Woman killed when Prigozhin plane crashed, shared poignant image ahead of doomed flight

The photo was posted to Twitter by flight attendant Kristina Raspopova just before boarding the private jet that crashed on August 23.

Ms Raspopova was one of three crew members who died along with seven passengers when the doomed flight from Moscow to St Petersburg ended in a field 300 km from the Russian capital.

Her latest post features a photo taken in an airport lounge as she waited for “mysterious repairs” to be made on the plane.

The stewardess reportedly told family members that the plane was delayed due to a technical inspection.

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led an aborted mutiny against Russian forces in June, was on the passenger list of the Embraer-135 plane (EBM-135BJ) that crashed in the Tver region northwest of the capital Moscow on Wednesday.

According to the Russian state news agency Interfax, all ten bodies were recovered.

Vladimir Putin has confirmed the death of Prigozhin, who he said made “some serious mistakes” and suffered a “difficult fate”.

At a meeting in the Kremlin, Putin made the first public reference to the crash and offered “sincere condolences” to the families of the 10 people on board, including Prigozhin.

“I’ve known Prigozhin for a long time, since the 1990s,” Putin is quoted as saying.

“He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results for himself but also for the greater good when I asked him. “He was a talented man, a talented businessman,” said the Russian leader.

Putin added that Prigozhin’s Wagner group “made a significant contribution to the fight against Nazism in Ukraine.”

“We remember this, we know this and we will not forget it,” he said.

Putin said he was told that Prigozhin had returned from Africa on Wednesday, shortly before his apparent death, and was holding meetings with officials in Moscow.

He said Russian investigators would continue investigating the crash “to the end.”

Crash investigators in Kuzhenkino, in Russia’s Tver region, have been sifting through the wreckage of the jet as part of the investigation led by Ivan Sibul, who has previously investigated other high-profile plane crashes.

US and Western officials said it was likely a deliberate explosion brought down the plane, which crashed into a field north of the Russian capital.

“A final conclusion has not yet been reached, but an explosion is the leading theory that caused the plane to crash in a field between Moscow and St. Petersburg,” the New York Times quoted US officials as saying. “The explosion could have been caused by a bomb or some other device attached to the aircraft,” they said.

The Pentagon said the US believed Prigozhin was killed but gave no further details other than denying that the plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

“Our initial assessment is that Prigozhin was probably killed,” said spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder. “We continue to assess the situation.

“We currently have no information to suggest that there have been reports in the press that there was some type of surface-to-air missile that shot down the plane. We believe this information to be inaccurate.”

A witness, Vitaly Stepenok, 72, told Reuters he heard an “explosion or a bang” before he saw the jet crash to the ground.

“Usually when you have an explosion on the ground you get an echo, but it was just a bang and when I looked up I saw white smoke,” Stepenok said.

“A wing flew off in one direction and the fuselage moved like that,” he said, gesturing with his arms as the plane headed for the ground.

“And then it glided down on a wing. It’s not a nosedive, it’s glided.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kiev had nothing to do with Prigozhin’s alleged death.

The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Zelenskyy as saying to journalists on Thursday: “We had nothing to do with it.” Everyone notices who has something to do with it.”

Meanwhile, Wagner fighters and a few dozen citizens have gathered at a makeshift memorial to Prigozhin in his hometown of St. Petersburg.

Men in military camouflage uniforms were seen laying flowers in front of portraits of Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, a close Prigozhin ally who is often described as the founder of the mercenary group and who was also named on the passenger list.