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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.
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