Who was Dmitri Utkin, the enigmatic right-hand man of Yevgueni Prigojine, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner? Since Wednesday August 23, his name has been circulating among the nine other passengers who are presumed dead in the crash of a private plane northwest of Moscow.
According to the Russian air transport agency Rossaviatsia, Yevgeny Prigojine was indeed on board the plane making a flight between Moscow and Saint Petersburg which crashed in the Tver region. “According to the airline, the following passengers were on board the Embraer – 135 plane,” said Rossaviatsia, citing the name of Yevgueni Prigojine but also the more discreet name of… Dmitri Utkin.
Little information circulates about him. This 53-year-old man would have gone through military intelligence. Born June 11, 1970 in Asbest in the Sverdlovsk oblast, Dmitri Outkin is a former special forces officer of the GRU (General Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia), where he served as lieutenant- col.
Admirer of Hitler and the Third Reich
He then reportedly joined the “Slavic Corps”, a mercenary company that fought in Syria alongside Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army in 2013.
In 2014, he founded with Evgueni Prigojine the paramilitary group Wagner. According to FranceInfo, it is he who would have chosen the name of the company, in reference to Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer, of whom he would be a great admirer. Several Nazi tattoos testify in this respect to his fascination with the Third Reich.
At the head of 300 men, Dmitri Outkine participated, from June 2014, in the fighting in eastern Ukraine with pro-Russian separatists, according to Ukrainian media and services.
In March 2016, he also took part in the capture of the city of Palmyra, in Syria, by the troops of the Syrian regime. In December of the same year, Dmitri Utkin was received in the Kremlin, appearing on television during a ceremony in homage to the “heroes” of Syria. He is photographed the same day with Vladimir Putin.
Accused of acts of torture
In December 2021, the European Union sanctioned Wagner along with eight individuals and three companies linked to him, including Dmitri Utkin. The paramilitary group is accused of ‘recruiting, training and dispatching private military operatives to conflict zones around the world to fuel violence, loot natural resources and intimidate civilians in violation of international law’ .
Dmitry Utkin is deemed “responsible for serious human rights abuses committed by the group, including acts of torture as well as extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and assassinations” within the framework of his functions within Wagner, according to a name sheet published in the Official Journal of the European Union dated December 2021.
A former member of Wagner, Marat Gabidoulline, even accuses Dmitri Utkin of having ordered four members of the paramilitary group to torture a Syrian deserter to death and to make a video in Syria, in June 2017.