Vladimir Putin said Yevgeny Prigozhin was a “talented businessman” who made “serious mistakes”, as Western security sources warned that the Russian president had been emboldened by the apparent assassination of the Wagner Group leader.
Putin broke his silence almost 24 hours after Prigozhin’s private jet was brought down by what is believed to be a bomb, killing the mercenary leader and his top deputies.
The West believes Putin ordered the killing, and on Thursday a British security source said the incident had left the president with “a quasi private army at hand”.
In short speech from inside the Kremlin on Thursday night, Putin said Prigozhin had made a “great contribution” to the war in Ukraine. The president added that an investigation into the crash was under way.
“I’ve known Prigozhin for a very long time – since the early 1990s,” he said. “He was a man of difficult fate. He made serious mistakes in life but he also achieved results, both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common good, just like in recent months.”
It came as Russian security sources and propagandists blamed Ukraine for the killing. Early US intelligence assessments have concluded that a bomb exploded on the private jet or that some other kind of sabotage caused the crash, which happened between Moscow and St Petersburg.
On Thursday night, the Pentagon said there was “no evidence to suggest” that a surface-to-air missile had brought down the plane.
Poland warned that Wagner could become more dangerous after the death of Progozhin. Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister, said: “The Wagner Group comes under Putin’s leadership. Let everyone answer the question for themselves – will the threat be bigger or smaller? For me, that’s a rhetorical question.”
British sources agreed with the assessment. “The plus for Putin is he will feel emboldened and will now have a quasi private army at hand,” said one security source.
The source added that Sergei Surovikin, the military chief dismissed by Putin on Monday, and Prigozhin were the only ones who told the president the truth about the war in Ukraine.
But a second source said the event also demonstrated Kremlin weakness, adding: “Ageing dictators do two things. Firstly, they die. Secondly, they lash out because they realise their power is fading.”
The downed plane was carrying Prigozhin’s second in command, his logistics chief and six of his lieutenants as well as the 62-year-old warlord, who was so close to the Russian president that he was known as “Putin’s chef”.
Putin, who said those on board had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine, moved to shore up his global standing by addressing Brics leaders on the final day of their summit. He was forced to do so by video link to avoid being detained under an international arrest warrant issued for war crimes.
Russia is keen to build the Brics group – which currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – into a more influential bloc able to challenge the West.
The Russian president said he was interested in deepening ties with Africa, which has suffered fuel and food price rises resulting from the war in Ukraine. Wagner mercenaries are active in Africa, from where Prigozhin recently posted a video.
Meanwhile, Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Adviser, held talks with his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy and the UK on Thursday at which they discussed ways to hold Russia accountable for the war.
“It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising,” said Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister.
News outlets in Russia reported that Russian investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board Prigozhin’s jet.
Residents of Kuzhenkino, where the crash happened, said they had heard a bang before the plane plummeted to the ground. It had shown no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.
One villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: “It wasn’t thunder, it was a metallic bang – let’s put it that way.”
The Kremlin earlier chose either to ignore the death of one of the most notorious figures in Putin’s war, or to blame Ukraine. “This is their doing,” Vladimir Solovyev, one of Russia’s most prominent propagandists, said on his morning TV show on Thursday.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said: “We had nothing to do with it. Everybody realises who has something to do with it.”
A day after the crash and his sacking of Surovikin, the head of the aerospace forces who is also known as General Armageddon, Putin has tightened his stranglehold on power.
Vladimir Osechkin, of Gulagu.net, a Russian prisoners’ rights group, told the Washington Post that members of the Wagner Group were in shock. “The commanders don’t know what to do and what to tell their fighters. Everything was centred on Prigozhin and his connections,” he said.
Wagner sources had told him those on the plane were on their way to an important meeting about the group’s future and believed “they really had” come to terms with Putin.
There was no massive outpouring of grief in Russia over the death of the Wagner boss, but Wagner fighters built makeshift memorials in several cities.
Offering the Prigozhin family his “condolences”, Putin warned that the investigation into the crash would “take some time”. “He was a talented man, a talented businessman,” he said of the man he is widely suspected of assassinating.
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