Wagner warns Putin ‘expect us’ after Prigozhin ‘killed in crash’ – follow live

The plane Prigozhin is reported to have been flying on was a private business jet – an Embraer Legacy 600, registration number 02795.

The aircraft is 26.3m long, has a wingspan of 21.1m and a top speed of 528mph. It has a range of nearly 4,000 miles can carry 13-14 passengers and usually has two crew members on board.

It crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino, northwest of Moscow, during a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg.

Ten people were reportedly on a plane that crashed near Moscow on Wednesday evening, killing everyone on board.

The passengers included Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who many believed was a marked man after his short-lived uprising in June against the Russian military.

Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, was also listed as a passenger, as well as logistics chief Valery Chekalov, and Yevgeny Makaryan, a fighter wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Syria.

Little is equally known about the other three Wagner fighters on the manifest, who included Alexander Totmin, Sergei Propustin and Nikolai Matuseiev. But one is thought to have been a bodyguard for the Wagner group.

In all, the other passengers included six of Prigozhin’s lieutenants, along with the three-member flight crew.

At least one person was killed and 16 people were wounded in Russian attacks across Ukraine on Thursday, local officials said, as Kyiv marked 32 years of independence from Moscow.

The cities of Kherson and Dnipro, and the frontline town of Kurakhove, were hit by attacks which wounded civilians, and a farmer was killed by shelling in southern Ukraine, the officials said.

A Russian missile strike on a bus terminal in Dnipro wounded 10 people, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.

Rows of shops near the station were rocked by the blast, which destroyed some of them and left others full of broken glass and ruined goods.

More than 10 other buildings including a bank, hotel and administrative building were damaged, Lysak said.

In the southern region of Kherson, three people were wounded in addition to the farmer who was killed, officials said.

Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said the farmer was killed by shelling while working in a field near the village of Shyroka Balka.

A seven-year-old girl was injured by Russian shelling of the centre of the city of Kherson, Prokudin also said.

Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said two other people were wounded when one of the shells hit a roof of a private house, and posted a photo online showing a partially destroyed building with a gaping hole in one side.

Three local residents were wounded in a separate attack on a supermarket in the town of Kurakhove in the eastern Donetsk region, the prosecutor’s office said.

Thursday was a national holiday commemorating post-Soviet independence. The anniversary fell exactly 18 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

Vladimir Putin will hold the key to the future of the group, which faces three options. Analysis by Joe Sommerlad:

Ukraine was not involved in the reported death of Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted President Volodymyr Zelensky as saying.

“We had nothing to do with it. Everybody realises who has something to do with it,” Mr Zelensky was quoted as telling journalists.

The president also attended a celebration ceremony of the Independence Day of Ukraine.

It is “no accident” that focus swiftly turned to the Kremlin following the crash, Germany’s foreign minister said Thursday.

“We know this pattern in Putin’s Russia: deaths, dubious suicides, falls from windows, all which remain unclarified — that underlines a dictatorial power system that is built on violence,” Annalena Baerbock told a news conference.

She added that it was “no accident that the world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced former confidant of Putin suddenly, literally falls from the sky two months after he attempted a mutiny.”

Masked men claiming to belong to the Wagner Group have warned the Kremlin to “get ready for us” after the reported death of their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“There’s a lot of talk right now about what the Wagner Group will do. We can tell you one thing, we are getting started, get ready for us,” the masked men warned.

Earlier reports said Russia security forces in two regions were put on alert after Wagner mercenaries vowed to “avenge” Prigozhin’s death.

Nato member Norway will donate F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, whose forces are embroiled in a difficult counteroffensive against Russia, Norwegian media said.

The reports came as Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store was visiting Kyiv.

There was no official confirmation of the plan, which was reported by Norwegian broadcasters NRK and TV2.

Norway would be the third European country after the Netherlands and Denmark to donate F-16 planes.

Ukraine has long pleaded for the sophisticated fighter jets to give it a combat edge.

Ukraine’s navy and military intelligence carried out a “special operation” overnight in which units landed on Russian-occupied Crimea, the defence ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said on Thursday.

The operation, which has not been independently confirmed, would amount to a rare demonstration that Ukrainian forces are able to stage ground operations in Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014.

Brief and dark video footage posted alongside the statement showed a small motorboat moving through water at night near a coastline. HUR said the landing point was on the western tip of Crimea, near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak.

“Special units on watercraft landed on the shore in the area of the Olenivka and Mayak settlements,” HUR said in a statement.

It said “all goals” had been achieved and casualties inflicted on the enemy, but did not identify the goals. “Also, the state flag flew again in Ukrainian Crimea,” it said, without saying where exactly or providing further details.