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Russia recovers bodies, flight recorders from Wagner crash

August 25, 2023

The jet crashed soon after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg, carrying Wagner chief Prigozhin and nine other people. The Kremlin has rejected accusations that it was behind the crash.

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A portrait of the owner of private military company Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin lays at an informal memorial next to the former 'PMC Wagner Centre' in St. Petersburg
Wagner chief Prigozhin is presumed to have died in the crashImage: Dmitri Lovetsky/ASSOCIATED PRESS/picture alliance

Russian authorities announced on Friday that they had recovered 10 bodies from the scene of a plane crash presumed to have killed the chief of the mercenary group Wagner,Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform that the flight recorders were also recovered.

"Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities," the committee said.

Wagner chief Prigozhin presumed dead in plane crash

Prigozhin was in the private jet that crashed in Russia on Wednesday, Wagner-linked media and Russian aviation authorities had said. An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash.

Several Western countries have suggested Moscow might be behind the crash, noting it comes barely two months after the mercenary chief's short-lived mutiny against the Russian military leadership.

What did the Kremlin say?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov flatly denied on Friday the allegations of Moscow's involvement, describing the speculation surrounding the crash as a "complete lie."

A preliminary assessment by the US intelligence concluded that the jet was downed by an intentional explosion, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Describing the assessment, one of the US and Western officials said Prigozhin was "very likely" targeted, the AP reported. The officials, however, did not offer any details on what caused the explosion.

Responding to reporters' questions about what brought down the jet, US President Joe Biden said: "I'm not at liberty to speak to that precisely." He added that the US was trying to "nail down" the cause of the crash.

Aviation expert Anthony Brickhouse speaks to DW

rmt/sri (AFP, AP)