Russia confirms Wagner Boss was on plane that crashed

Russia is confirming that Wagner Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board of a plane that crashed today, Wednesday, 08/23.

And a Wagner-linked social media channel issued a statement saying that Prigozhin is dead.

The state media certainly is reporting about this in a very matter of fact way. But what I've done so far is actually texted the spokespeople, both of the Kremlin and of Russia's Foreign Ministry as well, and have not gotten a response yet.

And I think it's also quite telling to see what Vladimir Putin has been doing on this evening.

In fact, he would have at a ceremony in the city of Kursk, which, of course, is in southern Russia tonight where he held a moment of silence, but that had absolutely nothing to do with Yevgeny Prigozhin, that was a moment of silence for fallen Soviet soldiers of World War II.

Putin, not saying anything yet about the crash, not saying anything about the investigation. We've also been in touch with some pro-Kremlin figures, including a former adviser of Vladimir Putin, who was also quite close to the Wagner private military company and to Yevgeny Prigozhin, he's sort of pushing that narrative saying that they believe that Ukraine might have actually been behind all this saying, look, it is Ukrainian Independence Day and they point to some other assassinations that the Russians have pointed towards the Ukrainians, even though the Ukrainians have not acknowledged.

Again, none of this is confirmed or is in any way possible to confirm at this point in time. But if we're looking at the coverage of Russian state media and of course also by Russian authorities as well, they are saying that the investigation is ongoing, they have of course come out and said that Yevgeny Prigozhin was definitely on that plane as were large parts of Wagner's leadership.