Chechen leader Ramzhan Kadyrov mourned the presumed death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“His death is a great loss for the entire state,” he wrote late last night on Telegram, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of the death of the head of the Wagner mercenary company.

Kadyrov also expressed his condolences to Prigozhin’s relatives.

Kadyrov and Prigozhin both participated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine with forces under their command. For a time they appeared united in their criticism of the Russian military leadership, but eventually the two men clashed.

“We were friends for a long time,” Kadyrov said in the Telegram post, a day after Prigozhin was presumed dead in a plane crash.

On Telegram, Kadyrov posted a photo of Prigozhin handing him a medal.

Prigozhin he hasn’t been seeing the big picture for the past few months, he said. “I asked him to put aside his personal ambitions in favor of issues of the highest importance for the state,” Kadyrov stressed.

Observers argue that the alliance between the two was likely temporary, believing that their criticism of the military leadership was mainly about securing privileges for their own military groups.