Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made his first comments about the presumed death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash.
“I’ve known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with no easy fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life, but he also achieved the needed results—both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause,” Putin said during a televised meeting, according to the Kremlin-contolled news agency Tass.
Putin’s comments are the closest words yet in way of confirmation regarding Prigozhin’s death.
The founder of the mercenary Wagner organization was listed as a passenger on a jet that crashed in Russia’s Tver region on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard.
