Compiled by Sabine Meuter and Jörn Kießler from the WDR-Newsroom.
topic of the day
Private jet crashed in Russia: “Wagner” boss Prigozhin on board? • The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, may have died in a plane crash in Russia. As the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya announced in the evening, citing the airline, both Prigozhin and his deputy Dmitri Utkin are said to have been on board the plane. The Ministry of Disaster Prevention in Moscow announced that according to initial information, all ten occupants of the machine died. The Telegram channel Gray Zone, which Prigozhin used to distribute his videos, also reported the death of the head of the private army last night. So far there has been no official confirmation or reliable evidence of Prigozhin’s death.
Instead, there is speculation about Prigozhin’s whereabouts, two months after his fighters’ short-lived uprising against the military leadership in Moscow. One version is that Prigozhin may have been on a second plane, which turned back after the crash and later landed in Moscow, Reuters reports. Another possibility is that he was not on any of the planes that flew over Russia. It was only on Monday that the Wagner boss appeared in a desert area in his first published video speech since the mercenary group rebelled and advertised for recruits in Africa. However, it is not clear where and, above all, when exactly the video was recorded. “Where Yevgeny Prigozhin was in the end, there is no precise information at the moment,” said the Telegram channel Gray Zone.