An Embraer Legacy 600 plane crashes near Moscow
An Embraer Legacy 600 plane crashed yesterday north of Moscow. It was travelling from the Russian capital to St Petersburg – the hometown of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The plane supposedly carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine others came down near the village of Kuzhenkino, in the Tver region, around 185 miles (297.73 km) north of the capital Moscow.
The civil aviation authority listed 10 people on the manifest:
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group
- Dmitry Utkin, its co-founder
- Sergey Propustin
- Yevgeny Makaryan
- Alexander Totmin
- Valeriy Chekalov
- Nikolay Matuseev
- Aleksei Levshin, commander
- Rustam Karimov, co-pilot
- Kristina Raspopova, flight attendant
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 says it first received data from the aircraft at 2.46pm local time. The aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of 28,000ft between 2.59pm and 3.11pm.
Nine minutes later, it had stopped transmitting data. “Even though the aircraft was not transmitting position information, other data like altitude, speed, vertical rate, and autopilot settings were broadcast. It is this data that provides some insight into the final moments of the flight,” Flightradar24 said.
At 3.19pm, the aircraft descended briefly before climbing to a maximum altitude of 30,100ft. It then descended back to roughly 27,500ft, before climbing and then leveling off again. It then started to descend sharply, with the final data showing it at 19,725ft.
We also received some photos from the scene this morning showing some of the debris from the crash site.
“One wing flew off in one direction and the fuselage went like that,” Vitaly Stepenok told Reuters, gesturing with his arms to show how the plane headed down towards the ground. “And then it glided down on one wing. It didn’t nose-dive, it was gliding,” he added.
“I just saw the number on the plane, which I told them, and that was it.”
Russian investigations committee confirms 10 deaths and opens criminal investigation
That brings us to the latest news – the Russian investigations committee sharing this update, in which it confirmed that 10 people had died – and that a criminal investigation had been opened…
Bodies were taken from the scene and transported to the morgue for formal identification.