On Wednesday, August 23, a private Embraer ERJ-135 aircraft, with registration RA-02795, crashed in the Tver region near Moscow. Russian Federal Air Transport Agency announced later that the founder of Wagner GroupYevgeny Prigozhin was among the passengers on the flight.
The incident has been reported initially around 7:20 p.m. local time on the Telegram channel 112. Approximately thirty minutes later, the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation (MChS) posted on its Telegram channel a official release which said there were ten people on board, including three crew members. MChS said the incident occurred near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region as the plane was flying from Moscow to St Petersburg. According to the flight tracking service FlightRadar24, the aircraft experienced a series of rapid descents and climbs thirty-six minutes after take-off before disappearing from radar.
Shortly after the incident, Telegram channels shared a series of video recordings of the plane crash, as well as videos on site.
News portal Telegram channel Izvestia published a video showing debris from the plane with the digits "795," fueling abundant speculation at the time that the crash had indeed involved plane RA-02795.
Private plane photo Embraer ERJ-135, with the flight number RA-02795.
Shortly after the accident, TASS and RIA Novosti reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin was among the plane's passengers, according to a passenger list filed with the Federal Air Transport Agency. These reports of Prigozhin's presence aboard the plane came out surprisingly quickly; as the Telegram channel noted Vyorstka, it usually takes the agency a few hours to disclose such information. According to Vyorstka, reports of Prigozhin's presence on the passenger list came just three minutes after the initial report of the plane crash from the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Not long after, Wagner's affiliated Telegram channel, VChK-OGPU, reported that Wagner's commander and co-founder, Dmitry Utkin, were also aboard the crashed plane.
As rumors of the crash spread on Telegram channels, the Grey Zone, affiliated to the Wagner Group, published information about a second private plane, also allegedly owned by Prigozhin, which was reportedly seen "flying" over Moscow, prompting speculation that Prigozhin may have been aboard the second aircraft. According to the Telegram channel Readovka, Prigozhin used to check in as a passenger on one plane and then board the other for security reasons. The aircraft in question eventually landed at Moscow's Ostafyovo airport, with no further information about Prigozhin.
Just before 23:00 local time, the Federal Air Transport Agency published a list of people believed to have been on board the crashed Embraer in the Tver region, among the deceased were Prigozhin and Utkin.
Methodological considerations
In this analysis we have used the Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard, a project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy within the German Marshall Fund of the United States. It provides a summary analysis of the narratives and stories promoted by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government officials and state-funded media on Twitter, YouTube, state-sponsored news sites, and through official press releases and transcripts published by the respective foreign ministries. The dashboard also includes a small collection of global media Twitter accounts for comparative purposes. Social Data Search is a tweet search engine and data discovery tool designed to complement the native search capabilities of Hamilton 2.0.
The purpose of the dashboard and search tool is to increase our understanding of the focus and spread of state-supported government messages across various communication channels.
Hamilton 2.0 displays results from sources we can directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels.
In the case of this investigation, we used the search for all websites affiliated with the Russian government, which published between 23-25 August 2023 (3 calendar days) in various languages about the crash of the plane carrying the leaders of the "Wagner" military group, using the keywords "Prigozhin" and "Wagner".
The extracted data has been structured in an Excel table available here (link), including the full English-language content of articles extracted from websites monitored by Hamilton 2.0. This means that the dashboard measurements should not be considered a complete and integral summary. Data for all websites are provided by Debunk.eu, a Lithuanian initiative to combat disinformation.
Contextual analysis of Russian online news network news about Prigozhin's death
The RT network had the highest number of articles about the crash of Prigozhin's Embraer ERJ-135. The first news refers to a statement by a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations confirming that 8 victims were found at the scene and that "search and rescue operations" are continuing. It also said that a team of investigators had been sent to the scene to examine the circumstances of the accident. Later the same ministry announced that the bodies of the 10 victims of the plane crash could not be found and that the search operations were halted.
RT also mentions that the head of the "We are with Russia" (My s Rossiey), Vladimir Rogov, publicly confirmed the death of the founder of the group "Wagner", Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the second man in the group, Dmitry Utkin. The Russian Air Transport Agency has launched an investigation into the "accident".
Frequency of articles published by Kremlin-affiliated news websites about the crash of Prigozhin's aircraft (23-25 August 2023).
The same RT continues the narrative thread with images of the crash of the plane shared on social media. The authors mention an alleged "fire" that broke out on board the plane.
The death of Prigozhin and Utkin can be confirmed by Vladimir Rogov, head of the "We are with Russia" who would have contacted Wagner representatives personally. The latter confirmed the death of the two leaders of the group. The Russian Investigative Committee then issued a statement, quoted by the same RT Arabicthat a criminal case has been opened on the basis of an offence under Article 263 of the Russian Criminal Code (violation of the rules of movement and use of air transport).
An eyewitness told them RT journalists about the first moments of the crash of the passenger plane owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Tver district, north of Moscow, saying an explosion was heard before the plane crashed.
RT intersperses news about Prigozhin's plane crash with news about Britain's intention to include the military group "Wagner" in the list of terrorist organisations and the direct consequences of this decision.
Then the World War II hypothesis is launched "Prigozhin's "second plane" which changed its direction of flight immediately after the first plane crashed. The plane had landed at Moscow's Ostafyevo airport and was scheduled to take off on Thursday on a Moscow-Baku route.
Key words used in articles published by pro-Kremlin propaganda networks on the subject of Prigozhin's plane crash (23-25 August 2023). It can be seen that the reference to President Putin on this subject is marginal.
According to the Russian Aviation Authority, Prigozhin and his entourage in the "Wagner" group died following the plane crash, which took off on the basis of a permit issued by the Russian authorities to use the airspace in accordance with established procedures.
In a video message, Putin sent his condolences families of the victims of the "plane crash" in the suburbs of Tver province, officially confirming the death of Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. He stressed the need to continue the work of the Investigative Committee "until the truth is known". He also praised the man's talent in business, stressing that he had known him since the 1990s. In his speech, Putin praised the contributions of the Wagner military company in the fight "against Nazism in Ukraine", pointing out that Prigozhin had made mistakes along the way [referring to The military rebellion of 23-24 June], but also achieved tangible results.
The RT network also mentions in a separate article and post by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov that the founder of the "Wagner" company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, made an important contribution to special military operations, noting that his death is a great loss to Russia and that he "did not want to see the full picture of what is happening in the country" being "a strong personality guided by the desire to achieve his goal here and now".
Sputnik network, on the other hand, was much more evasive in describing the event, limiting itself to the same press releases issued by the Russian authorities: the Investigative Committee, the Russian Aviation Authority (Rosaviatsiya).
Top pro-Kremlin sources with most social media interactions on the subject of the Prigozhin plane crash (August 23-25, 2023).
Also worth mentioning here Sputnik's contextualization about the crash of Prigozhin's private aircraft, with a focus on the June insurrection organized by Wagner Group forces. They accused Russian Defence Ministry troops of attacking their base, and consequently captured the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don. The military uprising is said to have been stopped thanks to "intense negotiations that took place in coordination with Russian President Vladimir Putin, mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko," Sputnik reports.
TASS News Agency describes in detail data from the report of flight RA-02795 published by Flightradar24 showing that the aircraft's altitude had dropped and risen repeatedly before the crash. All recorded altitude changes would have occurred within 32 seconds, indirectly suggesting a technical failure as the cause of the crash.
"This is always a tragedy," TASS quotes him as saying the Kremlin president in a meeting with separatist leader Denis Pushilin of the so-called "DNR". Then Putin would like to mention in his speech, quoted by TASS, that the founder of Wagner also worked abroad, especially in Africa, dealing with oil, gas, metals and precious stones, and that he's known him for a long timesince the 1990s - a man with a "not easy fate" and who has made "some serious mistakes in his life".
TASS also quotes Kommersant, launches for the first time in the media sphere the hypothesis that the crash could have been caused by an explosion in the tail section of the aircraft. Experts are also quoted as saying that holes in the fuselage and wings suggest that the aircraft may have been brought down by a missile. Incidentally, this article registered the highest rating on Info-Meter (55.0), according to data provided by Hamilton 2.0, meaning that the article gets the most traffic.
Frequency of use of country names in articles analysed about the death of leader Wagner following the crash of his aircraft in the Russian Federation.
Conclusions
This detailed analysis of the events surrounding the crash of the Embraer ERJ-135 private jet carrying seven leaders of the private military group Wagner, including Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, provides a comprehensive look at how the news was reported and interpreted in the Russian online media. Using the Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard tool and data provided by Debunk.eu, the analysis draws on official Russian government sources, state-funded media and public information to reconstruct the narrative around this event.
The event itself, the plane crash and the death of the Wagner leaders, generated a number of distinct reactions and narratives within the Russian propaganda network. Throughout the analysis, several aspects can be identified:
- Most of the articles published by pro-Kremlin channels feign false "objectivism", reporting the event as "a plane crash". The authors of the articles repeatedly call on readers not to jump to conclusions and to wait for the investigation to be completed.
- The speed with which the Russian authorities confirmed the death of the Wagner leaders along with the plane's crew is also suspicious. It usually takes several days to confirm the identity of the deceased. Russian officials and the press have been trumpeting in unison that Prigozhin and his lieutenants died in the crash. For example, RT and other official Russian sources provided detailed information about the plane crash, shortly presenting data on the number of casualties, the ongoing investigation, all accompanied by official statements from the authorities.
- Vladimir Putin's prompt reaction to the death of Prigozhin, whom he had known since the 1990s, is particularly noteworthy, praising his contributions to the Wagner military company in the fight "against Nazism in Ukraine", but without forgetting the mistakes of the past (read his "betrayal" in June when he launched the "March on Moscow").
- The analysis reveals that there has been speculation about the circumstances of the crash and possible causes, including mention of a possible explosion (RT) or the downing of the aircraft by a surface-to-air missile (TASS Agency), suggesting rather "an indirect message" to Kremlin circles thinking of challenging the authority of the autocratic Kremlin leader.
- The RT network included among its articles issues related to Britain's decision to deem the Wagner group a terrorist organization, thus incorporating international context into the discussion to fuel future conspiracy theories about the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in "organizing" the Prigozhin plane crash.
- It is also notable that the pro-Kremlin network has launched allusions to the existence of technical faults with reference to data provided by Flightradar.
Finally, this analysis shows how the official sources of the pro-Kremlin propaganda network reacted in the case of Prigozhin's death totally differently from the case of Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, Nemtzov's assassination, the poisoning of former spy Skripal, or the attempted poisoning of Navalnyi. If in the previous cases, the pro-Kremlin propaganda network mobilized relatively quickly to launch as many "alternative theories" in the public space as possible with the aim of confusing the public and making them give up their search for the truth ("We have no way of knowing what really happened"), including neglecting the obvious factor: assassinations and attempted political assassinations.
In the case of the death of Prigozhin and his lieutenants, not so many theories have been formulated, with the appearance of an "accident" caused in response to Putin's "betrayal" in June, and as a warning to possible future military adventurers. This time, they have intersected and overlapped to outline a false "non-involvement" by Putin, but without a vehement denial as expected.
Did the death of the Wagner Group leaders in a plane crash solve Putin's problem with this military group? At first glance, the answer is yes. Prigozhin had engaged in public disputes with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov over their failures in the war in Ukraine since last autumn. Then, in late June, Prigozhin publicly challenged official justifications for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, even launching indirect attacks on Putin, sparked a mutiny by seizing control in Rostov-on-Don and sending his troops to Moscow. While high-ranking Russian officials denounced this as treason, the Kremlin struck a deal within twenty-four hours that persuaded Prigozhin to stop the march to Moscow in exchange for safe passage to Belarus. In short, Putin, the strongman, appeared for the first time extremely weak and vulnerable.
This perception only increased over the next two months as Prigozhin spent much more time in Russia than in Belarus. He met with African leaders at the Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg and even became the public face of Russian support for a coup in Niger. All this by a man who has questioned Putin's official justification for starting the war in Ukraine.
So, by Putin's logic, Prigozhin had to go, and it could not wait, because every new public initiative the Wagner leader undertook was a reminder of the vulnerability of the Kremlin strongman. The plane crash sent a clear message to all: only a fool would dare challenge autocratic power. To underline the point, the Kremlin sacked Surovikin, Prigozhin's alleged friend, on the same day.
This certainly stopped the bleeding, but it didn't solve Putin's problem. He cannot erase the events of the last two months, and the Russian elites will not forget what they saw. Even though Prigozhin is gone, he is still admired - for Wagner's relative success in Ukraine compared to the Russian military, for the way he cared for his soldiers, and for his openness in voicing his concerns directly about the "wisdom" of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The ultimate factor in Prigozhin's uprising, Putin's failure in Ukraine, remains. And while some major players in Moscow may conclude that it is too dangerous to challenge Tsar Putin, others may conclude that Prigozhin's mistake was that he stopped the Wagner mercenaries' march into Moscow.
Whatever the outcome of the authorities' investigation, the message from the Kremlin is clear to all Russians: "It is extremely dangerous to try to find alternatives to the current power".
Dr. Nicolae Tibrigan, expert coordinator Digital Forensic Team
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