First Suspect in Prigozhin Jet Crash Case Emerges: Reports

The first suspect in the aircraft crash reported to have killed Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is his personal pilot, Russian Telegram channels reported on Thursday.

Artem Stepanov, who was formerly hit by United States sanctions for his connection with Prigozhin, is being investigated for his alleged involvement in the plane crash, according to Telegram news channels Sirena and SHOT, the Baza channel, which is linked to Russia's security services, and the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, which has close ties to Russian security forces.

A private jet belonging to Prigozhin, which had been traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region on Wednesday evening, exactly two months after he led a failed uprising against the Kremlin's top brass, calling out the military leadership for incompetence in Putin's war in Ukraine.

All 10 people on board the plane—seven passengers and three crew members—died in the incident, Russia's Emergency Ministry said. The cause of the crash wasn't immediately apparent. Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency said Prigozhin was on the list of passengers.

The Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported that Prigozhin was killed, but his death has not yet been officially confirmed.

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Baza reported that investigators believe Stepanov could have had access to Prigozhin's private jet on the eve of its departure from Moscow. The channel cited Stepanov's brother as saying that he has been on vacation in Kamchatka, a peninsula in Russia's far east, for the last week, but said "he has already been contacted by those to whom he is needed."

VChK-OGPU similarly reported that investigators believe Stepanov had access to the plane prior to its departure, and that he left for Kamchatka before the crash. Sirena reported that Prigozhin's "personal pilot" is being investigated for his involvement in the crash.

Newsweek could not independently verify the claims.

According to Russian news outlet MKRU, Stepanov filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Treasury when he was sanctioned, claiming at the time that he hadn't seen Prigozhin in 10 years.

Russian news outlet Fontanka cited a source at the crash site on Thursday as saying that the bodies recovered were too badly burned to allow for visual identification, but "indirect evidence" indicates that Prigozhin was among those killed.

Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency published a list of people on board the crashed plane, including Prigozhin, fellow Wagner Group founder Dmitry Utkin, a manager of Prigozhin's catering company Valery Chekalov, Sergey Propustin, who joined Wagner in March 2015, Yevgeny Makaryan, who joined Wagner in 2016, Alexander Totmin, and Nikolay Matuseev.

Update 08/24/23, 8:23 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.

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