Putin pays tribute to ‘talented’ Yevgeny Prigozhin after plane crash | World News

It has taken 24 hours for the Russian president to break his silence on the incident in which the man who led an armed mutiny against his leadership was killed.

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Authorities confirmed that all 10 people on the business jet died when it tumbled to the ground yesterday – and that passengers included the warlord and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin.

In a televised meeting at the Kremlin, Putin claimed he was only briefed about the crash this morning.

The war leader offered condolences to the families of the seven passengers and three crew members on board.

Paying tribute to the mercenary chief, he praised him as a ‘talented businessman’, who he had known since the 1990s.

‘I knew Prigozhin for many years, since the beginning of the 1990s,’ Putin said. ‘He was a person with a complicated background.

‘He was a talented person, a talented businessman. He worked not only in our country, and with good results too, but abroad too, in Africa in particular.’ 

In what appeared to be a reference to the war in Ukraine and efforts of Wagner in Bakhmut, Putin stressed that Prigozhin made ‘serious mistakes in his life’, but that he achieve the ‘necessary results’.

‘He made serious mistakes in his life and he achieved the necessary results, both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as during the past few months,’ the president said.

‘He dealt with oil, gas, precious metals and stones there. As I learned, he returned from Africa only yesterday. He met some officials here.’ 

Russian state media have not covered the crash extensively, instead focusing on Putin’s remarks to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg via video link and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, police, cordoned off the field where the jet went down in the village Kuzhenkino, about 185 miles northwest of the capital.

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