The Russian civil aviation administration confirmed on Wednesday evening the presence of Evgeny Prigojine and Dmitri Outkin in the crashed plane north of Moscow. Authorities said no one on board survived the crash.
Wagner lost its two founders. This Wednesday, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner Yevgeny Prigojine, at the origin of a rebellion in June, his deputy Dmitri Utkin and eight other passengers died in the crash of a small private plane north of Moscow in Russia, according to information from several Russian authorities.
The Russian air transport agency Rossaviatsia has indeed revealed the list of passengers on the plane operating from Moscow to Saint Petersburg which crashed in the Tver region, killing all the occupants. Among this list are the names of the two men.
A discreet right arm
Unlike his sidekick Yevgeny Prigojine, Dmitri Utkin was given very little prominence on the militia’s broadcasting channels but respected by his mercenaries. The Telegram channel “Grey Zone” linked to Wagner hailed this Wednesday evening a “hero of Russia” who “will even after the accident be the permanent commander” of the militia.
Before founding Wagner in 2014, he served as a lieutenant colonel in the 700th Intervention Detachment of the 2nd Special Forces Brigade of the GRU (General Directorate of Russian Military Intelligence).
It is difficult to trace with precision the exact route of Utkin. He reportedly quit his GRU job to form the Slave Corps, a private military company deployed to Syria in 2013 to fight alongside Bashar al-Assad’s troops. In 2014, he founded Wagner with a close friend of Vladimir Putin, a certain Evgueni Prigojine, who made his fortune in the restaurant business when the USSR fell.
Another detail, and not the least, concerning Dmitri Utkin: he is a great admirer of the Third Reich and of Adolf Hitler, and does not really hide it. On the rare pictures that exist of this man, he sports tattoos representing the insignia worn by the SS during the Second World War.
Eight bodies found
While ten people were on board the plane, only eight bodies have so far been found at the crash site, according to an emergency services official quoted by the Ria Novosti agency. The TASS agency mentioned seven bodies recovered.
An investigation has been opened for “violation of air transport security rules”. “A team of investigators was sent to the scene (…) to establish the causes of the accident,” the Russian Investigation Committee said in a statement.
Two months to the day before, Yevgeny Prigojine – and by extension Dmitri Utkine – was at the origin in June of a rebellion directed against the Russian general staff and the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, led by his men, who briefly captured military sites in southern Russia before heading to Moscow.
Vladimir Putin had called him a “traitor”, without pronouncing his name. Evgueni Prigojine had quickly given up on this mutiny, in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine. It ended on the evening of June 24 with an agreement providing for his departure to Belarus, while his fighters could join him there, enter the regular Russian army or return to civilian life.
Source: BFM TV
