Genetic testing on the 10 bodies recovered at the crash site “conform to the manifest ” for the flight, Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement on Sunday.
Russia’s civil aviation authority had said Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants were on the list of seven passengers and three crew members.
The Investigative Committee did not indicate what might have caused the business jet to plummet from the sky halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg, Prigozhin’s hometown.
But the crash’s timing raised suspicions of a possible Kremlin-orchestrated hit – something Russia has vehemently denied.
Peter Eltsov, associate professor at the US National Defense University, said conspiracy theories about Prigozhin still being alive say a lot about how big a figure the Wagner Group chief was in Russia.