- A Ukrainian presidential advisor warned that Prigozhin's death shows Putin won't negotiate.
- Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash last week, confirmed by Russia.
A Ukrainian presidential advisor warned that Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin's death shows there's no room to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that there's no end in sight for the war so long as he's in power.
On Wednesday, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted on X, the social media site formely known as Twitter, "Putin is absolutely not a subject suitable for negotiations. The 'story' of Prigozhin's demonstrative murder shows that Putin will not comply with any agreements, does not want any agreements, and is focused solely on escalation, scaling up murder and destruction."
Podolyak added: "So, as long as Putin remains president, the war will continue. Pulling Russia deeper and deeper into the abyss of chaos."
The disparaging comments come just a week after Prigozhin's death, confirmed by Russian officials, in a plane crash outside Moscow. The death raised suspicions about whether Putin or the government had the Wagner mercenary boss assassinated; Prigozhin had led a failed mutiny against Russian military leadership in June.
Prigozhin's armed rebellion — specifically against Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov over their botched use of Wagner forces in the war in Ukraine — came after months of Prigozhin's public bashing of Russia's Ministry of Defense and the Kremlin itself.
After Prigozhin's death, multiple officials and critics, including US President Joe Biden and the White House itself, suggested Putin was involved in assassinating Prigozhin and that "no one should be surprised" by his death.
Putin himself addressed the plane crash, expressing his condolences for his longtime associate and calling Prigozhin "a talented person" and "talented businessman," but also "a man with a complicated fate" who "made serious mistakes in life," according to translations from Al Jazeera.