Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made his first comments on the reported death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch and mercenary warlord who led a mutiny against the Russian armed forces in June, seemingly reconciled with Putin over the next two months, and then allegedly died along with nine others in a mysterious plane crash on Wednesday.
Putin told journalists at the Kremlin Thursday that Prigozhin was “a man of complicated destiny.”
The Russian dictator reminisced about meeting Prigozhin in the 1990s, after which the onetime hot-dog vendor and restaurant entrepreneur became known as “Putin’s Chef” for winning lucrative contracts to cater to the Kremlin and supply food to the Russian military.
Prigozhin used his profits to co-found a private military company (PMC) called the Wagner Group in partnership with a former Russian special forces operator named Dmitry Utkin, who was also reportedly killed in the plane crash on Wednesday.
Yevgeny Prigozhin…