Russia¡¯s most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, the Russian authorities said, two months to the day after he led an abortive mutiny against the army¡¯s top brass.

There was no immediate official comment from the Kremlin or the Defense Ministry on the fate of Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group and a self-declared enemy of the army¡¯s leadership over what he argued was its incompetent prosecution of Russia¡¯s war in Ukraine.

A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced him dead, however, and hailed him as a hero and a patriot who it said had died at the hands of unidentified people it called ¡°traitors to Russia.¡±