New Delhi: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led a failed rebellion against Vladimir Putin in June this year, was on board a private jet that crashed in Russia with no survivors on Wednesday, August 23, according to Russian aviation authorities.

Russian state media agency TASS reported that the Federal Agency for Air Transport of Russia (Rosaviatsiya) has initiated an investigation of the crash of the Embraer plane that happened in the Tver Region on Wednesday. The name Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in the list of passengers of the crashed flight, TASS said.

"An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated. According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list," Rosaviatsiya said.

While unconfirmed reports said the jet belonged to the Wagner chief, it was not immediately clear if the 622-year-old Prigozhin was on the plane when it crashed.

According to the BBC, a Wagner-linked Telegram channel had reported that the jet was "shot down by air defences" in the Tver region that is north of Moscow.

TASS had earlier reported that the Embraer aeroplane was on the way from Sheremetyevo to St. Petersburg. "There were three pilots and seven passengers on board. All of them died," it said.

The incident occurred near Kuzhenkino. "Emergency response services have told TASS that four bodies have been found. The plane reportedly caught fire after hitting the ground and burned up. It had been in flight less than 30 minutes," the report said.

Mercenaries of the Wagner Group, a private military contractor, were deployed by Russian forces in the invasion of Ukraine, but the relationship between Prigozhin and Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu was thorny. Tensions came to a head after the Wagner chief claimed that a base occupied by his troops was attacked by Russia’s military and on June 23, he began to drive a convoy away from Ukraine and into Russia.

After seizing the Southern Military District headquarters at Rostov-on-Don, Prigozhin marched towards Moscow. Russian President Putin's warning to "traitors" was hit back by Wagner that there would "be a new Russian president soon".

As the Wagner convoy was only a couple of hours from the Kremlin, a compromise was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on June 24. Prighozin received safe passage to Minsk and treason charges against Wagner fighters were dropped. The mercenaries were also integrated into the Russian military.

Until the rebellion, Prighozin was considered a close ally of Putin and even ran "troll factories" that praised the Kremlin and attacked critics.

Note: This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.

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