Wagner boss and failed coup leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the plane that crashed in Russia, killing everyone on board, aviation agency says

• Russian media reports said Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed.
• Moscow's civil aviation agency said in a statement that the Wagner Group boss was on board.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who incited a short-lived mutiny against the Russian defense ministry exactly two months ago, appears to have been killed in a plane crash on Wednesday, Russian state media reports indicated. Russia's civil aviation agency said in a statement that the mercenary boss was on board.

State-run news agency TASS reported that Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a business jet that went down in the Tver region just outside of Moscow on Wednesday evening. All ten people — three pilots and seven passengers — who were traveling on the flight between Moscow and St. Petersburg are reportedly dead.

Wagner-affiliated social media channels claimed that the plane was shot down by unspecified air-defense systems, but the cause of the crash remains unclear. Russia's defense ministry did not immediately comment on the matter.

"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," Russia's Federal Agency for Air Transport of Russia said in a statement.

The agency later published a list of names of the individuals who it said were on the plane, citing the airline. The list includes Prigozhin and his main associate Dmitry Utkin.

Prigozhin's exact whereabouts since he started the armed rebellion in late June that saw his Wagner mercenaries march toward Moscow, shooting down Russian aircraft in the process, have been somewhat murky.

He recently appeared in a video that surfaced earlier this week and was purportedly filmed from an undisclosed location in Africa. The footage followed earlier remarks that indicated he would eventually head there from his exile in Belarus.

His presence in Africa could not be confirmed by Insider, and it's unclear if he was traveling in Russia aboard the doomed flight for which he was listed as a passenger on Wednesday.

"We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised," White House National Security Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement shared with Insider. A US State Department spokesperson added that "the disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this."

Before it became a disgraced organization in the wake of Prigozhin's failed coup, the Wagner Group fought in Ukraine alongside the regular Russian army. Rifts slowly began to emerge between the two sides, with the Wagner boss regularly calling out Moscow's military leadership over issues like ammunition supply and battlefield incompetence.

Eventually, tensions boiled over in late June. Prigozhin and his mercenaries invaded Russia, quickly capturing the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and coming within just a few hours of Moscow before Belarus brokered a peace deal between Wagner and the Kremlin.

As part of the negotiations, Prigozhin was cast into exile in Belarus, and his mercenaries were given the opportunity to join him. Although Prigozhin was seen back in Russia at various times, he was eventually spotted at a military camp in Belarus where his Wagner fighters were training Belarusian forces.

Prigozhin said in July that Wagner would remain in Belarus for some time before eventually heading to Africa, where the mercenary organization has a footprint in several countries and has been accused of committing widespread human rights violations and other atrocities.

Although the Wagner Group's armed rebellion ended rather quickly, it set in motion a series of high-level purges within the Kremlin and Russia's military leadership. Prigozhin appeared to walk away from the chaos without being dealt the kind of punishment many observers expected. Some Western officials suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin might opt to deal with the betrayal at a later date.

"Putin is someone who generally thinks that revenge is a dish best-served cold," CIA Director Bill Burns said at a security forum last month, predicting that Prigozhin will likely face some sort of payback. "In my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback, so I would be surprised if Prigozhin escapes further retribution for this."

Update: This post has been updated with the latest information from Russia's civil aviation agency.