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NATAS travel fair returns for 57th edition

The National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (NATAS) fair returns this year from February 24-26 at Singapore Expo Hall 5.

With the theme The World of NATAS , visitors can expect a wide choice of bargains tour package deals. Exhibitors will comprise of more than 50 travel agencies, cruise operators and national tourist organisations from Thailand, Japan and Taiwan.

Chan Brothers Travel will be offering tour packages to China to popular destinations such as Beijing, Jiangnan, Yunnan and Fujian. It will also bring back safari tours where travellers to East Africa can go on a 10-day tour to watch the migration of more than two million animals.

EU Holidays will also have package deals to China, and will feature curated theme tours like marathon, cycling and fly-cruise packages, said the travel agency’s marketing manager, Mandy Chen.

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Natas fair returns as travel sector continues its rebound

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Travellers looking for bargains can shop for tour package deals at the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (Natas) fair, as the  travel sector continues its rebound  since international borders reopened.

Returning for its 57th edition, the fair will be held from Feb 24 to Feb 26 at Singapore Expo Hall 5.

Travel agencies will form the bulk of more than 50 exhibitors at the event, along with cruise operators and national tourist organisations from Thailand, Japan and Taiwan.

Visitors can expect a plethora of travel deals and tour packages at the fair, themed “The World of Natas”.

For instance, Chan Brothers Travel will be offering tour packages to China after the recent announcement on  its reopening of borders.  Travellers to China will be able to enjoy some of the bestselling routes pre-Covid, such as Beijing, Jiangnan, Yunnan and Fujian.

Speaking to The Straits Times, Mr Jeremiah Wong, senior marketing communications manager for Chan Brothers Travel, said that safari tours are returning for the first time since the pandemic, and travellers to East Africa can go on a 10-day tour to watch the migration of more than 2 million animals.

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EU Holidays, one of the exhibitors at this year’s fair, will also be offering package deals to China. The agency also has special curated theme tours like marathon, cycling and fly-cruise packages, said Ms Mandy Chen, marketing manager of EU Holidays.

The Natas travel fair was last held in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

Many people are looking to explore the world as travel returns to pre-pandemic levels, said Mr Steven Ler, president of Natas, adding that they can seek advice from the exhibitors on their holiday needs.

The public can visit  www.natastravelfair.travel/  for more information.

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Natas fair returns after two-year hiatus

SINGAPORE - Revenge travellers can shop for deals at the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (Natas) fair, which is back with its 56th edition after a two-year hiatus.

Natas Holidays 2022 will run from Aug 12 to 14 at Singapore Expo Hall 5.

Travel agencies will form the bulk of the more than 40 exhibitors - along with banks, national tourist organisations and travel insurance providers.

Look out for sweet deals and unique packages.

Chan Brothers Travel, for instance, will be offering an eight-day luxury Bhutan tour that is exclusive to the agency. It includes business-class flights and accommodation at Six Senses properties in Thimphu, Punakha and Paro - three of the country's best-known destinations. Prices start at $9,988 a person.

Ever-popular destinations such as Europe, Thailand, Japan and South Korea will feature prominently, along with an emerging cruise sector, says Natas president Steven Ler.

He is expecting 80,000 to 100,000 visitors over the three days, on a par with pre-pandemic attendance.

The organiser and exhibitors say the fair is a strong sign of travel's recovery.

Mr Jeremiah Wong, senior marketing communications manager for Chan Brothers Travel, anticipates high demand for year-end holiday bookings during the fair.

"2022 is the chapter of our industry's resurgence and we are positive that 2023 will be the year that tourism records a strong bounce back to pre-pandemic levels as the market stabilises," he says.

Mr Ler echoes this optimism. "The travel and tourism sector is finally moving into this long-awaited phase where travel may resume in a more significant way.

"Natas Holidays 2022 will kick-start the season of safe travels and pivot many industry players, especially the travel agents, close to full operations."

For more information, go to this website.

Natas Holidays 2022

Where: Singapore Expo Hall 5, 1 Expo Drive When: Aug 12 to 14, 10am to 9.30pm Admission: Free Info: Visit this website

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Back after 2-year hiatus, Natas fair sees younger crowd, travellers opting for more 'exotic' destinations

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SINGAPORE — After a two-year hiatus, the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (Natas) fair returned and was held at the Singapore Expo on Friday (Aug 12), welcoming crowds hungry for "revenge travel".

• Held from Aug 12 to 14, the Natas fair sees 21 travel agencies taking part
• Visitors to the fair seem more willing to head to more exotic locales that were less popular before the Covid-19 pandemic
• Younger people, who generally prefer free-and-easy travel, are also increasingly signing up with tour agencies

Janarthanan Krishnasamy

Tour operators at the convention and exhibition venue in Changi said that the turnout was better than expected, though they observed that some travel preferences have changed. 

For instance, they were seeing a trend of younger people turning to agencies  and signing up for tours.

Mr Jeremiah Wong, senior marketing communications manager from Chan Brothers Travel, said: "Customers who are used to travelling 'free and easy' are coming to us to book tours as well, especially those who are taking their parents along."

Ms Michell Devina Ngan, marketing manager at the Travel Corporation, said that her company has received sign-ups from young couples as well, possibly due to the need to navigate travel restrictions with ease. 

Mr Shawn Patrick, 20, said that this was the first time he had gone to the travel fair. He normally travels free and easy. “I am planning a trip for my parents,” he said. 

In spite of rising costs, travellers are now more keen to take up single-destination packages.

Retired businessman Steven Oh, 61, who had recently returned from Thailand, said that he was planning to go on a package tour to either Australia or New Zealand around the end of this year.

Having browsed through several packages at the Natas fair, he is not too bothered about the rise in package tour costs, which travel operators said have jumped by up to 20 per cent, mainly fuelled by an increase in air travel costs.

“I think it's a good time to revisit countries and have a good time... Even at a higher cost, I would rather have the travel agency make all the arrangements for me and my wife, so that we can focus on relaxing,” Mr Oh added.

He was among several customers interviewed by TODAY who expressed their desire to travel, despite the higher costs. 

Private-hire car driver Tan Whye Ngee, 60, who booked a tour to Europe during the fair, said: “I believe that the prices are value for money and I did not want to waste time.”

A former journalist who wanted to be known only as Madam Xu, 62, said that she did not wish to postpone travelling any more. 

“You can walk, you can see, you must go,” she quipped. 

She said that she was looking to book a trip to Hokkaido, Japan, preferring to go to a place that is less crowded due to Covid-19 concerns. 

At the moment, China and Taiwan are closed for consumer leisure travel. Hong Kong has mandatory hotel quarantine for overseas arrivals, while South Korea recently introduced polymerase chain reaction tests for travellers entering the country.

Some other people at the Natas fair would like to have more travel options, especially to Southeast Asian countries.

Preschool teacher Sarmiah Safrinah, 49, who is looking to travel this December, remarked that she did not see much offerings for Thailand , Vietnam and Bali in Indonesia, adding that destinations such as South Korea and Japan were promoted "more aggressively".

Retired aircraft engineer Vincent Toh, 56, also said that the options were "limited and uninteresting", wishing for more free-and-easy travel. 

TRAVELLERS’ NEEDS HAVE CHANGED, AGENCIES SAY

A total of 21 travel agencies are participating in the fair, which runs until Sunday.

Most of the agencies who spoke with TODAY said that the turnout and number of deals closed were around or above expectations.

Ms Kelly Toh, head of the marketing department at Commonwealth Travel Services, noted a post-pandemic preference for exotic destinations and single-destination trips.

“Travellers are looking for relatively unusual places such as Morocco and Turkey, as compared to other more conventional destinations,” she said. 

Mr Zane Neo, public relations coordinator for LGE travel, noticed that many people turned up at the fair knowing exactly where they wish to go, confirming travel arrangements in “as fast as five minutes”. 

Despite the travel agency generally being a sunset industry, Mr Neo said that his company tries to meet customer needs by “doing customised tours with itineraries being more flexible to accommodate destinations preferred by customers”.

A search for YouGov Global Travel Profiles dated March 11 this year showed that 46 per cent of Singapore residents planned to take holidays, business, or other overseas trips in the next 12 months, compared to 41 per cent who said the same last year. The proportion of residents who did not plan to travel during this period was 40 per cent, compared to 42 per cent in 2021.

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Russia-Ukraine War Prigozhin Listed as Passenger on Plane That Crashed, Killing All Aboard

The authorities did not confirm whether the Wagner mercenary leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, was on board when a private jet crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, killing 10 people.

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Anton Troianovski

Here’s the latest on the crash.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June, was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, according to Russian aviation authorities.

“An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated,” the Federal Agency for Air Transport of Russia said in a statement, according to the state news agency Tass . “According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list.” But late into the Russian evening, the authorities had not officially confirmed that he had been killed.

The plane left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport at about 6 p.m. local time, bound for St. Petersburg, and went down less than 100 miles to the northwest, near the city of Tver. In an article about the crash, the Russian state media agency, RIA Novosti, posted an unconfirmed video , widely shared on social media, that purports to show the plane tumbling from the sky, with smoke billowing.

The crash came hours after Russian authorities said that General Sergei Surovikin, a top officer who was seen as an ally of Mr. Prigozhin, had been relieved of his post. Mr. Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin were seen as among the most ruthlessly effective Russian military leaders, both sidelined in power struggles with officials who had the ear of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Here are the latest developments:

Russian media have reported that the plane that crashed on Wednesday was an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet with the tail number RA-02795. Past news reports have linked the plane to Mr. Prigozhin and Wagner.

Russian media reported that all 10 bodies had been recovered from the site.

In the United States, the State Department and the National Security Council released statements saying that “no one should be surprised” if Mr. Prigozhin’s death was confirmed, drawing links to “the disastrous war in Ukraine,” Wagner’s march on Moscow “and now — it would seem — to this.”

President Biden, at Lake Tahoe, was asked if he thought Mr. Putin, was behind the crash. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he answered. “But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

In the evening, Russian television showed Mr. Putin commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Battle of Kursk.

Embraer, the Brazilian maker of the Legacy 600 business jet that crashed on Wednesday, said that it had stopped providing any support for the aircraft in 2019 because of sanctions. Typically that support is largely maintenance related. It can potentially include data monitoring, but it’s unclear if that was the case with this jet.

The Brazilian Air Force has also said that the responsibility of the crash investigation is on Russia in this case, and that Brazil (as the home country of Embraer) would only get involved if Russia reaches out. It has not.

Some Wagner supporters voice suspicions of a Russian assassination.

As reports of the Wagner mercenary tycoon Yevgeny V. Prigozhin’s possible death in a plane crash spread on Wednesday night, some of his supporters immediately began voicing suspicions of an assassination in online posts on the Telegram messaging app.

Most did not explicitly say who they thought was responsible, but left little doubt that they meant figures within the Russian government. Mr. Prigozhin had railed for months against the country’s military leadership, accusing it of incompetence, corruption and betrayal that hobbled the war effort in Ukraine.

Grey Zone, a channel associated with Wagner, uploaded a photograph of Mr. Prigozhin, praising him as a “true patriot of his Motherland” and saying that he died “as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia.”

“But even in Hell he will be the best!” the channel said. “Glory to Russia!”

Roman Saponkov, a Russian military blogger seen as close to the mercenary group, wrote that the “murder of Prigozhin will have catastrophic consequences.”

“The people who gave the order don’t understand the mood in the army or the morale at all,” he said.

A blogger writing anonymously under the pseudonym Alex Parker, who actively supported Mr. Prigozhin until he aborted a June 24 mutiny, suggested the tycoon’s apparent death was a repeat of what happened in 2015 and 2016 — when a number of militants who had carried out a Moscow-instigated invasion in eastern Ukraine were killed in apparent assassinations.

The blogger blamed Mr. Prigozhin’s apparent death on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, calling him the “trigger” for such events.

“Today is the end of an era,” wrote the pro-war blogger Boris Rozhin, who posts under the Telegram pseudonym Colonelcassad. “August in Russia never fails in terms of bad news,” he added, referencing a longstanding superstition in Russia about a seemingly cursed month.

Some pro-government commentators were quick to turn the page.

Sergei Markov, a Russian political scientist and former adviser to Mr. Putin, quickly pinned the blame on Ukraine, eliciting more than a thousand “crying laughing” emojis in response.

The pro-war Russian military blog Arkhangel Spetsnaz, which has more than 900,000 followers on Telegram, said it was “closing the issue” of the plane crash.

“Leave all conjectures and investigations for later. When the enemy is defeated and victory will be ours,” the channel wrote. “Don’t muddy the waters now… The enemy takes advantage of every destabilizing situation.”

Where the plane crashed

St. Petersburg

Destination

Last tracked position

First tracked position

Last tracked

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Elian Peltier

Reporting from Dakar, Senegal

Wagner’s future in Africa faces further uncertainty.

The future of the Wagner private military company in Africa, one of the force’s main areas of operation, with thousands of soldiers on the ground, would be thrown further into uncertainty without Yevgeny V. Prigozhin as its leader.

Wagner operatives provide security to autocratic African leaders seeking to stay in power, as well as boots on the ground to fight rebels or extremist groups alongside underequipped national armies. Wagner also provides misinformation tactics, which have given the group’s members a veneer of popularity even as they have been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture, mass killings and rape, in the countries where they operate.

Mr. Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in Russia in June, which led Wagner forces to seek refuge in Belarus, had already raised doubts about the group’s operations in Africa, where it has developed a vast business empire and network of relationships with African leaders. But hours after that rebellion was called off, officials with the Russian Foreign Ministry phoned the president of the Central African Republic to assure him that the thousands of Wagner fighters deployed in his country would stay.

Besides the Central African Republic , Wagner’s launchpad in Africa, Wagner mercenaries are known to be deployed in Libya, Mali and Sudan .

In the Central African Republic, Wagner soldiers recently helped the authorities organize a referendum to rewrite the Constitution to allow the president to stay in power indefinitely.

In Mali, about 1,500 operatives have been deployed to fight off an Islamist insurgency, and in recent days they have been on the front line of a nascent conflict against rebel groups in the north of the country. Mr. Prigozhin appeared in an unverified recruitment video this week that several experts on the group said had been recorded in Africa, most likely in Mali.

An adviser to the Central African Republic’s president couldn’t be reached immediately on Wednesday, and a spokeswoman for the Malian military didn’t respond to requests for comment.

For years, questions have swirled around Wagner’s ambitions in Africa and where the group might expand next, especially in countries where military officers seized power.

After the coup in Niger last month, some Western and West African governments feared the country could become Wagner’s next priority . Mr. Prigozhin praised the coup in a voice message on Telegram and offered the group’s services to Niger’s new leaders.

A top civilian official representing the junta told The New York Times last week that to his knowledge, the new authorities had no intention of partnering with Wagner.

Laurence Tan

An informal memorial next to the former Wagner headquarters early Thursday in St. Petersburg, Russia. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin is not only famous for being the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, but he has built his own personal brand on social media.

Cassandra Vinograd

Who is Dmitri Utkin, the Wagner commander who gave the group its name?

The flight manifest for the plane that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday night contained at least one other notable name in addition to Yevgeny V. Prigozhin — that of Dmitri Utkin, his longtime lieutenant in leading the Wagner private military company whose mercenaries have fought not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria and across Africa.

Wagner, which the U.S. government has said was financed by Mr. Prigozhin, emerged during President Vladimir V. Putin’s first assault on Ukraine in 2014, when its mercenaries fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region. The Wagner commander at that time was Mr. Utkin, a retired Russian Special Forces officer said to be fascinated by Nazi history and culture.

The group’s name came from Mr. Utkin’s military call sign, which is said to have been taken from the composer Richard Wagner , Hitler’s favorite. Some of the group’s fighters also seemed to share that ideology: Ancient Norse symbols favored by white supremacists have been photographed on Wagner equipment in Africa and the Middle East.

Mr. Utkin, born in 1970, served in both of Russia’s wars against separatists in the Chechnya region, and he was in the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence agency, until 2013. After that he commanded a Spetsnaz special forces unit and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, according to a 2020 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

While over the years Mr. Utkin has been referred to as the “founder” of Wagner, a 2020 investigation by the investigative website Bellingcat said that open source data “strongly” suggested the Mr. Utkin was “not in the driver’s seat of setting up this private army” but rather a “hired gun.”

“While Dmitry Utkin has been widely presented as the front man and ‘principal’ for the Wagner PMC, there is ample data suggesting that his role was more of a field commander,” the report said.

After denying for years that he had any link to Wagner, Mr. Prigozhin admitted last year that he was its founder and chief.

Whatever his role in establishing Wagner, Mr. Utkin’s notoriety grew along with the military group’s — even though he was rarely seen, described by Bellingcat as “camera shy.”

Wagner expanded to Syria in 2015, tasked not only with bolstering the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war — but also with seizing oil and gas fields, American officials said .

In addition to Ukraine and Syria, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali and Mozambique, extending Russian influence in Africa.

Mr. Putin awarded Mr. Utkin military honors at a banquet in 2016. A year later, the United States imposed sanctions on him for his activities with Wagner — specifically, recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. (Britain, the European Union and Canada also imposed sanctions on Mr. Utkin and Mr. Prigozhin.)

After Russia began the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Wagner’s fighters took on a major role — most notably in the bloody, nearly yearlong battle for Bakhmut, where they ultimately claimed victory .

Even after the short-lived mutiny led by Mr. Prigozhin against Russia’s military leadership in June, Mr. Utkin stayed by the Wagner chief’s side.

Video emerged in July that appeared to feature Mr. Prigozhin delivering a speech to his fighters who had relocated to Belarus. After finishing, he turned the floor over to Mr. Utkin.

“This is not the end,” Mr. Utkin said.

Sheera Frenkel and Steven Lee Myers

With few available facts about the crash, rumors surge.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation flowed across the internet on Wednesday about the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, after he was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed outside Moscow earlier in the day.

People made claims that Mr. Prigozhin had staged the crash to fake his own death, on the same QAnon message boards in which others said that the United States was secretly responsible for his death. On far-right Telegram channels, users posted images of a map showing a second plane leaving Moscow shortly after the first, doomed flight, along with the claims that Mr. Prigozhin was on a second plane also owned by his company. The New York Times was not able to verify any of the claims.

The unclear circumstances surrounding the crash created exactly the type of confusion in which misinformation can easily spread, an irony given that Mr. Prigozhin was a pioneer in the field of establishing and sowing misinformation campaigns.

Although Russian officials said Mr. Prigozhin was listed on the plane’s manifest on Wednesday and that all 10 people on the flight were killed, officials have not said publicly that his remains had been identified.

More than a decade ago, Mr. Prigozhin created Russian troll farms, including the Internet Research Agency, to spread pro-Russian narratives. The troll farms were also part of a campaign to sow confusion in the United States and influence its elections — which he later boasted about — and in particular the 2016 presidential contest.

Those efforts led to a federal indictment of Mr. Prigozhin and others.

The fates of two men key to Putin’s war are now both in question.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin led the Wagner mercenary force that is believed to have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in its victorious fight for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, hobbling Ukraine’s preparations for its counteroffensive .

Gen. Sergei Surovikin oversaw the construction of the daunting network of defensive lines in the territory that Russia occupies in Ukraine, a defense that Ukrainian troops have struggled to break through.

On Wednesday, Russian state media reported that the general had been demoted, and that the mercenary was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed, killing everyone on board.

Wednesday’s fast-moving developments in Russia suggested that the end had come, in different ways, for two men who had proved pivotal over the past year to Russia’s war effort. If Mr. Prigozhin is confirmed to have been killed and General Surovikin remains sidelined from the invasion, questions are sure to be raised over whether President Vladimir V. Putin can sustain his fight without two of his most effective — and most brutal — military leaders.

The war itself has been a grinding slog for both sides.

Nearly three months into their counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces are still struggling to recapture territory occupied by Russia. American officials blame , among other things, Kyiv’s continued focus on Bakhmut, the city into which Mr. Prigozhin poured thousands of fighters recruited from Russian prisons for one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Russian forces, too, have made little gains since taking Bakhmut. Analysts say that those troops are increasingly exhausted as they defend against Ukraine’s onslaught, and that Mr. Putin might well be forced to declare another draft of civilians to replenish the invading army’s ranks.

Yonette Joseph

Russia’s Emergency Services say the remains of all 10 people on board the plane that crashed north of Moscow have been recovered, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The name of Dmitri Utkin, the Wagner mercenary group’s most prominent commander, was also on the passenger manifest of the plane that crashed on Wednesday, as released by Russia’s aviation authority .

Wagner reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of Utkin, a retired Russian Special Forces commander. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitler’s.

Julian E. Barnes

U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot confirm reports of Prigozhin’s death.

American officials said they could not confirm the reports from Russia that Yevgeny V. Prigozhin had been killed in an airplane crash, or why the jet went down.

U.S. intelligence agencies had been surprised that President Vladimir V. Putin had not yet taken action against him after his short-lived mutiny in June.

In July, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, said that a “complicated dance” with Mr. Putin had developed. Mr. Prigozhin continued to travel between Russia and Belarus, where President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko had offered Mr. Prigozhin and his fighters refuge, and other locations. But Mr. Burns predicted that Mr. Putin would move against Mr. Prigozhin, who staged the most significant challenge to Mr. Putin’s authority in decades with his rebellion .

“Putin is someone who generally thinks that revenge is a dish best served cold,” Mr. Burns said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last month. “So he’s going to try to settle the situation to the extent he can. But, again, in my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback. So I would be surprised if Prigozhin escapes further retribution for this.”

U.S. officials have said that Russia continues to depend on the Wagner mercenary group, particularly for its operations in Africa, a relationship that could have offered Mr. Prigozhin some insurance. But Russia was no longer dependent on the private forces in Ukraine, a reality that potentially gave Mr. Putin a broad hand, other officials noted previously.

On Wednesday, Russian media announced the ouster of Gen. Sergei Surovikin . U.S. officials said General Surovikin had at least known about Mr. Prigozhin’s planned mutiny and may have supported it. As a result, General Surovikin had lost his command, and was under some sort of movement restrictions, if not formal detention, U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday, shortly before the news of the crash became public.

After the announcement of General Surovikin’s removal, American officials noted that they were surprised by how Mr. Prigozhin continued to appear relatively free, recently traveling to Africa and posting a video on social media. In contrast, General Surovikin had lost his freedom of movement, a U.S. official said.

In an article about the crash, the Russian state media agency, RIA Novosti, posted an unconfirmed video , widely shared on social media, that purports to show the plane tumbling from the sky, with smoke billowing.

Erica L. Green

President Biden, who is at Lake Tahoe, was asked if he thought the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, was behind the crash. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he answered. “But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

The pro-war Russian military blogger Arkhangel Spetsnaz, commented on the crash, urging his more than 900,000 followers on Telegram to “leave all conjectures and investigations for later.” The post continues: “Don’t muddy the waters now,” and says, “The enemy takes advantage of every destabilizing situation.”

Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, posted what appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the news of the crash on his Telegram account. Yermak, who frequently uses emojis to convey news and reactions, posted a simple audio link — to the song “Highway to Hell.”

Elian Peltier Ivan Nechepurenko and Raja Abdulrahim

Prigozhin’s business empire stretches around the world.

A chocolate museum in St. Petersburg. A gold mine in the Central African Republic. Oil and gas ventures off the Syrian coast.

The economic ventures of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former hot dog seller turned Wagner group warlord who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s military last month, stretch far beyond the thousands of mercenaries he deployed in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East.

Through a vast network of shell companies and intermediaries, Mr. Prigozhin’s activities have included catering, producing action movies, making beer and vodka, cutting timber, mining diamonds and hiring people to sow disinformation in elections abroad, including the 2016 U.S. election.

The exact size of his business has been shrouded in mystery and the fate of his sprawling empire is uncertain.

After Mr. Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny in June, The New York Times took a look at his business interests around the world.

Timeline: What led to the June standoff between Russia’s leadership and Prigozhin?

For years, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary leader who conducted a brief rebellion against the Russian military, had been a loyal supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But in October, he began to openly criticize the Russian government.

Here is a timeline of the events leading to his break with Mr. Putin:

October 2022

Mr. Prigozhin was one of two powerful supporters of Mr. Putin to publicly turn on Russia’s military leadership after it ordered a retreat from Lyman, a key city in eastern Ukraine , emphasizing that the retreat was a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.

November 2022

Just a day before the U.S. midterms, Mr. Prigozhin sardonically boasted that Russia was interfering in the election .

February 2023

Mr. Prigozhin accused two Russian military leaders of treason in a series of hostile audio messages. He claimed that the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, and its most senior general, Valery V. Gerasimov, were withholding ammunition and supplies from his fighters to try to destroy Wagner.

Mr. Prigozhin issued a series of inflammatory statements. He once again accused Russia’s military bureaucracy of starving Wagner forces of necessary ammunition and threatened to withdraw them from Bakhmut . Days later, he appeared to backtrack on that threat after saying he had been promised more arms.

Mr. Putin mobilized Russian troops to defend Moscow from what he called an armed rebellion by Mr. Prigozhin, whose forces had claimed control of Rostov-on-Don and were seen moving north along a highway toward the Russian capital. Then, in a surprise turn of events, the Belarusian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, said he had secured Mr. Prigozhin’s agreement to halt his forces’ advance. Mr. Prigozhin turned his forces around.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Mr. Prigozhin would flee to Belarus, and that Russia’s military operations in Ukraine would continue unchanged.

Mr. Lukashenko told reporters that Mr. Prigozhin was a “free man” currently in St. Petersburg, adding that he “maybe” went to Moscow and was not in Belarus. A Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation later confirmed that Mr. Prigozhin had been in Russia, between Moscow and St. Petersburg, during most of the period since the mutiny.

Unverified photographs circulated on social media suggested that Mr. Prigozhin was meeting with African officials in St. Petersburg, where some of the continent’s top leaders had converged for a summit with Mr. Putin.

August 2023

Mr. Prigozhin emerged in an unverified video message posted on Telegram channels affiliated with his Wagner forces, appearing to recruit for the group’s operations in Africa. On Wednesday, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, was demoted from his post as chief of the air force, according to Russian state media. The country’s former top commander in Ukraine, he is the only senior official with ties to Mr. Prigozhin that has been demoted or punished following the rebellion’s aftermath.

Lauren Leatherby

This was the path of the plane.

Data tracking the position of the plane that crashed abruptly cuts off about 100 miles northwest of Moscow, according to Flightradar24 .

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fate remains unclear. Several Russian news outlets are reporting, citing anonymous sources, that he was indeed on the plane that crashed. But Grey Zone, a Telegram account associated with Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group, just posted that it remained uncertain whether the warlord was dead or alive.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement body, announced the opening of a case on the plane crash, on suspicion of a violation of air transport safety rules. It said investigators had been dispatched to the site of the crash.

Eric Schmitt

The White House National Security Council said it had seen the reports of the crash in Russia involving Yevgeny Prigozhin. “If confirmed, no one should be surprised,” said a spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson.“The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”

Edward Wong

The State Department has issued the same public statement on the events as the National Security Council. It is unclear if U.S. government agencies have any concrete facts or intelligence on what happened. But the statements appear to be efforts to pin the blame on the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his “disastrous war,” as the American officials put it.

Russian television has been airing live footage of President Vladimir V. Putin in the Kursk region to honor the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. “I heartily congratulate all citizens of Russia on this event,” Putin says, standing onstage in front of an orchestra.

The White House says President Biden has been briefed on the reported plane crash in Russia.

The Russian aviation authority issued a new statement on the crash, announcing that it had created a special commission that was “investigating the circumstances and causes of the accident.” The statement offered no comment on the cause of the crash but said the commission would look for evidence, including black box records.

The Russian state television channel Rossiya-24 just aired a brief report on the plane crash, naming Yevgeny Prigozhin as being on the passenger list but without providing any new details. It cited the authorities as saying that three pilots and seven passengers had been on the plane.

U.S. officials said they could not confirm the Russian reports that Yvegeny Prigozhin was aboard a plane that crashed, killing all aboard.

Riley Mellen

Video shared on the messaging platform Telegram appears to show the aircraft that reportedly crashed burning on the ground. The paint and a partial registration number visible on the aircraft in the video aligns with a jet the Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is known to use, RA-02795. Flight tracking websites indicate that the flight ended abruptly near Tver, northwest of Moscow, around 6 p.m. local time.

Eight bodies have been recovered at the crash site in the Tver region, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has reported, citing Russian Emergency Services officials.

Russian state television is showing live footage of President Vladimir V. Putin. He is at an event in the Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine, at a ceremony commemorating the Battle of Kursk in World War II.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement that a private Embraer Legacy jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed in the Tver region, near the village of Kuzhenkino. The ministry said 10 people were on board the flight, three of which were crew members. “According to preliminary information, everyone on board died,” the statement said.

We wrote this profile of Yevgeny Prigozhin amid the Wagner uprising in June.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fate is not known at the moment. On the social messaging app Telegram, an account known to be close to the Russian authorities, Readovka, says that reports of the warlord’s death are “premature.” It adds: “Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been on a different airplane.”

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the plane crashed in the Tver region, north of Moscow.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader of the private Wagner paramilitary group whose armed rebellion in June threatened the country’s leadership, was listed on the passenger roster of a private jet that crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, Russia’s aviation authority said.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the plane, an Embraer jet, crashed in the Tver region, north of Moscow, according to the state news agency Tass. Minutes later, the news agency, citing Russia’s aviation authority, said that Mr. Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on the plane.

“An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region,” Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said, Tass reported. “According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin.”

The Embraer jet was traveling from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport to St. Petersburg, Russia, and crashed less than 30 minutes after takeoff, Tass said.

Mr. Prigozhin, an outspoken tycoon, built the private paramilitary force that has fought on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine and across Africa. Frustrated over the country’s military leadership, he instigated a short rebellion two months ago, a mutiny that posed a grave threat to the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.