Russia says that Yevgeny Prigozhin died in the plane crash

The Decay of the Prussian Airlines Flight of a Freedom-Fronted American Airlines Flight with an Assassination Plane

Instead, the Kremlin made a deal with Prigozhin to stop the armed revolt, so that he would be allowed to walk free without being charged. Questions have remained, however, about whether Prigozhin eventually would face a comeuppance for the brief uprising that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority of his 23-year rule.

There is still uncertainty over the future ofWagner, an organization that was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries.

Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, as well as Wagner logistics mastermind Valery Chekalov, also were killed in the crash. It’s long been thought that Utkin founded the group with his nom de guerre.

One of the Western officials who described the initial assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that an explosion would be in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

An intelligence assessment concluded that an explosion caused the plane to go down. The Kremlin rejected the idea of the Russian president being the architect of an assassination as a complete lie.

Russia’s civil aviation authority earlier this week said Prigozhin, 62, and some of his top lieutenants were on the list of the passengers and crew members on board the plane. The passengers and crew of the plane died when it plummeted into the air near St.Petersburg, Prigozhin’s hometown.

Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement that forensic and genetic testing identified all 10 bodies recovered at the site of Wednesday’s crash and the findings “conform to the manifest” of the plane. The statement didn’t offer any information on the cause of the crash.