Key Airport Executive Who Oversaw Prigozhin’s Final Flight Found Dead

Alexey Korshenko, the former head of the business aviation terminal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, was found dead in his apartment, The Moscow Times reported on July 21.

The facility serviced Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane before its fatal 2023 crash.

The 57-year-old former executive was found hanged on the balcony of his Moscow residence on June 6, with Russian investigators treating the incident as a suspected suicide.

However, former colleagues noted that Korshenko had been abruptly dismissed from his post approximately three weeks before his death. Having helped launch Sheremetyevo’s business aviation terminal in 2011, Korshenko oversaw operations at the facility that handled Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600 business jet before its final flight on August 23, 2023.

Before his death, Prigozhin oversaw the Wagner PMC as it fought in Ukraine and exploited resources across Africa and the Middle East for Moscow. Following his short-lived armed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June 2023, Prigozhin’s mercenary network was dismantled after he and his top commanders died in a suspicious plane crash north of Moscow.

Open source intelligence suggested that Korshenko may have possessed critical information regarding maintenance issues logged on Prigozhin’s aircraft immediately before departure, according to The Moscow Times. During pre-flight checks, technicians discovered two major mechanical faults, including a failing turbo-cooler unit.

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War in Ukraine

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When a replacement component imported from the United States proved damaged, a local firm supplied an alternative unit in which an explosive device may have been planted, intelligence alleged.

The Moscow Times noted that the supplier firm, Protector, is linked through its owner to figures associated with organized crime and Russian intelligence-adjacent networks. On the morning of the departure, representatives of a separate aviation company also inspected Prigozhin’s jet under the pretext of a prospective purchase.

Following the crash, Russian transport security officials dispatched to inspect the terminal were denied access to security camera footage and documentation, with FSB officers immediately seizing the aircraft’s inspection report, the outlet reported.

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World

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While official Russian investigations attributed the crash to an in-flight hand grenade detonation, Western and Russian intelligence sources previously told The Wall Street Journal that former Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev directed the assassination.

Following Prigozhin’s death, Russian military intelligence has integrated former Wagner recruitment networks to coordinate sabotage operations and arson attacks across NATO member states using local recruits.

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