Putin praises mercenary leader Prigozhin in 1st comments after air disaster

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.

Putin's comments, which suggested he harboured decidedly mixed feelings about the boss of the Wagner Group, a private mercenary organization, were the most definitive yet on Prigozhin's fate. Before he spoke, the only official statement had come from the aviation authority, which said 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 northwest of Moscow on Wednesday evening.

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

The presumed death of Prigozhin, 62, leaves the Russian presidentstronger in the short term, removing a powerful figure who launched a brief mutiny against the army's leadership two months ago and threatened to make Putin look weak.

But it would also deprive 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 thatare now likely to be reorganized.

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

'Preliminary data' suggests Prigozhin dead: Putin

Pledging a thorough investigation thathe said would take time, Putin said that "preliminary data" indicated that Prigozhin and other Wagner employees had been on the downed plane. The passenger list suggests that Wagner's core leadership team wasflying with him and had also perished.

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 Prigozhin as a flawed character who made some bad mistakes.

WATCH | The tensions between Prigozhin and the Kremlin:

Did Prigozhin's failed mutiny against Putin cost him his life? | About That

1 year ago

Duration 13:38

Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is presumed dead after a plane crash north of Moscow two months after marching on the Russian military. Andrew Chang breaks down what we know about the crash, the rumours of Vladimir Putin's involvement, and takes us through the fateful 24 hours of Prigozhin's failed march on Moscow.

"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.

"I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the start of the '90s. He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin's most loyal allies, said thatPrigozhin was his friend and he had asked the mercenary chief "to set aside his personal ambitions."

"But lately he either did not see or did not want to see a full picture of what was going on in the country," Kadyrov said.

No problems apparent before drop

The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, long linked to Prigozhin's Wagner Group, had been flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg when itcrashed 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.

The U.S. Department of Defence on Thursday said there was currently no information to suggest that a surface-to-air missile took down the plane presumed to be carrying Prigozhin.

U.S. Brig.-General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, offered no further details or evidence as he made his remarks at a Pentagon news conference.

Reuters had reported earlier on Thursday that the United States was looking at a number of theories over what caused Prigozhin's plane to crash, and cited two U.S. officials saying a surface-to-air missile likely hit the aircraft.

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

Amid the absence of verified facts, some of his supporters have pointed the finger at the state, whileothers blame Ukraine though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had no involvement in Prigozhin's death.

SergeyMironov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia party and former chairof the upper house of the Russian parliament, suggested on his Telegram channel that Prigozhin had been deliberately killed.

"Prigozhin messed with too many people in Russia, Ukraine and the West," Mironov wrote. It now seems that at some point his number of enemies reached a critical point."

Mironov offered no evidence to support his statement, but Putin critics or opposition politicians, includingAlexander Litvinenko and Boris Nemtsov, were homicide victims, while Sergei Skripal and Alexei Navalny survived mysterious poisonings.

Leadership void

Prigozhin's death would also leave the Wagner Group which incurred Putin's wrath in June by staging a failed mutiny against the army's top brass leaderless and raise questions about its future operations in Africa and elsewhere.

Rosaviatsiya, Russia's aviation agency, published the names of all 10 people reportedly on board the plane, including Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, his right-hand man and a formerspecial forces officer in Russia's GRU military intelligence service.

After a deal ended the mutiny, Utkin said in a speech to Wagner fighters that it was "just the beginning of the biggest work in the world that will be carried out very soon."

Prigozhin spearheaded the mutiny against the army leadership thatPutin said could have tipped Russia into civil war. He also spent months criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine.

The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal thatsaw 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.

Indicted in the U.S. for election interference

Prigozhin gained attention in the United States and was believed to be working on Putin's behalf when he and a dozen other Russian nationals and three Russian companies were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election victory.

They were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.

In addition to Prigozhin and Utkin, 53, the following is a list of the other eight people reported by Russia's aviation agency Rosaviatsiya to have been aboard the jet:

• Valery Chekalov, 47, a senior deputy of Prigozhin, according to Ukrainian security services-affiliated website Myrotvorets.
• Sergei Propustin, 44. One of the rare published photographs of Propustin showed him dressed in black and wearing a cap, accompanying Prigozhin on a tour of Russian regions after the capture of Bakhmut.
• Alexander Totmin, 30, was among the few mercenaries in the secretive Wagner Group who was active on social media.
• Yevgeniy Makaryan, age unknown, who joined Wagner in 2016 and fought in Syria, according to St. Petersburg newspaper Fontanka.
• Alexei Levshin, 51, the senior pilot of the plane that crashed. How long Levshin worked on Prigozhin-affiliated flights could not be ascertained.
• Rustam Karimov, co-pilot of the plane, 29, was the youngest victim of the crash. Karimov's father told Russian media that he took a job with the aviation company that provided Prigozhin's flights three months ago.
• Kristina Raspopova, 39, the plane's flight attendant.
• Nikolai Matuseev, or Matusevich, according to a database of Wagner fighters. No details are known about him.