ukraine became a lot weaker. we have to keep in mind that they gave up all of their very heavy weapons and gave them back to the russian military. so this essentially was a mercenary group once again, one that could not defend itself, if it came to a conflict there and certainly one that was weakened as well. i think the other thing that we have to keep in mind is while the wagner mercenaries went to belarus afterwards, conducting training for the russian military and seeing with are they wanted to go next, it certainly seemed as though that was always an uncomfortable situation. even said that they wanted to go somewhere else, that they were threatening to invade nato territory, invade poland because they were getting so antsy moving off the battlefield. so really this was not the same organization that it it had been in ukraine. that was also certainly a big pride for the organization.
i think we do have that one but we don t have it loaded. we re able to deduce a little bit here this is the video now of the engine on the left side of the screen there, that vertical video, the registration parkings typically printed on there. you can make out the number 2795. this airplane that was registered to prigozhin, tail number 2795. this was likely an airplane belonging to prigozhin, the wagner boss and the data is really interesting. it tells a lot here. the data says this was flying at 28,000 level, level of cruising altitude, 513 knots, 585 miles
close to him. fred s mentioning there the presence of wagner in belarus, not sustainable. so much of what happened after that coup was not sustainable. so for those of us joining us here, a plane patching the description of yef which is a jet what crashed northwest of moscow and from the region where you can see this plane just falling out of the sky and according to observations, it does appear to be missing a wing. i want to bring in retired air force colonel cedric layton, a 26 year in the airport, including much of that as an intelligence officer, what questions are raised for you as you are looking at what are pretty extraordinary pictures
despite the fact that obviously that was very brutal. but i ve been in contact with folks from wagner and they took great pride in their performance on the battlefield inside ukraine. so a lot of that was shattered by that and certainly you could tell that yevgeny prigozhin was also a figure who had become a lot weaker than he was before. once again, i also think one. things that we really have to look out for was if yevgeny prigozhin was on the plane but if his second in command was on the plane as well. all the things we have seen from the wagner private military company in the past eight years, inside syria, i saw them in syria years ago when they were starting to operate there. and later in ukraine as well. he was behind a lot of that and that would certainly indicate a complete decapitation of the entire wagner military company and an uncertain future. decapitation is the word. that would make sense if putin had questions about those
just because you are a law enforcement official in no way insulates you. if a prosecutor believes there is evidence to charge you. it will be up to the jury, potentially at the federal level, because giuliani has said he will try to get it to the federal court. it will be up to the jury whether he is convicted. but the idea that he shouldn t be charged solely because you used to prosecute people, that s not the way justice works in the united states. paula reid, thank you very much. we ll have a whole lot more on this story ahead and on the breaking news that we ve been covering for the last couple of hours. the wagner chief yevgeny prigozhin listed among passengers on board a plane that crashed northwest of moscow. that is according to russian state media. we are seeing these pictures. the tail numbers appear to jive with what we know the tail