Latest on Russia's Plane Crash

U.S. and other Western officials said that preliminary intelligence reports led them to believe that an explosion on board a plane linked to the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin likely brought down the aircraft on Wednesday, killing all the passengers aboard.

Although there has been no official confirmation that Mr. Prigozhin was killed, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday, in his first comments on the crash, spoke obliquely of his death, referring to him in the past tense. “He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results,” Mr. Putin said in a televised meeting.