The chief of Russia's Wagner mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed while on board a plane which crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, Russian officials have confirmed, just two months after he led a brief rebellion against the army's top management.

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the fate of Prigozhin, an important force in the Ukraine conflict and a highly vocal critic of the army's leadership, during a televized address late on Thursday.

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Offering condolences to the families of the mercenary chief and the others on the flight, Putin said that he had known Prigozhin since the early 1990s.

"He was a man with a difficult fate, he made some serious mistakes in his life," he said. "He achieved the necessary results both for himself and for a joint effort that I had asked him about during the last months," he added, apparently referring to Prigozhin's role in Ukraine and possibly the efforts of Wagner fighters in the city of Bakhmut.

Calling the Wagner group founder a talented businessman. Putin stressed that investigators would look into what happened – but that it would take time.

What do we know about the plane crash?

A private jet on its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia's Tver region and killed all 10 people on board - seven passengers and three crew members.

Rosaviatsia, Russia's aviation agency, published the names of all 10 people on board the downed plane, including that of Yevgeney Prigozhin and that of Dmitry Utkin, his right-hand man who helped found the mercenary group and bore the call sign "Wagner".

Residents of a village near the site of the crash, who filmed the plane coming down and published on social media said they had heard two loud bangs, then saw the jet plummet to the ground.

According to flight-tracking data, the plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds.

Russian investigators said they have opened a criminal investigation into the crash.

Rescuers recovered all 10 bodies or what was left of them from the scene, Russian news agencies reported.

Priogozhin has kept a reasonably low-profile since withdrawing his troops from Ukraine leading an aborted mutiny. He had been exiled in Belarus but was photographed in St Petersburg in July. In the past week, Prigozhin released his first video statement since June, which suggested he was in Africa.

During his address, Putin confirmed that Prigozhin had returned to Russia from Africa on Wednesday and had met with "some officials," without specifying who.

In the video published on Telegram on Tuesday Prigozhin said "We are working. The temperature is above 50 degrees Celsius. Just how we like it. The Wagner group is conducting RSA [ed. reconnaissance and search activities]. Making Russia even greater on every continent and Africa even freer."

Prigozhin, who founded the Wagner Group during Russia's incursion into Crimea in 2014, spearheaded a mutiny against Russia's top army brass between 23 and 24 June which President Vladimir Putin said could have tipped the country into civil war.

Wagner fighters shot down Russian attack helicopters during the revolt, killing an unconfirmed number of pilots. He had also spent months criticizing Russia's operations in Ukraine, aiming particularly personal comments at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff.

The mutiny was ended by an agreement with the Kremlin which saw Prigozhin relocate to neighboring Belarus. 

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