A former fighter of the private military company Wagner, with the call sign 'Yaga,' has expressed the belief that the group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, definitely survived the 2023 plane crash. This was reported by the Russian media portal Tsargrad. 'In my opinion, Prigozhin 100% survived and is now handling the representation of the Russian Federation in Africa,' he stated. However, the former soldier did not provide any evidence to support his claim. Yevgeny Prigozhin was declared dead on August 23, 2023, after a business jet he was on crashed near Tver. One of Prigozhin's most well-known ventures was the Wagner private military company. In the fall of 2022, he officially confirmed that he was its founder. In a statement released by his Concord Group press service, he said that in the spring of 2014, he decided to assemble a group of patriots to go and protect Russians in Ukraine. This group later evolved into the Wagner PMC. A monument to Yevgeny Prigozhin was unveiled in St. Petersburg on June 1, 2024. Several Wagner members laid flowers at the monument, and people approached the businessman's grave every few minutes throughout the day. Previous reports indicated that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former owner of the Concord company, earned 80 billion rubles from the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

'Definitely Alive': Former Wagner Fighter Reveals Prigozhin's Current Whereabouts