MOSCOW: Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was aboard a plane that crashed north of Moscow, killing all 10 people on board, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency.

The crash immediately raised suspicion; the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company had been the subject of intense speculation since he mounted the mutiny.

At the time, President Vladimir Putin denounced the rebellion and vowed to avenge it.

But the charges against Prigozhin were soon dropped. The Wagner chief, whose troops were some of the best fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, was allowed to retreat to Belarus, while he popped up in Russia from time to time.

The crash also came after Russian media reported that a top general linked to Prigozhin had been dismissed from his position as commander of the air force.

The plane that crashed Wednesday carried three pilots and seven passengers and was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

It went down almost 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass.

Russia’s civilian aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, quickly reported that he was on the manifest and later said that, according to the airline, he was indeed on board.

Earlier, Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in the partly occupied Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, said he’d talked to Wagner commanders who also confirmed that Prigozhin was aboard, as was Dmitry Utkin, whose call sign Wagner became the company’s name.

(AP/VOA)