Dmitri Utkin, a longtime lieutenant of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin and the man whose nom de guerre inspired the name of their private military outfit, Wagner, is widely believed to have died with him in a plane crash in Russia on Wednesday. He is 53 years old.
Mr. Utkin’s death has not been officially confirmed by the Russian authorities or by Wagner, but he was listed as a passenger on a plane that went down in a field while it was flying to St. Petersburg from Moscow.
Mr. Utkin, a veteran Russian military officer, has been closely involved with Wagner from its emergence as a relatively modest fighting group a decade ago to its evolution into a brutal, armed-to-the-teeth force ready to the Kremlin’s command from Africa to the Middle East to, most recently, the hottest place on the Ukrainian battlefield.
But his exact role is a bit vague.
Over the years, Mr. Utkin was sometimes referred to as the “founder” of Wagner, who first came to public attention during the early forays against Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2014, a prelude to the full invasion in 2022. Wagner mercenaries fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region, led by Mr. Utkin.
Whether he was the actual founder of the group, however, has become less certain over time. “While Dmitry Utkin is widely portrayed as the front man and ‘principal’ for the Wagner PMC, there is ample data to suggest that his role was more than that of a field commander,” a report issued in 2020 by the investigative website Bellingcat said. The open-source data, the report said, strongly suggested that Mr. Utkin was “not in the driver’s seat of setting up this private army” but rather a “hired gun.”
Part of the challenge in understanding his role is that while Mr. Prigozhin has been quiet lately, reveling in grabbing attention and denouncing rivals in Russia’s regular military, Mr. Utkin is rarely seen in public. Bellingcat called her “camera shy.”
However, in many respects, his influence on Wagner’s culture appears clear.
Mr. Utkin, a retired Russian Special Forces officer, has been described as fascinated by Nazi history. The name of the mercenary group — and, before that, the military call sign of Mr. Utkin — is said to have been inspired by composer Richard Wagner, a favorite of Hitler. Some of the group’s fighters seem to share that ideology: Ancient Norse symbols favored by white supremacists have been photographed in Wagner’s equipment in Africa and the Middle East.
Mr. Utkin, who was born in 1970, served in the military in two wars in Russia’s restive Chechnya region and was in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, until 2013, according to a 2020 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After that, the report said, he commanded a Spetsnaz special forces unit and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.
But it was as part of Wagner that he gained fame.
In 2015, a year after helping carve out parts of eastern Ukraine, the Wagner group turned its attention to Syria, tasked by the Kremlin not only with entrenching President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war but seizing of oil and gas fields, American officials said. Wagner operatives also fought in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mali and Mozambique, expanding Russia’s influence in Africa by proxy.
Officially, the Kremlin has denied ties to Wagner, but in 2016 Mr. Putin presented Mr. Utkin with military honors at a banquet.
A year later, the United States granted its own recognition: It imposed sanctions on Mr. Utkin on his activities with Wagner — specifically, recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. (Britain, European Union and Canada sanctions were also imposed to Mr. Utkin and Mr. Prigozhin.)
In 2022, after Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine began, Wagner’s fighters played a major role, especially in the bloody, nearly year-long battle for Bakhmut, where Mr. Prigozhin ultimately claimed victory.
But the glory is short-lived.
Mr. was even more angry. Prigozhin on what he called the incompetence of Russia’s military leaders, and while he was careful to express loyalty to Mr. Putin, he did not mince words in his denunciation of the president’s minions. In late June, words became action, and Wagner’s forces briefly took up arms against Russian soldiers, angering the Russian president.
At home and abroad, many are watching closely what might happen to Mr. Prigozhin.
In the following days, Mr. Utkin remained next to the head of Wagner. And the next month, a video surfaced showing Mr. Prigozhin delivering a speech to the Wagner fighters who moved to Belarus. When finished, he turned the floor over to Mr. Utkin, who this time did not retain his customary discretion.
“This is not the end,” Mr. Utkin said.