Russian media post information on passengers aboard plane that crashed in Tver Oblast

Russian media outlets have collected information about the people who were supposedly on board the plane that crashed in Russian Tver Oblast on the evening of 23 August.

Source: Russian media outlets RBC, Meduza and Interfax

Details: RBC shared the following information about the passengers who were flying with Prigozhin and Utkin:

Sergey Propustin and Yevgeny Makaryan are listed in Myrotvorets as members of the Wagner Group [Myrotvorets, Ukrainian for "peacemaker", is a Ukrainian website that publishes a running list (and sometimes personal information) of people whom the authors consider to be enemies of Ukraine – ed.];

Oleksandr Totmin: as stated on Myrotvorets, he took part in military operations in Sudan;

Valeriy Chekalov: as SPARK notes, he was the CEO of the company Neva CJSC; Fontanka wrote that Neva became the owner of Europolis, a company associated with Prigozhin; according to this outlet, the latter agreed with the Syrian government to liberate Syria from militants and protect the country's oil and gas fields in 2016, and in return received contracts for the production of a quarter of the hydrocarbons obtained from them. Europolis is under EU sanctions, and Brussels' justification for this was that it was linked to the Wagner Group. In July, Chekalov himself was sanctioned by the US for his ties to Prigozhin, as reported by the US Department of Justice.

Previously: Interfax, citing emergency services, reported that the remains of all ten people on board the business jet that crashed near Tver had been found.

They added that the search operation has been completed.

Meduza pointed out that exactly two months had passed between the plane crash in Tver Oblast and Yevgeny Prigozhin's mutiny.

After the so-called "march of justice", the founder of the Wagner Group disappeared from public space for some time.

Since then, he managed to meet with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, visit Belarus several times, where his mercenaries were settled, presumably come to St Petersburg for the Russia-Africa forum, and record his latest video message, supposedly made in an African country.

Background: 

• On the evening of 23 August, a small plane crashed in Russian Tver Oblast, and the Russians claimed that Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, was on board.
• The Grey Zone Telegram channel, which is close to the Wagner Group, claimed that Yevgeny Prigozhin's plane had been shot down by air defence fire.
• It was also shared that a terrorist attack on board is being considered as a line of enquiry regarding the crash of Prigozhin's plane.
• The VCHK-OGPU Telegram channel, which is also affiliated with the Wagner Group, reported that the bodies of Prigozhin and his deputy Utkin had been found and identified, and Grey Zone added that "Prigozhin died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia". 
• The Russian media saw a certain symbolism in the fact that the plane crash occurred on 23 August, exactly two months after the Wagner Group’s mutiny [Prigozhin announced his "march of justice" on the evening of 23 June – ed.].

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