Blast on jet may be cause of crash which apparently killed Prigozhin

US 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 Prigozhin likely brought down the aircraft on Wednesday, killing all the passengers aboard. Although there has been no official confirmation that Prigozhin was killed, President Putin on Thursday, in his first comments on the crash, spoke obliquely of his death, referring to him in the past tense. "