How did the plane carrying Wagner’s leaders crash? ‘It all happened in 30 seconds’
The news that Yevgeniy Prigojin, the leader of the Russian Wagner mercenary army, died when his plane crashed exactly 2 months after the uprising that rocked Russia, fell like a bomb on the world agenda.
The Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) announced that the plane crashed yesterday in a small town in Tver, along with Wagner founder Prigojin, his deputy and Wagner co-founder Dmitriy Utkin, and leading names in the group Sergey Propustin. , Yevgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Cekalov, announced that they also found Nikolay Matuseyev.
The question of how the plane crashed generated controversy, as all eyes turned to Putin, who said: “I will never forgive treason.”
The Embraer EMBR3.SA Legacy 600 private jet transported Prigojin and other Wagner leaders from Moscow to St. Petersburg. I was transporting him to St. Petersburg. According to the flight data, the aircraft showed no signs of malfunction and had no problems until the last 30 seconds.
‘hit with a missile’
Ian Petchenik of the site Flightradar24, which collects flight data, claimed that the plane suddenly began to fall to the ground, saying: “Whatever happens, it happened very quickly.” Petchenik, who said there were no signs of trouble with the plane before, said the private plane suddenly crashed to the ground from a height of 8,000 meters.
Videos show the plane crashing abruptly, with smoke billowing up behind.
In some Telegram channels, known to be close to Wagner, it is claimed that the plane was shot down by the defense systems of the Russian army. According to some sources, the plane was hit by surface-to-air missiles when Russia launched an investigation into the incident.
The Brazilian aeronautical company Embraer affirmed that it has not carried out any maintenance on its own plane in recent years and that it complies with international sanctions against Russia.
Prigokhin had traveled to Belarus on the same plane after the brief uprising in June.