Residents of a village near the site of a plane crash which is believed to have killed Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said they had heard a bang, then saw the jet plummet to the ground.

The plane, an Embraer Legacy 600private jet, crashed on Wednesday near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia's Tver region on its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg and killed all 10 people on board - seven passengers and three crew members.

There has been no official comment from the Kremlin or the Defence Ministry on the fate of Prigozhin but a Telegram channel linked to his Wagner mercenary group, Grey Zone, pronounced him dead.

A Reuters reporter at the crash site early on Thursday saw men taking away black body bags on stretchers.

Part of the plane's blue-and-white liveried tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area.

Forensic investigators had erected a tent and lighting gear. Parts of the wreckage lay near what appeared to be a half-built abandoned structure.

Kuzhenkino resident Vitaly Stepenok, 72, told Reuters: "I hear an explosion or a bang. Usually, if an explosion happens on the ground then you get an echo, but it was just a bang and I looked up and saw white smoke."

"One wing flew off in one direction and the fuselage went like that," he said, gesturing with his arms to show how the plane headed down towards the ground.

"And then it glided down on one wing. It didn't nose-dive, it was gliding."

Standing in a village street, Stepenok said he was afraid the plane would fall onto houses there.

"I was over there. I jumped on my bike and was there (at the site) in about 20 minutes. Everything was on fire. People were walking around. They dragged someone out, their remains... I couldn't make it out. I just saw the number on the plane, which I told them, and that was it."

Another villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: "In terms of what might have happened, I'll just say this: it wasn't thunder, it was a metallic bang - let's put it that way. I've heard things like that before."

"Over there by that mast. And it fell over there," he said pointing towards a farm.

The crash occurred two months to the day since Prigozhin led an abortive mutiny against the army top brass, accusing them of incompetence in their handling of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal investigation. Some unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles. Reuters could not confirm that.

** Putin breaks silence on Prigozhin plane crash as bodies taken to medical examiner's office

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his first comments Thursday on the mysterious plane crash that presumably killed Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin and the private military company's co-founder Dmitry Utkin along with eight others near Kuzhenkino, Russia, on Wednesday.

The comments were made hours after the bodies of the crash victims were moved to the Tver Regional Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, ABC News learned.

"As for the aviation tragedy, first of all, I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of all the victims," Putin said in an on-camera address, adding that Wagner Group made a "significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine."

"I knew (Yevgeny) Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with a complex destiny, and he made serious mistakes in life," Putin said. "He achieved the results he needed both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in these last months."

He added on the investigation, "But what is absolutely clear - the head of the Investigative Committee reported to me this morning, they have already launched a preliminary investigation into this incident. And it will be carried out in full and to the end. There is no doubt about that here. Let's see what the investigators say in the near future. Tests -- technical and genetic tests -- are being carried out now. This takes some time."

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg -- Prigozhin’s home town -- dozens of people have been arriving to light candles and drop flowers at a pop-up memorial.

Reuters/Yahoo News