On 23 August 2023, an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet crashed near Kuzhenkino in Tver Oblast, approximately 100 kilometres (60 mi) north of its departure point in Moscow. Among the ten victims were Yevgeny Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin and Valery Chekalov, the key figures of the Wagner Group, a Russian state-funded private military company. The crash prompted speculation that the jet was destroyed on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin, after Prigozhin had led the Wagner Group rebellion exactly two months prior.
The aircraft involved in the crash, pictured in 2022
Putin's right-hand man Nikolai Patrushev (left) is believed to have orchestrated the assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin
Makeshift memorial to Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin in Moscow
Image: Yevgeny Prigozhin (13 06 2023)
Nikolai Patrushev
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Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev is a Russian politician, security officer and former intelligence officer who served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia from 2008 to 2024. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008. Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs. He played a key role in the decisions to seize and then annex Crimea in 2014 and to invade Ukraine in 2022.
Russian President Putin and then FSB director Patrushev at a meeting of the board of the Federal Security Service in 2002
Dmitry Medvedev with Sergei Lavrov and Patrushev at the 2010 SCO Summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Patrushev with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, D.C. on 22 May 2013