Wagner Group commander Dmitry Utkin was on plane that crashed north of Moscow, Russian civil aviation authority says

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary Wagner Group commander Dmitry Utkin was on the plane with Yevgeny Prigozhin that crashed north of Moscow, the Russian civil aviation authority has said.

Civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia published the names of seven passengers, including Wagner boss Prigozhin and Utkin, along with three crew members it said had been on board.

Utkin - a former Russian soldier reportedly adorned with Nazi tattoos - has been described as Prigozhin's right-hand man and played a key role in the founding of the Wagner Group.

The 53-year-old has also been accused of involvement in numerous war crimes, including in Homs, Syria, where he reportedly gave the order to beat a deserter to death and demanded the act be filmed.

The rebellion ended when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stepped in to broker a deal - which saw Prigozhin agreeing to relocate to neighbouring Belarus.

In the aftermath, Andrei Gurulev, a retired general and politician, said Prigozhin and Utkin deserved "a bullet in the head" for their role in the attempted rebellion.

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