MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday (Aug 24), breaking his silence after the mercenary leader's plane crashed with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs. Putin's comments, which suggested he harboured decidedly mixed feelings about Wagner's mercenary boss, were the most definitive yet on...
MOSCOW — 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.
The presumed death of Prigozhin leaves Russian President Vladimir Putin stronger in the short term, removing a powerful figure who launched a June 23-24 mutiny against the army's leadership and threatened to make him look weak. 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."I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It's always a tragedy," Putin said in televised remarks made during a meeting in the Kremlin with the Moscow-installed chief of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
Residents of Kuzhenkino, the village near the crash site, 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. A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced Prigozhin dead on Wednesday evening, hailing him as a hero and a patriot who had died at the hands of "traitors to Russia".
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 Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff.
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