Finally Putin Announces Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Death, Says ‘Talented Businessman’ Gone!

• Speculation grows bomb downed Wagner chief’s plane after take off from Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin has finally confirmed the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, maintaining that the Wagner chief had made “some serious mistakes” and met with a “difficult fate”.

This is as speculation continue to grow that Prigozhin’s plane was brought down by a bomb shortly after taking off from Moscow, the Russian capital

The Russian leader, who spoke in a televised meeting at the Kremlin with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader of the occupied Donetsk region, addressed Wednesday’s crash of Prigozhin’s business jet for the first time, offering “sincere condolences” to the families of the 10 people on board, including Prigozhin.

“I have known Prigozhin for a long time, since the 1990s. He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results for himself but also for the greater good when I asked him. He was a talented man, a talented businessman,” Putin said, speaking about the warlord in the past tense.

Putin added that Prigozhin’s Wagner group “made a significant contribution to the fight against nazism in Ukraine”. “We remember this, know this, and won’t forget it,” he said.

Putin said he was told that Prigozhin had returned from Africa earlier on Wednesday, shortly before his apparent death, and had held meetings with officials in Moscow. He said that Russian investigators would pursue the investigation into the crash “to the end”.

The Russian leader spoke during a televised meeting with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader of the occupied Donetsk region.

However, US and Western officials said it was likely that an intentional explosion had brought down the plane, which crashed into a field 185 miles (300km) north of the Russian capital.

The New York Times quoted the officials as saying. “A definitive conclusion has not been reached, but an explosion is a leading theory of what caused the plane to crash in a field between Moscow and St Petersburg”. “The explosion could have been caused by a bomb or other device planted on the aircraft,” they said.

The Pentagon said the US believed Prigozhin had been killed but did not give any specifics other than to deny the plane had been hit by a surface-to-air missile.

“Our initial assessment is that it’s likely Prigozhin was killed,” spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said. “We’re continuing to assess the situation. We don’t have any information to indicate right now the press reporting stating that there was some type of surface-to-air missile that took down the plane. We assess that information to be inaccurate.”

Earlier in the day, Wagner fighters and a few dozen members of the public had gathered at a makeshift memorial for Yevgeny Prigozhin in his hometown of St. Petersburg.

Footage of the memorial set up outside Wagner’s headquarters in the city showed men in military camouflage on Thursday laying flowers on the ground in front of portraits of Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, a close Prigozhin ally often described as the founder of the mercenary group, who was also named on the passenger list.

In one clip, a fighter in full military garb can be seen falling to his knees and weeping. One young man standing outside the memorial on Wednesday evening in an interview published by the Russian Sota outlet said; “I am here to honour the memory of Prigozhin … I support his politics, Wagner is just,”

Meanwhile, crash investigators in Kuzhenkino, in Russia’s Tver region, picked through the wreckage of a jet that officials said had been carrying Prigozhin and had crashed with no survivors.

One resident, Vitaly Stepenok, 72, told Reuters he heard an “explosion or a bang” before seeing the jet plummet to the ground.

“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,” Stepenok said. “One wing flew off in one direction and the fuselage went like that,” he said, gesturing with his arms to show the plane heading down towards the ground. “And then it glided down on one wing. It didn’t nose-dive, it was gliding.”

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.”

Russian authorities said on Thursday that the investigation into the crash would be led by Ivan Sibul, a veteran investigator who has previously examined other high-profile plane crashes.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said Kyiv had nothing to do with the presumed death of Prigozhin. The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Zelenskiy telling journalists on Thursday: “We had nothing to do with it. Everybody realises who has something to do with it.” – With Agency reports