Among those presumed dead alongside the Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a plane crash near Moscow was Dmitry Utkin, who was often described as the founder or co-founder of the mercenary group although his exact role was disputed.
His own call sign was “Wagner”, after Hitler’s favourite composer. The investigative website Bellingcat wrote in 2020 that Utkin had “an obsessive fascination with the history of the Third Reich” while another recent report described him as “festooned with numerous Nazi tattoos, including a swastika, a Nazi eagle, and SS lightning bolts”. The Wagner group was apparently named after him.
