TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was presumed dead Wednesday after a plane crash north of Moscow that killed all 10 people on board.
Prigozhin was on the plane, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency, which cited the airline. The crash immediately raised suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.
At the time, President Vladimir Putin denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back” and vowed to avenge it. But the charges against Prigozhin were soon dropped. The Wagner chief, whose troops were some of the best fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, was allowed to retreat to Belarus, while reportedly popping up in Russia from time to time.
Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine who was linked to the leader of a brief armed rebellion, has been dismissed as chief of the air force, Russian state media reported Wednesday after weeks of uncertainty about his fate.
Surovikin has not been seen in public since June 23-24, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, sent his men to march toward Moscow. In a video released during the uprising, Surovikin — who was believed to have close ties to Prigozhin — had urged him to pull the mercenaries back.
The Wagner uprising posed the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s 23-year rule and reports circulated that Surovikin had known about it in advance. Prigozhin called off the rebellion short of reaching Moscow after he said he wanted to avoid bloodshed.
