Prigozhin's Dead Body Identified by DNA After Plane Crash, Russia Says

Wagner financier and former Kremlin ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been confirmed dead following a plane crash over Russian territory on Wednesday, according to Russian state authorities.

All 10 people onboard the ill-fated flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg have been confirmed dead through genetic testing, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement posted to social mediaon Sunday.

Russia's civil aviation authority said on Wednesday that the plane carrying Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary group lieutenant, Dmitry Utkin, had crashed at around 6 p.m. local time. The plane went down near the village of Kuzhenkino, in Russia's Tver region, and footage quickly emerged of the plane plummeting towards the ground, along with photos of the wreckage.

Listed as passengers were Prigozhin, Utkin, and several other passengers, as well as pilot Alexey Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov, and stewardess Kristina Raspopova.

The crash happened two months to the day after Prigozhin led a short-lived armed rebellion against the Kremlin, with his forces seizing the southern city of Rostov-on-Don before marching towards the Russian capital.

The crash sparked rampant speculation over whether the notorious oligarch could have escaped the crash, or whether he could have faked his own death. Initial reports suggested a wide variety of reasons for the crash, including a missile strike or whether a wine crate stowed onboard contained a bomb.

The Investigative Committee said on Friday that officials had retrieved 10 bodies from the crash site, and was carrying out genetic testing. Authorities had seized flight recorders and other, unspecified items from the site, it said in a statement.

Prior to the genetic confirmation, the Kremlin had said it could not confirm Prigozhin's death, nor whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would attend his former ally's funeral.

Following the crash, Putin offered his "sincere condolences to the families of all those who died," calling it a "tragedy." Referring to Prigozhin in past tense ahead of the official confirmation of his death, Putin said he had known the mercenary leader since the 1990s, and that he was "a talented businessman."

Prigozhin had also risen to prominence as "Putin's Chef," a nickname referring to his catering business' work for the Kremlin.

"He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results for himself but also for the greater good when I asked him," Putin said.

The Kremlin hit back at claims it was responsible for the crash earlier this week, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling the BBC that this was a "complete lie."

The Wagner mutiny, brief as it was, was widely considered a major challenge to the Kremlin and Putin's personal power.

U.S. President Joe Biden had said he was "not surprised" by reports of Prigozhin's death, adding: "There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don't know enough to know the answer."

On Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, said the U.S. Defense Department's "initial assessment is that it's likely Prighozin was killed," but that there was no evidence to indicate a surface-to-air missile was responsible.

Update 08/27/23 at 7:45 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.