US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he was not surprised by reports that Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had died in a plane crash, Reuters reported.
Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet that crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, according to Russian authorities.
Asked by reporters about the crash, Biden said he did not know for a fact what had happened.
"But I’m not surprised," Biden said, adding, "There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer."
Prigozhin, 62, led a mutiny against Russia's top army brass on June 23-24, which Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.
The attempted mutiny was ended by negotiations and an apparent Kremlin deal that saw him agree to relocate to neighboring Belarus, though he appeared to move freely inside Russia after the deal nonetheless.
Biden had recently quipped that Prigozhin should watch what he eats following the failed coup.