Minutes after it was reported a private jet had crashed in the Tver region north of Moscow, the Russian Aviation Agency - Rosaviatsia - shared Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passengers list.
Dmitry Utkin is the alleged co-founder of the Wagner Group, the paramilitary group that staged a mutiny against the Russian defence leadership in late June.
EXCLUSIVE: Oleksandr Musiienko believes Wagner Group fighters will disguise themselves as migrants in order to cross the border from Belarus into Poland and start trouble.
Wagner Group mercenaries are already in Mali and Burkina Faso - but if they arrived in Niger, where there are currently more than 1,000 US personnel, analysts fear tensions could boil over.