Flash Report 23 AUG 2023 - 11:30 PDT - Private Jet Reportedly Carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin Shot Down (Patreon)

An Embraer Legacy 600 Business Jet, tail number RA-02795, registered to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Private Military Company Wagner Group, was apparently shot down by Russian air defenses over the Tver Region near Moscow.

The plane was flying at 513 knots at 28,000 feet when it suddenly stopped squawking, and Russian air controllers lost contact. There was no distress call, and the attached video shows the telltale puff of an air defense missile explosion.

The airplane had seven passengers and three crew listed on the manifest, including Yevgeny Prigozhin as a passenger. There is no official confirmation of his death, but multiple PMC Wagner-aligned channels are reporting that he was on the airplane. A video from the crash site that we have reviewed and is extremely graphic verifies there are no survivors. The last three digits of the tail number survived the crash, and pictures show it was 795.

At the time of this writing, the Russian state media agency Russia Today (RT) reported, "According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, an investigation has been launched into the Embraer crash in the Tver region; among the passengers are the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin."

Russian state media is reporting a "criminal investigation" has been opened, and some are suggesting the crash was due to terrorism. The videos showing the airplane being shot down by a surface-to-air missile are undeniable. 

A second airplane owned by Prigozhin, an Embraer ERJ-135BJ with the tail number RA-02748, was flying over Moscow at the time of the shootdown, turned around, and landed at Ostafyevo Airport near Moscow. The airplane, which was supposed to fly to St. Petersburg, circled for almost an hour before landing and also made no emergency declarations. It is unknown if the second aircraft was ordered to land. 

We cannot confirm the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin nor reports that PMC Wagner's mercenary commander, Dmitry Utkin, was onboard the aircraft. We would be surprised if Prigozhin and Utkin were on the same airplane, as this would represent a pretty basic personal security mistake.

This will have a major impact internally in Russia as well as in Belarus and the African continent.