The second plane, which some media associate with the head of the Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, was also in the air on Wednesday evening, making a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg at the time of the crash of the plane in which the leader was said to be Russian mercenaries, but the general manager of the company that runs it denied to Reuters any connection with Wagner.

The Russian aviation authority said Yevgeny Prigozhin was aboard a private Embraer plane that crashed Wednesday night northwest of Moscow, with no survivors. The investigation has not yet identified the 10 people on board, but Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to their families, including Prigozhin’s family, News.ro recalls.

Russian media, mainly linked to Wagner’s group’s Telegram channel, Gray Zone, have linked a second private jet with flight number RA-02748 to the mercenary group and said it was also in the air at the time of the crash.

But the operator of the plane, the Russian company Jetica LLC, denies any such connection. “Neither the plane itself nor its passengers are connected to Wagner and never have been,” Jetica CEO Serhii Trifonov told Reuters.

This plane was not leased, Trifonov said, but refused to say who owned it.

Flight RA-02748 was landing in St. Petersburg on Wednesday evening after a flight from Moscow when the plane believed to be carrying Prigozhin crashed, according to flight tracking data. Then he flew back to Moscow about 20 minutes later. It was expected to land in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Thursday, according to websites that track aircraft flights.

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