Russia Believed to Have Shot Down Plane Carrying Mercenary Leader: Report

U.S. officials are still determining the cause of the plane crash that likely killed Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to the Pentagon.

Prigozhin, along with Wagner ally Dmitry Utkin and eight other people, was presumed dead after the plane suddenly plummeted out of the sky and crashed during a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Wednesday. There is “no information” to support theories that the plane was shot down via missile strike, but Prigozhin was likely on the plane when it crashed, according to Pentagon Spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.

“It is likely Prigozhin was killed,” Ryder said during a press conference Thursday. “We don’t have any information to indicate right now … there was some type of surface-to-air missile that took down the plane. We assess that information to be inaccurate. Again, nothing to indicate, no information, to suggest there was a surface-to-air missile.”

When asked if it was possible that a bomb was planted on the aircraft and exploded mid-flight, Ryder said he had no further information to provide.

Flight tracking data showed that the plane was in normal and working condition until the aircraft made a “sudden downward vertical” and plummeted 8,000 feet from a 28,000-foot cruising altitude within 30 seconds, according to Reuters. The plane then began to sporadically ascend and descend, until a final nosedive resulted in a crash near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region.

“Whatever happened, happened quickly,” Ian Petchenik of Flightradar24 told Reuters. “They may have been wrestling (with the aircraft) after whatever happened.”