Joe Biden says ‘not much’ happens in Russia that ‘Putin is not behind’ after Wagner chief feared dead in plane crash outside Moscow and confirms he’ll be keeping an eye on the first Republican debate tonight

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was not surprised by the plane crash that appeared to have killed the leader of the uprising against Vladimir Putin, and indicated that the Russian president was behind it.

“I’m not sure what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said while vacationing at Lake Tahoe.

Biden spoke to reporters after he and his family trained at a Pelodog, a combination Pilates and cycling studio. He took a wrong turn leaving the studio and had to go back to join his family and the Secret Service.

And when asked if Putin was behind the crash of a plane that listed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin as a passenger, Biden said he wasn’t sure, noting that he had been training for the past 90 minutes.

Not much happens in Russia that Putin doesn’t support. But I don’t know enough to know the answer. I’ve been training for the past hour and a half,” he said.

The president, who carried a banana-blueberry smoothie during his speech, also said he would watch the Republican primary debate later Wednesday night, even though Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the race, chose to skip the event.

But he joked that he had no expectations for the evening, the first formal gathering of Republicans who are trying to defeat him in next year’s election.

“I’m going to try to get as much as possible, yes,” he said.

When asked what his expectations were, he smiled broadly and laughed, “I don’t have those.”

Biden spent the afternoon in the wellness studio. He seemed to get lost leaving the studio in the Tahoe Valley and took a wrong turn as he exited.

He turned to the left and walked a few feet before turning to go the other way, grinning as he joined his Secret Service and his family to walk toward the motorcade.

The president, first lady Jill Biden, and their relatives took a Pilates class, followed by a spin class, the White House said.

Biden granddaughters Maisy and Naomi were spotted by a monthly group along with Naomi’s husband Peter Neal. Just like Biden’s daughter Ashley and Melissa Cohen, Hunter Biden’s wife.

At one point, Hunter Biden’s young son, Beau, ran across the sidewalk into the gym.

The president is on vacation for a week at the mountain lake resort that straddles the state lines of California and Nevada.

He visited Maui Monday to witness the devastation of the wildfires, but was criticized for trying to connect with the victims by dredging up his own family tragedy and talking about a decades-old kitchen fire at his home.

He is staying with family, including his son Hunter, in the $18 million home of billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer after complaints that the rent could violate local housing law.

Russian state media said that Prigozhin was died after a plane — with his name on the passenger list — crashed in Russia on Wednesday, two months after his failed coup attempt against Putin.

Video footage shows the plane falling from the sky in the Bologovsky district of the Tver region, 90 kilometers north of Moscow. A burning wreckage, which appears to be an aircraft, was later seen in a field, with unconfirmed footage showing it completely engulfed in flames.

The available tracking data for the downed plane appears to show it rising to about 29,000 feet, before suddenly vanishing and dropping to 0 feet.

Russian state television Rossiya24 announced Prigozhin’s death, stating: “A private jet flying from Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed.”

“Ten people were killed. Yevgeny Prigozhin was one of the passengers.’

The name of Dmitri Utkin, the most prominent commander of the Wagner mercenary group, was also on the passenger list of the crashed plane.

US intelligence agencies were surprised that Putin had not yet taken action against Prigozhin after his short-lived mutiny in June. And they couldn’t confirm his death right after the crash.

Prigozhin’s Wagner force was a core part of the Russian forces against Ukraine.

The Wagner group witnessed some of Ukraine’s worst fighting, with numbers so low that Prigozhin recruited thousands of dangerous convicted criminals straight from prison to join his forces.

In late June, Prigozhin launched an unprecedented verbal assault on President Putin and his allies before marching 25,000 troops to Moscow.

The mutiny was ended through negotiations and an apparent agreement with the Kremlin, with Prigozhin agreeing to move to neighboring Belarus. But it seemed that after the deal he could still move freely within Russia.

After the June ammunition, Biden said Putin was “definitely” weakened.

He also joked at the time that Prigozhin should be careful.

“If I were him, I’d be careful about what I ate. I would watch my menu,” Biden said.

‘But all jokes aside, who knows? I don’t know, I don’t think any of us are sure about Prigozhin’s future in Russia,” the president added.