Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence on Thursday over a plane crash a day earlier that killed notorious mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and other senior members of the Wagner paramilitary group.

In televised remarks, Putin described the crash as a “tragedy” and expressed his “sincere condolences to the families of all the victims”. Along with Prigozhin, nine other people on board also died.

Putin’s statement was the first official confirmation that the Wagner boss had been murdered.

Wednesday evening’s crash came just two months after Prigozhin led a rebellion against Moscow’s top military officials, seen by some observers as the biggest threat to Putin’s long rule.

Although Moscow has launched an investigation into the air traffic rule violation, investigators have remained silent as speculation of a possible murder has grown.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that Kiev had nothing to do with the incident. “I think everybody knows who it concerns,” he said, apparently referring to Putin.

Moscow initially said only that Prigozhin, 62, was listed as a passenger on the flight, without confirming his death.

But when Putin broke his silence on Thursday, he paid a fitting tribute to the mercenary boss and the paramilitary group he leads.

Putin said, “I have known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 90s. He was a man with a complicated fate and made serious mistakes in his life, but he achieved the right results.”

In an address to Russians during the Wagner Uprising on 23–24 June, in which he warned against “civil war”, Putin called Prigozhin – his one-time ally – a “traitor”.

But on Thursday he said Wagner members killed in the crash had made “significant contributions” to Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.

They shared a common issue, Putin said, adding: “We remember him, we know him, and we will not forget him.”

Some Western leaders expressed doubts that the crash was an accident.

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US President Joe Biden said, “Nothing happens in Russia that Putin isn’t behind,” after saying he did not know what had happened.

France observed “reasonable skepticism” about the crash, while Germany said it followed a pattern of “unexplained” deaths in Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Bayerbock says it is suspicious that “a disgraced former confidant of Putin literally falls from the sky two months after attempting a coup”.

Even influential pro-Kremlin figures, such as state television personality and Putin aide Margarita Simonyan, were suggesting it could have been an assassination.

“One of the versions that is being discussed (about the accident) is that it was staged. But personally, I am leaning towards the more obvious version,” she said on social media.

Russia’s aviation authority published the names of those on board the Embraer private jet late on Wednesday.

This involved Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, a shadowy figure who managed Wagner’s operations and reportedly served in Russian military intelligence.

Russian police patrolled the crash site near the village of Kuzenkino, about 350 kilometers (220 mi) north of Moscow, in the Tver region. Some of the masked men had rifles.

A woman living near Kuzenkino said her neighbor had heard a roar and seen “flashes from the plane” accompanied by flames.

“A neighbor came to me with trembling hands and when we went to the window I only saw a mushroom, a black cloud,” she said in a video published by state news agency RIA Novosti.

verified by video AFP From the visuals it appeared that the Embraer Legacy aircraft was engulfed in a plume of white smoke as it fell from the sky.

Flightradar24 tracker website said the plane flying from Moscow to St Peterburg appeared on their radar for the last 30 seconds and descended “dramatically” at around 15:20 GMT.

Some Telegram channels linked to Wagner initially suggested the plane had been shot down by Russian air defenses, on a day when Kiev carried out more drone attacks on Russia.

READ: Wagner boss Prigozhin listed as passenger on plane that crashed with no survivors: Officials

Prigozhin appears to have enjoyed some popularity in Russia.

He appealed to nationalist-leaning Russians – the army’s leadership was also under suspicion during the Ukraine invasion – who adopted his tough style.

Some even speculated that he would run in the 2024 presidential election, which is expected to extend Putin’s rule until at least 2030.

“He was one of the few true patriots of our country,” said Pavel Zakharov as he laid flowers at Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg.

Many Russians eagerly awaited Prigozhin’s outspoken, often profanity-laden social media videos, which stood in stark contrast to the Russian authorities’ tightly controlled narrative.

The Wagner Office was still operating and even recruiting in Russia after Prigozhin’s rebellion, in which his men captured a military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and marched on Moscow. Did.

In Siberia, a region from where Wagner recruited heavily, people also laid flowers at the mercenary company’s office in Novosibirsk.

But in Ukraine, where Wagner fighters were known for their extraordinary brutality – including extrajudicial killings of their own people – many welcomed the news of Prigozhin’s death.

Prigozhin recruited thousands of Russian defectors to fight in Ukraine, often being put on the front lines.

Wagner’s future without Prigozhin—including his involvement in African conflicts—remained unclear.

The won future of the chieftain had become uncertain since the settlement with Belarus ended Wagner’s brief rebellion.

Under that agreement, the Kremlin “guaranteed” that Prigozhin would be allowed to live in Russia’s neighbor and Kremlin ally Belarus.

Minsk promoted the presence of Wagner fighters in its territory for several weeks, saying it had set up camps for them.