President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...on Thursday sent his condolences to Yevgeny Prigozhin's family, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader's plane crashed on Wednesday evening with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs.
Vladimir Putin cited "preliminary information" as indicating that Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top associates in the Wagner mercenary group had been killed.
Russian Sherlocks have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky northwest of Moscow.
Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.
Western politicians and commentators have suggested that President Putin ordered Prigozhin killed to punish him for launching a failed June 23-34 mutiny against the top brass which represented the biggest challenge to Vladimir Putin's rule yet.
Kremlin front man Dmitry Peskov said the accusation and many others like it were false.
"There is now a great deal of speculation surrounding this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the plane's passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, in the West, all this speculation is presented from a well-known angle", Peskov told news hounds.