Russia’s Putin delivers mixed tribute to the late Prigozhin, says the talented businessman made ‘serious mistakes’

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Mr 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.

Mr Putin’s comments, which suggested he harboured decidedly mixed feelings about Wagner’s boss, were the most definitive yet on Mr Prigozhin’s fate.

Before he spoke, the only official statement had come from the aviation authority, which said Mr Prigozhin had been on board the downed plane.

Russian investigators have opened a probe

into what happened but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky north-west of Moscow on Wednesday evening.

Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.

United States officials told Reuters that Washington is looking at a number of theories over what brought down the plane, including a surface-to-air missile.

The presumed death of Mr Prigozhin leaves the Russian President stronger in the short term, removing a powerful figure who launched a June 23 and 24 mutiny against the army’s leadership and threatened to make Mr Putin look weak.

However, it would also deprive Mr Putin of a forceful and astute player who had proved his utility to the Kremlin by sending his fighters into some of the bloodiest battles of the Ukraine war and by advancing Russian interests across Africa, which are now likely to be reorganised.

It remains to be seen, too, how Wagner fighters, some of whom have already spoken of betrayal and foul play, react.

Pledging a thorough investigation that he said would take time, Mr Putin said “preliminary data” indicated Mr Prigozhin and Wagner’s core leadership team had been on the downed plane.

Mr Putin paid generous tribute to

the renegade mercenary,

calling him a talented businessman who knew how to look after his own interests and who could, when asked, do his bit for the common cause.

But he also described Mr Prigozhin as a flawed character who had made some bad mistakes.

“I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It is 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.

“I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the start of the 1990s. He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life.”

‘Metallic bang’

The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, which had been flying from Moscow to St Petersburg, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow.

A Reuters reporter at the crash site on Thursday morning saw men 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.

Residents of Kuzhenkino said they had heard a bang and then saw the jet plummet to the ground. The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.

One villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: “It wasn’t thunder, it was a metallic bang – let’s put it that way.”

Mourners left flowers and lit candles near Wagner’s offices in St Petersburg and at other locations across Russia.

A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced Mr Prigozhin dead on Wednesday evening, hailing him as a hero and a patriot who had died at the hands of “traitors to Russia”.

Amid the absence of verified facts, some of his supporters have pointed the finger of blame at the state, others at Ukraine, which marked its Independence Day on Thursday.

Mr Putin said in June that

Mr Prigozhin’s mutiny against the army,

which saw Wagner fighters shoot down Russian military helicopters, could have tipped Russia into civil war.

The mercenary leader had also spent months criticising the conduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine – which Moscow calls a “special military operation” – and had tried to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal that saw Mr Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But he had appeared to move freely inside Russia.

Many Russians had wondered how he was able to get away with such brazen criticism without consequence.

Mr Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday that he suggested was made in Africa. He turned up at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July. REUTERS