For some, it was remarkable in itself that Yevgeny Prigozhin had lasted so long after his failed mutiny against the Kremlin two months earlier.
After pictures of him driving triumphantly through Rostov-on-Don, some 600 miles from Moscow, caught the world’s attention, this complex figure seems to have met its end at the hands of the man whose authority he was questioning .
So how much closer are we to understanding exactly what happened in his final hours?
Witnesses to the crash heard a loud bang before seeing the jet “fall out of the sky” – locals shared these images of the aftermath on social media
A Russian soldier inspects part of a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region
uprising that shocked the world
On the night of Saturday, June 24, Yevgeny Prigozhin smiled and waved to his worshiping followers in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
The creepy 62-year-old with the shaved head was an unlikely folk hero, but after leading a rebellion, albeit brief, against the Kremlin, he had the crowd in his grip.
That moment on a balmy summer evening proved its apotheosis. The ex-convict had managed an unlikely rise to become commander of what is arguably the world’s leading private military company (PMC), Wagner.
He had also brokered an extremely generous deal with Vladimir Putin, an agreement that left the enraged president looking weaker than at any time in his two decades in power.
His only punishment for leading an uprising that threatened to plunge Russia into civil war would be political exile in Belarus. For Western intelligence analysts, it seemed too good to be true.
The African Summit
Prigozhin was rarely seen in Belarus, and on July 28 he met with President Putin and African politicians for a summit in his hometown of St. Petersburg.
To the outside world, it seemed as if the outspoken warlord had made his peace with Putin and was being reinstated into the political community.
He was dressed casually and appeared rested. He was photographed befriending presidents and prime ministers who had deliberately traded their country’s natural resources for Wagner’s political services and protection. Prigozhin was in his element.
The last video
After several weeks of keeping a low profile, Prigozhin reappeared Tuesday in a Wagner promotional video filmed in North Africa.
Posing in his military uniform, including a rather ridiculous camouflage sun hat, and holding an assault rifle, he boasted that his PMC improved security on the continent and made life a nightmare for IS and al-Qaeda.
People carry a body bag away from the wreckage of a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region on August 24
Flight attendant Kristina Raspopova was killed on August 23 aboard Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet
Everything seemed fine in his world. While he was being investigated for alleged corruption, that didn’t seem to matter as he wielded such a powerful weapon, wore body armor and carried spare magazines full of 7.62mm caliber cartridges. Prigozhin looked quintessentially the world-traveling warlord, the man who had dared to approach the Kremlin and amazingly gotten away with it.
Apparently he was too influential to be eliminated even by his ruthless old adversary, Vladimir Putin.
The fatal flight
Prigozhin and other senior Wagner members, including the PMC’s co-founder, his right-hand man Dmitri Utkin, 53, flew back to Russia in the evening.
They were accompanied by Valery Chekalov, 47, a veteran of the Ukraine campaign; Sergei Propustin, 44, who fought alongside Prigozhin during the Battle of Bakhmut; and two other mercenaries, Alexander Totmin, 30, and Yevgeny Makaryan, who were involved in Wagner’s brutal crackdown on opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Her bodyguards were also in tow.
On Wednesday, her last flight from Moscow was delayed in Prigozhin’s hometown of St. Petersburg, apparently due to mechanical problems with her Embraer Legacy private jet.
39-year-old stewardess Kristina Raspopova took her time, grabbed her smartphone and opened her Facebook page.
She posted a photo of her airport meal, white bread, pie and butter, and told relatives the plane was being “fixed.”
The 39-year-old stewardess Raspopova took her time, grabbed her smartphone and opened her Facebook page
Whatever the cause, just after 6 p.m. local time, the jet was seen circling over the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of the Russian capital. Its engines caught fire and one of its wings was badly damaged
A relative said: “She said she was in Moscow.” The plane was being serviced or urgently repaired. It seemed like she had been there for a while. That’s at least a few days.
“They were waiting for the start order.”
Apparently the issues delaying their departure have been resolved and on Wednesday afternoon the luxury plane soared for 12 minutes after takeoff, eventually reaching an altitude of 28,000 feet.
Suddenly it disappeared from the radar. What happened next remains unconfirmed.
Either the plane was destroyed by an explosive device hidden on board or it was attacked by a surface-to-air missile – smoke plumes seen by eyewitnesses suggest the latter, but US intelligence officials yesterday cast doubt on that theory.
Whatever the cause, just after 6 p.m. local time, it was seen circling over the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of the Russian capital.
Its engines caught fire and one of its wings was badly damaged. Then, to the horror of bystanders filming the incident, the jet plummeted toward the ground and crashed in a ball of flames. Within 30 seconds, the jet had plummeted more than 8,000 feet.
All ten people on board were found dead at the scene of the accident.
The second flight
About ten minutes after the crash, a second Embraer Legacy 650, also chartered by Wagner, landed safely in St. Petersburg. It was on a similar trajectory to the crashed jet.
This led to speculation that Prigozhin might have survived the assassination by flying on the other plane.
However, it shouldn’t be. The assassin’s selection of the correct aircraft indicated that he had inside knowledge of the Wagner boss’s travel plans, which had often been changed at the last minute for security reasons.
The Russian investigative committee released a photo of the alleged crash site on Wednesday after the fire was extinguished
The Wagner headquarters in St. Petersburg appeared to be illuminated in the shape of a cross
Assessments by western secret services
US and other Western officials said preliminary intelligence reports led them to believe an explosion on board caused the plane to crash.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it could be some time before Western intelligence agencies could say with absolute certainty that Prigozhin was on board.
Russian investigators plan to interrogate a pilot as they suspect the private jet was blown up by a bomb hidden near the toilet.
Baza, a channel on Russian social media app Telegram with links to the country’s security services, reported that Artyom Stepanov is being searched for and may have had access to the plane before it took its final flight.
But the development was viewed with skepticism by Western officials.
The West assumes that Putin is most likely responsible for the deaths of Prigozhin and key lieutenants. US President Joe Biden said yesterday: “There is not much happening in Russia that Putin is not behind.”
The bomb theory and the release of Mr Stepanov’s name could be an attempt by the Kremlin to distance itself from claims of a state-sponsored assassination.