A day after a plane crash that probably killed Russia’s notorious mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and all nine other people on board, Russian President Vladimir Putin remained silent on the incident on Thursday.

The crash on Wednesday evening came just two months after Prigozhin led a mutiny against Moscow’s top military officials, the biggest threat to Putin’s long rule.

Moscow launched an investigation into the violation of air traffic rules, but investigators have since remained silent, and speculation of a possible murder has been rife.

Ukraine has denied involvement, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying: “We have nothing to do with this situation, that’s for sure.”

“I think everyone knows to whom it concerns,” Zelensky said in an apparent reference to Putin.

Flightradar24 tracker website said the plane flying from Moscow to St Peterburg appeared on their radar for the last 30 seconds and descended “dramatically” at around 15:20 GMT. Photo: AFP

Moscow has still not officially confirmed the death of the 62-year-old warlord, saying only that he was listed as a passenger on the flight.

During the Wagner Rebellion on 23–24 June, Putin gave an address to Russians in which he called Prigozhin – his one-time ally – a “traitor”, and warned against a “civil war”.

Prigozhin had spent months making scathing attacks on the way Moscow invaded Ukraine before his 48-hour uprising shook Putin’s regime.

To the surprise of many, Moscow dropped the charges against Prigozhin and allowed him to go into exile in Belarus.

Some Western leaders questioned whether the crash was an accident.

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US President Joe Biden said he did not know what happened, but added: “Nothing happens in Russia that Putin is not behind.”

France observed “reasonable suspicion” about the crash and Germany said it followed a pattern of “unexplained” deaths in Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Bayerbock says it is suspicious that “a disgraced former confidant of Putin literally falls from the sky two months after attempting a coup”.

Even influential pro-Kremlin figures, such as state television personality and Putin aide Margarita Simonyan, were suggesting it could have been an assassination.

“One of the versions that is being discussed (about the accident) is that it was staged. But personally, I am leaning towards the more obvious version,” she said on social media.

A handout photo taken and released by the Russian Investigative Committee on August 23, 2023 shows rescuers working at a plane crash site near the village of Kuzenkino in Tver region. Photo: AFP

Putin’s opponents have disappeared under mysterious circumstances during his long rule.

Russia’s aviation authority published the names of those on board the Embraer private jet late on Wednesday.

This involved Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, a shadowy figure who managed Wagner’s operations and reportedly served in Russian military intelligence.

Russian police patrolled the crash site near the village of Kuzenkino, about 350 kilometers (220 mi) north of Moscow, in the Tver region. Some of the masked men had rifles.

A woman living near Kuzenkino said that her neighbor heard a roar and saw “flashes from the plane” accompanied by flames.

This photo posted on August 23, 2023 on the Telegram channel @grey_zone belonging to Wagner allegedly shows the wreckage of the burning plane near the village of Kuzenkino, Tver region. Photo: AFP

“A neighbor came to me with trembling hands and when we went to the window I only saw a mushroom, a black cloud,” he said in a video published by state agency RIA Novosti.

verified by video AFP From the visuals it appeared that the Embraer Legacy aircraft was engulfed in a plume of white smoke as it fell from the sky.

Flightradar24 tracker website said the plane flying from Moscow to St Peterburg appeared on their radar for the last 30 seconds and descended “dramatically” at around 15:20 GMT.

Some Telegram channels linked to Wagner initially suggested the plane had been shot down by Russian air defenses, on a day when Kiev carried out more drone attacks on Russia.

While he publicly challenged Moscow’s authority, Prigozhin seemed to enjoy some popularity in Russia.

Wreckage of the presumed Prigozhin plane crash in Russia. Photo: AFP

He appealed to nationalist-minded Russians – who were also suspected of leading the military during the Ukraine invasion – who accepted his tough stance.

Some even speculated that he would run in the 2024 presidential election, which is expected to extend Putin’s rule until at least 2030.

“He was one of the few true patriots of our country,” said Pavel Zakharov as he laid flowers at Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg.