Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he had known the late Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash on Wednesday, for a long time and described him as a talented person with a difficult fate.
"I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, from the beginning of the 1990s. He was a man of difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life […] He was a talented person, a talented businessman, he worked not only in our country and worked with results, but also abroad, in Africa in particular," Putin said during a meeting with Denis Pushilin, the acting head of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The Russian leader noted that the country's Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin has reported about the start of an investigation into the Wednesday private plane crash with Prigozhin on board, and vowed to see it through.
"A preliminary investigation of this incident will be carried out in full and will be seen through. There is no doubt here. We'll see what the investigators say soon," Putin said.
The president emphasized that PMC Wagner under Prigozhin's leadership made a significant contribution to the fight against Nazism in Ukraine, adding that the country remembers, knows and "will not forget" about this contribution.
"It seems that the primary data indicate that employees of the Wagner company were also there. I would like to note that these are people who have made a significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine," Putin said.
On Wednesday evening, an Embraer business jet flying from the Russian capital Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed in the Tver region. According to preliminary data, there were 10 people on board, all of whom died. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head and founder of PMC Wagner, was on the passenger list, according to the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia).