Who is Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Shocking video footage has shown the aircraft falling from the sky in the Bologovsky district in the Tver region, with unconfirmed images showing what appears to be a plane covered in a blaze.

The reported death comes just two months after Prigozhin’s failed coup attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The stand off had been ongoing for months, with Prigozhin claiming he would take all steps necessary to topple the country’s military leadership adding his forces had ‘crossed state borders’ and were ready to ‘destroy anything that gets in the way’.

While Prigozhin has more recently been seen as Putin’s number one enemy, not so long ago he was considered a close ally of the Kremlin.

The 62-year-old had made his huge fortune by providing catering services for the Kremlin, earning him the nickname ‘Putin’s chef’.

Born in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, in the Soviet Union in 1961, Prigozhin spent some of his early life in prison after being convicted of robbery and fraud.

He spent nine years in detainment before being released from prison in 1990. From there he started to sell hotdogs at flea markets in his home city.

The warlord previously told the New York Times in 2018: ‘The rubles were piling up faster than his mother could count them’.

As the Soviet Union fell, it gave way for Prigozhin to set up several businesses, including a grocery and gambling business.

He later became a restaurateur and following the success of several outlets, he started to earn lucrative Kremlin catering contracts with Russia’s elite.

It was a move that thrust him to the forefront of Russian politics and his growing political ambitions began became more obvious.

After starting to cater for the Kremlin, he developed a close relationship with Putin. He is understood to have been handed over hundreds of millions in government contracts to feed school children and government workers.

These contracts, some of them later involved in the military, are believed to have led him to start the Wager mercenary group, although information on its exact origins is sparse.

Prigozhin had long-refuted any association with Wagner, and had threatened to sue journalists who reported on his involvement with the group.

The group gained a reputation for doing the Russian military’s dirty work, leaving a trail of brutal violence, rapes and war crimes in its wake. For years after it was first established, the Russian government refused to even acknowledge the existence of the group.

Wagner’s first deployment was to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine in 2014 – where they assisted Russian-backed separatist groups fighting the country’s new government following a 2013 revolution that toppled the Kremlin-friendly president.

Since then they went to Libya – fighting for warlord Khalifa Haftar against the Western-backed Government of National Accord – and Syria, alongside the forces of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

They were also deployed to the Central African Republic where they were accused of rape, robbery and torture against unarmed civilians, and are currently deployed to Mali where they have been accused of massacring civilians.

Up until June, Prigozhin’s rants against the military leadership were met with silence from Putin and the military. Some saw that failure to squelch the infighting as a sign of potential shifts in Russia’s political scene that sets the stage for more internal battles.

A video that Prigozhin released in May appeared to ignite some of the rifts between the military and militia – not just for what it showed but also for what the Wagner boss said.

He stood in front of the bloodied bodies of his slain troops near Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, yelling expletive-riddled insults at Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov. He called them weak and incompetent and blamed them for the carnage.

‘They came here as volunteers and they died to let you lounge in your mahogany offices,’ Prigozhin declared. ‘You are sitting in your expensive clubs, your children are enjoying good living and filming videos on YouTube. Those who don’t give us ammunition will be eaten alive in hell!’

Prigozhin continued to launch unpresidented verbal attacks against the Russian president before the conflict came to a head on June 23, him marc 25,000 troops towards Moscow.

Having taken the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the army marched north for several hours, forcing the capital into lockdown, before an agreement between him and the government was reached.

The mutiny was ended by negotiations and an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But he had appeared to move freely inside Russia after the deal nonetheless.

Prigozhin, who had sought to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, had posted a video address just this Monday which he suggested was shot in Africa – but the date of the shoot is unknown.