The Kremlin has denied Vladimir Putin had any role in the presumed death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner militia leader who launched the biggest challenge to the president’s rule in decades.

Prigozhin’s private jet was filmed plummeting out of the sky on Wednesday and crashing north-west of Moscow, leading western officials to assume the warlord was killed on Putin’s orders and in retribution for the mutinous march he led on Moscow in June.

“These are all total lies,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that the Kremlin could not confirm that Prigozhin had died until DNA and other tests were complete. Several bodies have been pulled from the crash site, authorities have said. Russia’s aviation agency listed Prigozhin among the passengers.