Russian president Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader’s plane crashed with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs.
Russian investigators opened a criminal investigation but there has been no official word from Moscow on what may have caused Wednesday evening’s crash, in which 10 people were reported to have been killed. Until Mr Putin’s comments on Thursday there had been no official confirmation of Mr Prigozhin’s death beyond a statement from the aviation authority saying he was on board.
Speaking about the crash for the first time, Russia’s president described Mr Prigozhin (62), the head of the Wagner private military group, as a talented businessman whom he had known since the 1990s and said the investigation into the crash would take time.
“As for the aviation tragedy, first of all I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It’s always a tragedy,” Mr Putin said in televised remarks made during a meeting in the Kremlin with the Moscow-installed chief of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
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“Indeed, if employees of the Wagner company were there, and the preliminary data indicate they were, I would like to note that these people made a significant contribution to our common cause of combating the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, we remember this, we know it and we shall not forget,” he added.
Russia’s civil aviation agency said Mr Prigozhin and six top lieutenants were on the business jet that crashed soon after taking off from Moscow, with a crew of three.
Rescuers quickly found all 10 bodies, it was reported, and Russian media cited Wagner sources as confirming Mr Prigozhin’s eath.
The crash occurred exactly two months after Mr Prigozhin led a revolt against Russia’s army leadership, an act of rebellion that Mr Putin at the time condemned as a treacherous “stab in the back”.
Mr Putin on Thursday recalled that he had known Mr Prigozhin – a convicted criminal who went on to establish a successful catering company before founding the Wagner mercenary group – since the early 1990s, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“He [Mr Prigozhin] was a talented person, a talented businessman, he worked not only in our country, and achieved results, but also abroad, particularly in Africa. He was involved there with oil, gas, precious metals and stones.”
Mr Putin earlier made a virtual statement to a summit of the Brics nations in South Africa which his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was attending. Neither referenced the plane crash.
Russian state media gave the disaster low-key coverage.
The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, which had been flying from Moscow to St Petersburg and was reported to have also been carrying senior members of Mr Prigozhin’s team, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow.
At the crash site on Thursday morning men were seen carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane’s tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent.
The Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, reported that investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board.
Mr Prigozhin spearheaded the mutiny against the Russian army leadership on June 23rd-24th which Mr Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.
The mercenary leader also spent months criticising the conduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine – which Moscow calls a “special military operation” – and tried to topple defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff.
The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal that saw Mr Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But he had appeared to continue to move freely inside Russia.
Mr Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday which he suggested was made in Africa. He turned up at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July.
US and other Western officials long expected Mr Putin to go after Mr Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended June mutiny.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised,” US president Joe Biden said. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country was not involved. “We have nothing to do with this. Everyone understands who does,” he said.
Prigozhin supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane was deliberately downed, including suggesting it could have been hit by an air defence missile or targeted by a bomb on board.
These claims could not be independently verified.
Numerous opponents and critics of Mr Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts.
Speaking to Latvian television, Nato Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence director Janis Sarts said that “the downing of the plane was certainly no mere coincidence”.
[ Prigozhin’s death would raise tensions within Russia’s armyOpens in new window ]
The crash came the same day that Russian media reported that Gen Sergei Surovikin, a former top commander in Ukraine who was reportedly linked to Mr Prigozhin, was dismissed from his post as commander of Russia’s air force.
Gen Surovikin has not been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Mr Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
At Wagner’s headquarters in St Petersburg, lights were turned on in the shape of a large cross.
Mr Prigozhin’s supporters brought flowers to the building in an improvised memorial.
While countless theories about the events swirled, most observers saw Mr Prigozhin’s reported death as Mr Putin’s punishment for the most serious challenge to his authority of his 23-year rule.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, said on Telegram that “no matter what caused the plane crash, everyone will see it as an act of vengeance and retribution” by the Kremlin, and “the Kremlin wouldn’t really stand in the way of that”.
“From Putin’s point of view, as well as the security forces and the military – Prigozhin’s death must be a lesson to any potential followers,” Ms Stanovaya said in a Telegram post.
In the revolt that started on June 23rd and lasted less than 24 hours, Mr Prigozhin’s mercenaries swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot, before driving to within about 200km of Moscow in what Mr Prigozhin called a “march of justice” to oust the top military leaders who demanded that the mercenaries sign contracts with the ministry for defence.
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They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen Russian pilots.
Mr Prigozhin’s death is unlikely to have an effect on Russia’s war in Ukraine. His forces pulled back from the front line after capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut in late May. – Reuters/AP