The leader of Ukraine claimed on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s passing in a plane crash last month.
“He killed Prigozhin, at least we all have this information and not any other,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech.
He said the incident showed that the Russian leader was now “politically weak”.
Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, died with nine other people when a plane flying from Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed on August 23.
Exactly two months earlier, Prigozhin had openly challenged Russia’s military high command by leading a short-lived mutiny with his fighters that threatened to spiral into civil conflict.
This, according Russian observers, is Putin’s greatest challenge to his authority.
Prigozhin put an end to the uprising after reportedly reaching a deal with the Kremlin through Belarus’s mediation, but he was not charged criminally.
The Kremlin has denied claims that it planned the disaster as payback for Wagner’s June march on Moscow.
According to Russian investigators, they are looking into every scenario that could have led to the disaster, including planned murder.
