Vladimir Putin, Russian President has described the death of Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine others in a plane crash as a tragedy.
The Alarmee reports that Putin was speaking for the first time since the plane crash on Wednesday where Prigozhin and others died tragically.
“First of all, I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of all the victims, this is always a tragedy. Indeed, if they were there, it seems … preliminary information suggests that Wagner Group employees were also on board,” Putin was quoted by CNN.
He says he had known Prigozhin for a very long time and that he was “a talented man, a talented businessman.”
Putin added: “He was a man of difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results needed both for himself and when I asked him about it – for a common cause, as in these last months.”
Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch and mercenary leader who had been a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin until he launched a rebellion in June 2023.
Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as “Putin’s chef” because he owned restaurants and catering companies that provided services to the Kremlin.
Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2022 investigation, were “tightly integrated with Russia’s Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU”
