Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence on Thursday about the plane crash in which the leader of the Russian Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and other senior members of this group died, and consoled his family and the families of the victims, while the United States distanced itself from any involvement in targeting the Prigozhin plane, and talked about several hypotheses behind the crash.

Putin said yesterday – during a meeting with the pro-Moscow President of Donetsk Denis Bushilin – that he has known Prigozhin since the nineties, and was a "talented" person and not only in Russia, as he put it.

The Russian president added that Prigozhin's fate "was complicated, with many mistakes in his life" but added that he had achieved important results.

Putin praised what he called the Wagner Group's significant contribution to the "war against Nazism in Ukraine" and said Russia would never forget it.

Regarding the cause of the crash, the Russian president said: "We will wait for the outcome of the investigations."

Putin said Prigozhin returned to the country from Africa on Wednesday and held important meetings in Moscow with officials before his plane crashed.

In June, the Russian president faced the biggest challenge to his more than two-decade rule when Prigozhin led an armed rebellion.

For his part, Chechen President Ramadan Kadyrov said that Prigozhin made a significant contribution to the special military operation against Ukraine, noting that his death is a great loss for Russia.

On his Telegram channel, the Chechen president offered his sincere condolences to Prigozhin's family and friends.


Russian investigation

Yesterday, Russian authorities opened a criminal investigation into the incident over alleged violations of air traffic rules.

The Al Jazeera correspondent said that the wreckage of Prigozhin's plane has not yet been lifted and noted that some parts of it were scattered two kilometers from the site of its downing.

The Embraer Legacy private jet crashed yesterday near the village of Koginkino in the Tver district (north of Moscow) while flying towards St. Petersburg, where Wagner is headquartered.

Russian official sources, including the Civil Aviation Authority, said Prigozhin was on the list of ten passengers on board, and none survived.

The Civil Aviation Authority explained that there were 7 passengers and 3 crew members on board the plane, noting that the passengers also included the second-in-command of the Wagner Group, Dmitry Otkin.

Commenting on the developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that Kiev had nothing to do with the incident, saying "I think everyone knows who it is interested in," apparently referring to his Russian counterpart.

Zelensky said – during a joint press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gar Steer in the capital Kiev – that the most dangerous thing after the killing of Prigozhin is the presence of 20,<> Wagner fighters out of control, and may pose a threat to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and even Russia, as he put it.

Washington believes Prigozhin's death will have repercussions in Wagner's areas of the world (Reuters)

American reading of the incident

This comes at a time when the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley denied any connection at all to the crash of the Prigozhin plane, adding that his death will have repercussions in the areas of Wagner presence in the world, and also said that he was not surprised by the downing of the plane of the Wagner commander, and that the rebellion of Prigozhin exposed him to danger.

For its part, the US Department of Defense said yesterday that Prigozhin was killed in the crash of the plane he was carrying on Wednesday near Moscow, stressing at the same time that there is no data to support the hypothesis that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder stressed that there was no information on the cause of the crash, but ruled out the widely circulated hypothesis on social media platforms that the plane was shot down by a missile.

Ryder added that the Wagner Group posed a real threat and that its activity in Africa would be monitored.

Meanwhile, a US official told Al Jazeera that his country is considering more than one hypothesis about the Prigozhin plane crash, but has not yet reached a final conclusion.


The New York Times quoted U.S. officials as saying that the main hypothesis of the crash of Prigozhin's plane was an explosion inside it.

According to these officials, the explosion may have been caused by "detonating a bomb or fueling it with adulterated fuel."

The same newspaper quoted – from a US intelligence source – that he did not detect the launch of a missile at the plane, nor evidence of targeting it with surface-to-air missiles.

The Washington Post also quoted U.S. officials as saying intelligence was looking into the possibility that the plane crashed after an explosion inside it.

The same sources added that an explosion was detected along the plane's path, but there were no signs of a missile launch.

U.S. officials said there was no reason to doubt Russian reports about Prigozhin's death.

Earlier, Reuters quoted US officials as saying that Washington believed a surface-to-air missile, launched from inside Russia, shot down Prigozhin's plane, but stressed that this information was still preliminary and under review.

Andrei Troshev could become Putin's "new man" at Wagner (Reuters)

Prigozhin's possible successor

Meanwhile, speculation has been raised about who might succeed Prigozhin as Wagner's leader, with Western media quoting Russian sources as saying who Putin's new man is called.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Putin had proposed Andrei Troshev as Wagner's new commander during a meeting with the group's leaders days after the end of the Prigozhin rebellion in June.

Troshev is a retired Russian colonel who is a founding member and executive director of the Wagner Group.

According to sanctions documents published by the European Union on the situation in Syria, Troshev serves as Chief of Staff of the Wagner Group's operations in Syria.

Troshev is a veteran of the Chechen and Afghan wars, and was decorated for his participation in these wars.