Russian authorities: Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prighozin died in plane crash. Poland watches the situation closely

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner group commander Dmitry Utkin were among 10 people on board a plane involved in a fatal crash north of Moscow on Wednesday (August 23), Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said.

Rosaviatsia published the names of seven passengers, including Prigozhin and Utkin, and three crew members it said had been on board.

There was no immediate official confirmation that Prigozhin, Russia's most powerful mercenary and a self-declared enemy of the Russian Defence Ministry, was physically on board.

Reuters could not confirm that he was on the aircraft though a Telegram channel linked to Wagner pronounced him dead.

The channel, Grey Zone, declared Prigozhin a hero and a patriot who it said had died at the hands of unidentified people it called "traitors to Russia."

If confirmed, his death would leave the Wagner Group, which incurred President Vladimir Putin's wrath in June by staging an abortive armed mutiny against the army's top brass, leaderless and raise questions about its future operations in Africa and elsewhere.

Whoever or whatever was behind the crash, his death would also rid Putin of someone who had mounted the most serious challenge to the Russian leader's authority since he came to power in 1999.

"An investigation has been launched into an Embraer plane crash that occurred tonight in the Tver region," Rosaviatsia, Russia's aviation agency, was cited as saying by the state TASS news agency. "According to the passenger list, the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin is among them."

Russia's emergency situations ministry said in a statement that the aircraft, which had been travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, had crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region. It said that 10 people had been on board, including three crew members. According to preliminary information, everyone on board had been killed, it said.

The Head of the National Security Bureau of the Republic of Poland Jacek Siewiera commented on the news about the alleged death of Prigozhin. "Today marks exactly 2 months since the march on Moscow and just like at the time: events taking place in the territory of the Russian Federation are its internal affairs. We are watching closely," Siewiera wrote.

Commenting on the news from Russia, the United States President Joe Biden said: "I don't know for a fact what happened. But I'm not surprised..."

"There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer," Biden added.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that "it is obvious that Putin does not forgive anyone for his own bestial terror".

"The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner command two months after the coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russia's elites ahead of the 2024 elections. 'Beware! Disloyalty equals death," Podolyak added.

Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded the mutiny against Russia's top army brass on June 23-24 which Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war. Wagner fighters shot down Russian attack helicopters during the revolt, killing an unconfirmed number of pilots in a move which infuriated the military.

He has also spent months criticising the way Russia was prosecuting its war in Ukraine, something Moscow calls a "special military operation", and had tried to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff.

Many Russians had wondered how he was able to get away with such brazen criticism.

The mutiny was ended by negotiations and an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But in practice he had appeared to move freely inside Russia after the deal.