Wagner leader: Chechen leader publicly mourns Prigozhin

Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov has publicly mourned the alleged death of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. “His death is a great loss for the whole country,” he wrote on his Telegram channel shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of the tragedy. He expressed his condolences to the family.

Kadyrov and Prigozhin were both involved with troops under their command in Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine. They were united in their criticism of the Russian military leadership for a while, but ended up falling out badly.

The relationship between Kadyrov and Prigozhin

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Kadyrov claimed two days after Prigozhin was believed to have died in a plane crash. He posted a photo on Telegram that shows him receiving a medal from the Wagner mercenary group from Prigozhin’s hands. He only touched on the conflict in passing.

In recent months, Prigozhin has lost sight of the big picture. “I have asked him to put his personal ambitions aside in favor of matters of the greatest importance to the state,” he wrote.

In fact, Kadyrov and Prigozhin were both seen as hardliners and called for even tougher action by Moscow in Ukraine. However, many observers described the alliance between the two as temporary, as their criticism of the military leadership is primarily about gaining advantages for their own units.

In fact, the alliance ended when Prigozhin criticized Kadyrov’s Akhmat forces for never fighting in the front lines. The Chechen units then threatened the Wagner boss with violence, among other things.

The mutiny initiated by Prigozhin in June promised to defeat Kadyrov “with harsh methods”. However, there was no conflict between the Wagner and Achmat units; Prigozhin called off the uprising himself.