A day after Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash, Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence on the matter and called him a 'talented businessman' on Thursday.
According to BBC, Putin sent his condolences to the ten deceased passengers of the plane that crashed in Tver region, and said that investigators will look into the matter that will take some time. The Russian leader also mentioned that he came to know about the crash on Thursday morning. According to the Kremlin leader, Prigozhin had returned from Africa yesterday and met certain official persons there.
"This was a person with a complicated fate, and he made serious mistakes in life, but also sought to achieve the necessary results - both for himself and at time when I asked him to, for the common cause, such as in these recent months," said the Russian President on Prigozhin, while noting that he has known the Wagner chief since the 1990s.
Speaking on the passengers who died in the crash, Putin said that they have made a significant contribution against the "neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine" and that their role will not be forgotten.
ccording to Russia's emergency situations ministry, the 13-seater Embraer (EMBR3.SA) Legacy 600 executive jet took off from Moscow for Putin's hometown, St. Petersburg. There were speculations that the plane could not be tagged "ill-fated" as it had shown "unusual descent" in the last 30 seconds before it crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region.
The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency reported that Prigozhin was among the people on board the plane that crashed in the western Tver region. Flight data shows the plane reached an altitude of some 28,000 feet before it suddenly stopped transmitting tracking details. As per Flightradar24, there was "no indication that there was anything wrong with the aircraft" before it witnessed a dramatic drop.
As of now, it wasn't clear what led to the crash, but multiple media reports claimed it could be possible that the jet was shot from the ground. Russia, without elaborating the details of the crash, said it has opened a criminal case and is currently investigating the fatal crash.
Prigozhin had previously engineered a short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The plane crash has led to speculations that Kremlin was exacting revenge against the Wagner leader.
On June 23, he called for an armed uprising against the defence minister and headed from Ukraine toward Moscow with his mercenaries. His forces took control of the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, the city in southern Russia near the border with Ukraine, and continued their “march of justice,” until stopping a mere 200 kilometres from the Russian capital.
Putin branded Prigozhin a "traitor" as the revolt unfolded. But the criminal case against the mercenary chief on rebellion charges was later dropped.
US President Joe Biden hinted that Putin was behind the crash that claimed the life of the Wagner group chief. "You may recall, I was asked about this (in July)... I said I would be careful what I rode in. I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised," he told CNN.
Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Prigozhin was convicted of robbery and assault in 1981, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. When he got out, he opened a restaurant business in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. Putin was the city’s deputy mayor at the time.
Prigozhin used that connection to develop a catering business and won lucrative Russian government contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”
He later expanded into other areas, including media and an infamous internet “troll factory” that led to his indictment in the US for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
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