The crash of the Russian plane hijacked by a “fermionic” flight: The body count of Prigozhin and three of his top lieutenants

Mr. Putin believes fervently in a powerful state. Western audiences often downplay this fundamental conviction, emphasizing instead Mr. Putin’s personal interests and individual priorities. It’s true, of course, that there’s a large dose of self-interest in the president’s conduct. The state becoming vulnerable and unable to address domestic challenges is one of the nightmares that Mr. Putin has. That’s precisely what Mr. Prigozhin threatened. For that transgression, he may have paid with his life.

Wagner, which has been a part of a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is still not certain about its future.

The crash killed the second-in-command of Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin, and the logistics mastermind Valery Chekalov. Utkin was long believed to have founded Wagner and baptized the group with his nom de guerre.

One of the Western officials who described the initial assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that an explosion would be in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

An intelligence assessment shows that the plane went down due to an explosion. As suspicions grew that the Russian president was the architect of an assassination, the Kremlin rejected them as a “complete lie.”

Russia’s civil aviation authority earlier this week said Prigozhin, 62, and some of his top lieutenants were on the list of the passengers and crew members on board the plane. The seven passengers and three crew were killed when the plane plummeted from the sky.

Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement that forensic and genetic testing identified all 10 bodies recovered at the site of Wednesday’s crash and the findings “conform to the manifest” of the plane. The statement didn’t specify what might have caused the crash.