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A private jet carrying Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board.
The cause of the Prighozhin plane crash is still under investigation, but experts have cast doubt on the possibility that it was an accident.
The Embraer Legacy 600 business jet took off from Moscow and was headed for St. Petersburg when it crashed in the Tver region, about 100 miles northwest of the capital.
The plane was carrying seven passengers and three crew members, all of whom were killed.
Video footage of the crash shows the plane falling to the ground, apparently out of control, and emitting white smoke or vapour.
Aviation experts say that this suggests that the plane may have been damaged before it crashed.
"Modern airliners do not just fall out of the sky like that," said David Learmount, an aviation expert at FlightGlobal. "There must have been some damage to explain it."
John Strickland, an aviation consultant at JLS Consulting, agreed, saying that it would be "extremely unusual and rare for an aircraft to fall from the sky after a normal departure as this appears to have made."
The crash of the plane carrying Prigozhin comes at a sensitive time for Russia. The country is mired in a war in Ukraine, and Prigozhin was a key figure in Russia's military intervention in the country.
He was also the alleged head of the Wagner Group, a private military contractor that has been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine and other countries.
The circumstances surrounding the crash of the plane carrying Prigozhin are still under investigation.
However, the fact that the plane was carrying a high-profile figure who was under investigation by Western governments has led to speculation that the crash may have been the result of foul play.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denied that Ukraine was involved in the crash.
However, he has also made a veiled joke about Ukraine's appeal to other countries for more planes to fight the Russian invasion.
"When Ukraine appealed to the countries of the world regarding planes, we did not mean this," Zelenskyy said. "But this in some way will definitely help."
The crash of the plane carrying Prigozhin is a major development, and it is likely to have a significant impact on the war in Ukraine and the wider geopolitical landscape.
