UK's Ministry of Defence, on Friday, said that it is 'highly likely' that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead, but there's no 'definitive proof'. “The demise of Prigozhin would almost certainly have a deeply destabilising effect on the Wagner Group,” the UK's defence ministry wrote on X, the social media platform.
“Wagner’s leadership vacuum would be compounded by the reports that founder and field commander Dimitry Utkin and logistics chief Valery Chekalov also died,” it further wrote. Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary group was killed in a plane crash on Wednesday. The group had played an important role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine-- mainly in ceding regions in the south and east of Ukraine.
Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny against President Vladimir Putin, post which, he met with Putin and went on exile to Belarus. Experts believe that Prigozhin being killed in the plane crash was revenge for him staging a rebellion against Putin, even though the latter may have dropped criminal charges against him.
On Tuesday, Prigozhin was seen in a video, in which he said he was recruiting Wagner strongmen for Africa. Also, on Wednesday, a senior army official, General Sergei Surovikin, who was said to be a VIP member of the Wagner group was dismissed from his post.
US President Joe Biden said he wasn't surprised at the news that Prigozhin had died. Russian President Putin called the incident a 'tragedy.' “ “If employees of the Wagner company were there, and the preliminary data indicate they were, I would like to note that these people made a significant contribution to our common cause of combating the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, we remember this, we know it and we shall not forget," he said.
