Russian investigators announced, on Friday evening, that they had found the bodies of the ten victims who were killed in the crash of the plane that was carrying the commander of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in addition to the two black boxes of the plane that crashed Wednesday in Russia.
The Russian Investigative Committee said on Telegram: “The bodies of the 10 dead were found at the scene of the plane crash. Genetic tests are being conducted to identify them. Investigators have seized the flight recorders, and a careful inspection of the place is being conducted.”
The committee stressed that “detailed research at the scene of the accident continues,” adding that “important materials and documents were also extracted to determine all the circumstances of the accident.”
The committee added that “the investigation will carefully study all possibilities regarding what happened.”
It is reported that an Embraer plane destined for Prigozhin, which was heading from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed in the Russian province of Tver on the evening of August 23.
There were ten people on board, all of whom died. According to the Russian Air Transport Authority, the passenger list included Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private military company “Wagner”.
Investigators did not reveal the hypotheses they are working on or the possible causes of the accident, which could include a bomb planted on board, a surface-to-air missile hitting it, or a mistake by the pilot.
Since the plane crash near the Russian capital on Wednesday and the authorities confirmed the death of ten people on board, including Prigozhin, speculation and analysis have circulated that the leader of the group, who was close to President Vladimir Putin until his armed rebellion in June, may be the victim of an assassination orchestrated by the Kremlin, as revenge for his defiance of the president’s authority. Russian.
On Friday, the Kremlin denied its involvement in the incident, considering it a “pure lie.”
Putin stressed, Thursday, that the investigation into the incident “will take some time,” but “it will be carried through to the end and a conclusion will be reached. There is no doubt about that.”
