TRANSCRIPT:
Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been Russia's most powerful mercenary.
Now he's presumed dead after a private jet plane crash near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region, north of Moscow.
The bodies of eight out of the ten people listed as passengers on the plane are believed to have recovered, but they are yet to be formally identified.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered a tribute to the families of the passengers.
"As for the aviation tragedy, first of all, I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of all the victims. It is always a tragedy. Indeed, if there were, and the primary data indicate that there were employees of the Wagner PMC, I would want to note that these people made a significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine. We remember this, we know it, and we will not forget it."
The President also singled out the Wagner leader in his remarks.
"I have known (Yevgeny) Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man of difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life and he achieved the results he needed - both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman.He worked not only in our country - and worked with the result - but also abroad, in Africa, in particular. He was engaged in oil, gas, precious metals and stones there."
Prigozhin's apparent death has come after months of tensions between the 62 year old and Russian authorities.
The Wagner group leader spent months criticising the way Russia was prosecuting its war in Ukraine, and he also spearheaded the mutiny against Russia's top army brass in late June which Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.
Wagner fighters shot down Russian attack helicopters during the revolt, killing an unconfirmed number of pilots in a move which infuriated the military.
For many, this event made the Wagner leader a marked man.
Ukraine's president Volodymr Zelenskyy has denied any Ukrainian involvement in the crash and says he has no doubt who is responsible.
"Well, first of all, we don't have any connection to this situation, that's for sure. I think everyone understands who is involved."
President Putin says an investigation into the cause of the crash is currently underway.
But German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says no official conclusion from the Kremlin can be taken at face value.
"It is still not clear what exactly happened because of course we cannot trust the official Russian pronouncements. What we do know is that for at least one-and-a-half years we have been repeatedly lied to by the Kremlin. And so it is no coincidence that the world is now looking at the Kremlin after an ex-ally of Putin, who fell out of favour, suddenly falls from the sky two months after he attempted an uprising."
So what does it mean if the Wagner chief and some of its top operatives are indeed dead?
Whoever or whatever was behind the crash, Prigozhin's death appears to have rid Putin of someone who had mounted the most serious challenge to the Russian leader's authority since he came to power in 1999.
It also leaves a complicated legacy.
Wagner has been a key player in supporting pro-Russia regimes in Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali among others.
Throughout Africa, they're known for demanding control of resource extraction plants including gold, uranium and diamond mines in exchange for their military and security services, a method that has earned the militia group billions of dollars.
Wagner imagery have figured prominently in pro-coup and anti-Western protests in Mali, Burkina Faso, and lately in Niger [[nee-jhair]] where Wagner had recently offered their services to the newly formed military junta.
Samuel Ramani, an analyst at the U-K's RUSI defence and security think tank, says President Putin's influence and effectiveness in central and western Africa will likely be diminished by Mr Prigozhin's death.
"So he loses obviously the head of his Africa operations, particularly in the security sphere, and also the second in command of those African operations, Dimitry Utkin. And equally importantly, he loses many of the personal contacts that Prigozhin has managed to cultivate on that continent, including the kinds of contacts that will be necessary to export gold and diamonds out of sanctioned countries like Mali into Central African Republic to the international markets or even to the Russian Central Bank."
Back in Russia, supporters have gathered outside the Wagner headquarters in Saint Petersburg to lay flowers and pay their respects to the mercenary operatives who are viewed as war heroes by many locals.
“I think the people who died yesterday are heroes of course. They did a lot for Russia. No matter what they say, history will put everything in its place. A lot of people will remember them, no doubt.”
