Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims of the plane crash near Tver on Wednesday, presumably including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, who was traveling on the plane.
Putin spoke on the matter for the first time when he received Gyeniisz Pusilin, acting leader of the Donetsk region, in Moscow on Thursday. The president promised a thorough investigation of the tragedy.
He said that Alexander Bastrikin, the president of the Russian Investigative Committee (SZK), reported to him about the start of the preliminary investigation.
"We will see what the investigators say in the near future, the technical and genetic analysis is going on now, it will take some time"
Putin insisted.
Regarding Prigozhin, Putin said that he had known him since the beginning of the nineties.
He called her a man of difficult fate, who had made grave mistakes in life, and who had achieved the necessary results both for himself and for the common cause, as he had done in his last months, when she had asked him to do so.
"He was a talented person, a talented businessman, and he worked effectively not only in our country, but also in Africa, where he dealt with oil, gas, precious stones and precious metals," he said.
"I understand that he returned from Africa yesterday, met with some officials here," the president said. He emphasized that Wagner's militants made a significant contribution to the fight against the "neo-Nazi regime" in Ukraine, which Russia will not forget.
On Wednesday evening, an Embraer Legacy private plane en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed near the village of Kuzsenkino in Tver Oblast. All ten people on board lost their lives. According to the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsia, Prigozhin and Dmitry "Wagner" Utkin, the commander of the mercenary group, were also on board the plane.
MTI
Cover photo: MTI/AP/Ria Novosti Russian news agency/Pavel Bednyakov
