Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has paid tribute to the Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, calling his death a “great loss for the whole state.”
The Russian warlord-turned-mutineer died Wednesday evening, after his private jet crashed in flames on an internal flight from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, killing all 10 people on board.
Kadyrov, the leader of the Russian majority-Muslim region and considered one of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent allies, offered his condolences to Prigozhin’s family in a post on his Telegram channel that included a photo of himself next to the smiling warlord.
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Kadyrov wrote, adding that Prigozhin was “distinguished from others by his responsiveness, unique communication skills and persistence.”
Prigozhin led the mercenary Wagner Group for years, and fought in Russia’s war on Ukraine. In June he launched an uprising against the conduct of the war in Ukraine that he abruptly called off with his troops closing in on Moscow.
Prigozhin and the Chechen strongman were long brothers in arms. But Kadyrov said that his elite troops had been poised to quash the Wagner rebels occupying the southern city of Rostov-on-Don to “defend the homeland.” He was glad the situation “ended without a direct confrontation.”
In his tribute, Kadyrov seems to address the fallout from the mutiny, saying that Prigozhin recently “either did not see or did not want to see the full picture of what was happening in the country.”
“I asked him to leave his personal ambitions behind in favor of matters of paramount national importance,” he added. “Everything else could be dealt with later. But that’s just the way he was, Prigozhin, with his iron character and his desire to get what he wanted right here and now.”
