Vladimir Putin has broken his silence on the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin after speculation grew about Kremlin involvement with the plane crash that killed the Wagner chief and 10 others.
The notorious mercenary leader was travelling on a private jet from Moscow to St Petersburg on Wednesday with seven co-passengers and three crew members on board, when the plane went off radar about 160km after takeoff and crashed soon after in the Tver region north-west of Moscow.
The Kremlin leader called the deceased Wagner chief a “talented” man, but one with a “difficult fate”. “I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life.” Prigozhin’s death comes just two months after the Wagner group staged a mutiny against Russia’s military regime, which challenged Mr Putin’s leadership in the country.
Sources in Wagner have claimed the aircraft was shot down by Russian military forces in the region using a surface-to-air missile, with witnesses telling social media channel Grey Zone they heard “two bursts of characteristic air defence fire”. Prigozhin – who is a former close ally of the Mr Putin - and his group have been accused of hundreds of brutal war crimes in Ukraine, central Africa and the Middle East, in their ten years of operation.
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