Yevgeny Prigozhin lived much of his life in the shadows, and his final farewell could not have happened any other way. The head of the Wagner Group, whose plane crashed on August 23, was buried yesterday in a cemetery on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, his hometown, in the most absolute of secrets.
“The farewell of Yevgeny Víktorovich took place in a closed format. Those who want to say goodbye to him can visit the cemetery in Porojovskoe”, his press service announced in a statement in the afternoon.
The place and time of Prigozhin’s funeral had not been previously announced. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, assured hours earlier that he did not have this information. “The decision about the funeral of Prigojin and other workers of the Wagner Group is something that must be taken by their relatives and friends”, he pointed out.
The press secretary of the Russian president also ruled out the presence of Vladimir Putin at the funeral of Prigozhin, his ally for years, but leader of the aborted armed rebellion with which his army of mercenaries went two months ago put Putin in a compromise.
The funerals of Prigozhin’s lieutenants who died last week in the same air disaster also began in Saint Petersburg yesterday, under strict security and secrecy measures.
The first member of the Wagnerite dome to be buried was Valery Chekalov, Prigozhin’s head of security, Fontanka.ru reported. The ceremony took place at Severnoe Cemetery. This medium also claimed that the funeral was being prepared for the same day for Dmitri Utkin, Wagner’s first commander and co-founder of the group.
Prigozhin and his lieutenants were killed on Wednesday, August 23, in an Embraer Legacy private jet flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg that crashed near the town of Kuzhenkino in Tver Oblast, 300 kilometers away. northwest of the Russian capital. The dead formed the leadership of the Wagner Group, and after their disappearance, doubts about the future of the organization grow. Ten people were on board, including three crew members.
On Sunday, the Investigative Committee, which is responsible for investigating major crimes, reported that forensic tests and DNA analyzes had been completed, and that the death of the leader of the mercenaries and some of his lieutenants.
The crash came two months after Prigozhin and his mercenaries staged a mutiny against Putin’s top military leaders, seizing control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and advancing on Moscow, before half a lap with 200 kilometers to go to the capital. The uproar ended thanks to a pact between Prigozhin and Putin, in which the Belarusian president and Kremlin ally, Aleksandr Lukashenko, acted as mediator. The pact provided that the Wagnerites would leave Russia and go into exile in Belarus in exchange for not being prosecuted for the uprising.
Peskov on Friday called the suggestion by Western politicians and commentators that Putin ordered Prigozhin killed as revenge for his disloyalty an “absolute lie”.
The cause of the accident is currently unknown. According to the RBK newspaper, the Investigation Committee is investigating whether the pilot made a mistake, whether there was a mechanical error or whether an external cause caused the plane to crash.
Authorities in St. Petersburg yesterday strengthened security at several cemeteries in Russia’s second city, including Serafimovskoe, which Fontanka.ru pointed out as Prigozhin’s possible last home.
Interestingly, in this historic cemetery established at the beginning of the 20th century in the Primorski district, northwest of Saint Petersburg, there are the remains of the Russian president’s parents. Putin’s father was a World War II veteran and a survivor of the Nazi German siege of Leningrad (the city’s name in Soviet times) during World War II.
Metal arches were installed in the cemetery in the morning. Since the night before, police officers were guarding all the entrances, and inside the compound they “walk and check every trench”, reported Fontanka.ru.
In the nearby streets and avenues, large traffic jams were formed and several hours passed until the traffic was normalized.
