KUZHENKINO, Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence Thursday on the plane crash a day earlier that reportedly killed mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and other senior members of the Wagner paramilitary group.
In televised comments Putin offered his"sincere condolences to the families of all the victims", describing the crash as a"tragedy". As well as Prigozhin, the other nine people on board also died.
"There is a court in The Hague, there is a court of God. But Russia has an alternative -- President Putin," he said when asked again about the air crash later Thursday.When Putin broke his silence on Thursday he paid a qualified tribute to the mercenary boss and the paramilitary group he led. They had shared a common cause, Putin said, adding:"We remember that, we know that, and we will not forget that."
Even influential pro-Kremlin figures, such as state television personality and Putin ally Margarita Simonyan, seemed to suggest that it could have been an assassination. Russian police patrolled the crash site near the village of Kuzhenkino, some 350 kilometres north of Moscow in the Tver region. Some Wagner-linked Telegram channels initially suggested the plane had been shot down by Russian air defence, on a day when Kyiv struck Russia with more drone attacks.
"He was one of the few real patriots in our country," Pavel Zakharov said as he laid flowers at Wagner's headquarters in Saint Petersburg.
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