Ten corpses and flight recorders have been discovered at the site of a plane crash that is believed to have murdered Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russia said.
“Molecular-genetic tests are now being carried out,” said the researchers.
The jet crashed near Moscow on Wednesday, fueling fears that it was brought down by a bomb or a missile.
Claims that the Kremlin gave the order to assassinate Prigozhin were a “complete lie,” the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin told the BBC earlier.
In June, Prigozhin, a former Putin supporter, staged an abortive violent insurrection by his mercenary warriors.
Mr. Putin called the mutiny “treason,” but an agreement was eventually reached for Wagner mercenaries to either join Russia’s regular army or travel to Belarus, a Moscow ally.
Prigozhin, 62, was labelled a “dead man walking” in the aftermath of the uprising, with many analysts claiming that the Russian president would never forgive the Wagner chief.
During a press conference on Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the BBC that there was “lots of speculation” surrounding the “tragic” deaths of all ten passengers in Wednesday’s plane disaster in the Tver area, north-west of Moscow.
According to the passenger list, Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, as well as five other passengers and three staff members, were on board the Embraer Legacy 600 plane.
“Of course, in the West, this supposition comes from a specific standpoint. “It’s all a lie,” Mr. Peskov continued.
“We don’t have many facts right now; the facts need to be clarified during the official investigation that is currently underway,” he continued.
Moreover, despite the plane’s manifest, Mr. Peskov declined to say if the Kremlin had confirmation that Prigozhin was on board the doomed airliner.
The suspected death of Prigozhin has also cast additional uncertainty on Wagner’s future.
Belarus’ President Aleksander Lukashenko said on Friday that up to 10,000 Wagner warriors will remain in the nation.
Many analysts, though, feel that Mr. Lukashenko is a puppet of the Kremlin.
President Putin remained silent for over 24 hours after the tragedy before expressing condolences to all of the victims’ families.
He also called Prigozhin a “talented individual” who “made serious mistakes in life.”
But, since the jet went down, there has been wild conjecture about what caused the tragedy.
The Pentagon believes the Wagner leader was killed, but a US official told CBS News that an explosion on board the jet was the most likely cause of the accident.
President Joe Biden stated on Friday that the US was still attempting to “nail down” what caused the jet to crash.
