Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin was formally confirmed dead on Sunday after DNA analysis, according to investigators, as fury and concerns about what caused his plane to crash earlier in the week grew.
The disaster occurred exactly two months after Wagner staged a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership, fueling speculation that the Kremlin was involved.
“Molecular-genetic examinations have been completed as part of the investigation into the plane crash in the Tver region,” Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman from Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
“According to their results, the identities of all 10 victims were established, they correspond to the list stated in the flight list,” she added.
Dmitry Utkin, a secretive figure who handled Wagner’s operations and reputedly served in Russian military intelligence, was among the nine other persons listed onboard the Embraer private plane that crashed on Wednesday.
Makeshift memorials
Following the disaster, Russian officials launched an investigation into air traffic violations but have not revealed any more information regarding its likely cause.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the situation as “tragic,” labeling rumors of suspected foul play a “absolute lie.”
His remarks came as the Kremlin attempted to tighten its grip on groups like Wagner, with a presidential decree signed Friday requiring paramilitary fighters to make an oath to the Russian flag.
President Vladimir Putin claimed in a speech on Thursday that he had known Prigozhin, a former ally, since the early 1990s. Both are from Saint Petersburg, Russia’s old imperial capital.
His statements, however, did little to quell mounting doubts and outrage over the killing of the mercenary’s boss, with improvised tributes to Prigozhin sprouting up across Russian cities.
“He was killed,” said one man outside a makeshift memorial in Moscow visited by an AFP reporter.
“He was killed by his enemies. We won’t say who. The investigation will reveal. But we hope that revenge will catch up with those who committed this crime,” he added.
Drone strikes
Hostilities between Moscow and Kiev raged on Sunday, with Russia saying that its border regions had been targeted by drones once more, and Ukraine reporting a midnight strike.
Since Kyiv announced in July that it intended to “return” the conflict to Russian soil, Russia and the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula have been targeted practically daily.
After the governor of Belgorod area stated a drone carrying explosives killed a man, Moscow’s defense ministry announced on Sunday that two Ukrainian drones flying over border territories had been rejected.
A drone crashed into an apartment building in Kursk city overnight, blowing out windows on multiple stories, according to the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine.
“There were no fires, none of the residents were injured,” governor Roman Starovoit said on social media, sharing an image of what appeared to be a charred mark on a tower block.
The strike came a day after the governor of Russia’s neighboring Belgorod region said a drone attack killed a man in the village of Shchetinovka, about a mile (two kilometers) from the Ukrainian border.
“The Ukrainian armed forces dropped an explosive device from a drone when the man was on his dacha plot cutting grass,” governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Saturday evening, announcing the man died from shrapnel wounds.
Ukraine said on Sunday that it shot down four cruise missiles in its north and central regions overnight amid another Russian air strike.
Ruslan Kravchenko, the chief of Kyiv’s regional military administration, claimed falling missile fragments injured two persons and damaged ten homes.
‘Juice’
Meanwhile, Ukraine lamented the death of three pilots killed in a mid-air collision on Friday, with key personalities paying respect to well-known fighter ace “Juice” who died in the incident.
The accident of two combat training planes is a setback for Kyiv, which has been hunting for upgraded F-16 airplanes to modernize its Soviet-era air force.
Major Vyacheslav Minka, Major Sergiy Prokazin, and Captain Andrii Pilshchykov — better known as “Juice” — were the three killed, according to the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade.
“Each of them was involved in air operations for the defence of Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale aggression, including tactical tasks in the east and in Zaporizhzhia region,” it said.
In an address Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to the crash victims, hailing them as defenders of “Ukraine’s free sky” and promising an investigation into what happened.
Zelensky has petitioned Western officials to send F-16s, which Ukraine claims are needed to defend its airspace and reclaim territory as it struggles to make progress in its counteroffensive.