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The plane of the Wagner Group's founder Yevgeny Prigozhin flew from Rostov to St. Petersburg on June 25 after his short-lived rebellion against the government, IStories, an independent Russian investigative journalism project, reported on June 26.
The journalists cited the FlightRadar flight tracking site.
"On June 25, an Embraer Legacy 600 (RA-02795) jet took off from St. Petersburg and turned off its transponder near Rostov Oblast. Around 6 p.m. on the same day, the plane reappeared on the radar over Tambov Oblast and returned to St. Petersburg by 7 p.m.," IStories reported in a joint investigation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
The Belarusian monitoring group Belarusian Hajun also reported that the RA-02795 had traveled between southern Russia and St. Petersburg, while Prigozhin's second plane, a BAe 125-800B (RA-02731), has been in Moscow since June 22.
On June 23, Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion against the Russian government. The mercenary group occupied Rostov, a major regional capital, and marched all the way to the town of Kashira in Moscow Oblast before unexpectedly ending the rebellion on June 24.
Following Prigozhin's negotiations with Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko that led to Wagner's retreat, the Kremlin announced the departure of the mercenary boss to Belarus.
Prigozhin's current whereabouts as well as the content of the deal between Wagner and the Kremlin remain unclear in public sources beyond speculation and gossip.
Martin Fornusek
(Updated: )
