ST. PETERSBURG, Russia
A private burial was held for mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, following a suspicious plane crash two months after his brief mutiny that challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His spokespeople said Tuesday
a service took place behind closed doors, and directed "those who wish to
bid their farewell” to the 62-year-old head of the Wagner private military
contractor to go to the Porokhovskoye cemetery in his hometown.
A wooden cross towered over
his flower-covered grave. Nearby stood a Russian tricolor and a black Wagner
flag. Russian media cited unidentified sources as saying Prigozhin was laid to
rest Tuesday without any publicity, per his family's wishes.
Members of the Russian
National Guard were stationed along the fence at the cemetery, steering
visitors away after it closed for the day.
Putin's spokesman said the
president would not attend the service. The Russian leader had decried the
armed rebellion in June as “treason” and “a stab in the back.”
Russian state television,
which for decades has served as the main source of information for the vast
majority of Russians, barely covered the funeral at all.
One major channel, Russia 1,
dedicated less than one minute of air time to it in its evening news bulletin,
only to say that the funeral ceremony took place “without outsiders and the
press at the request of the family” and that Prigozhin's grave is right next to
that of his father, who died in 1978. Another popular station, Channel One,
ignored it completely in their evening news.
The secrecy and confusion
surrounding the funeral of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants reflected a
dilemma faced by the Kremlin amid swirling speculation that the crash was
likely a vendetta for his June 23-24 uprising.
While it tried to avoid any
pomp-filled ceremony for him, the Kremlin couldn't afford to denigrate
Prigozhin, who reportedly received Russia's highest award for leading Wagner
forces in Ukraine and was idolized by many of the country's hawks.
Putin's comments on
Prigozhin's death reflected that careful stand. He noted last week that Wagner
leaders “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine and
described Prigozhin as a ”talented businessman" and “a man of difficult
fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life."
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin
political analyst, noted that Prigozhin has become a legendary figure for his
supporters who are increasingly critical of the authorities.
“Prigozhin's funeral raises an
issue of communication between the bureaucratic Russian government system that
doesn't have much political potential and politically active patriotic segment
of the Russian public,” Markov said.
The secretive service “became the final stage of a special operation to eliminate him," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“Everything was as closed as
possible, under full control of the security forces, with distracting
maneuvers,” she said in a commentary on her Telegram channel.
The country’s top criminal
investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed
Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.
The committee didn’t say what
might have caused Prigozhin’s business jet to plummet from the sky on Aug. 23,
minutes after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg. Just before the crash,
Prigozhin had reportedly returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to
expand Wagner Group’s activities.
Also on Tuesday, a funeral was
held at St. Petersburg’s Northern Cemetery for Wagner’s logistics chief Valery
Chekalov, who was among the 10 people killed in the crash. Prigozhin’s
second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, a retired military intelligence officer who
gave the mercenary group its name based on his own nom de guerre, also was
killed.
A preliminary U.S.
intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the
plane to crash, and Western officials have pointed to a long list of Putin’s
foes who have been assassinated. The Kremlin rejected Western allegations the
president was behind the crash as an “absolute lie.”
Although both were from St.
Petersburg, Prigozhin and Putin were not known to be particularly close.
Prigozhin, an ex-convict who
earned millions and his nickname “Putin’s chef” from lucrative government
catering contracts, served Kremlin political interests and helped expand
Russia’s clout by sending his mercenaries to Syria, Libya, the Central African
Republic and other countries. Wagner, one of the most capable elements of
Moscow’s forces, played a key role in Ukraine where it captured the Ukrainian
eastern stronghold of Bakhmut in late May.
The crash came exactly two
months after the brutal and profane mercenary boss launched a rebellion against
the Russian military leadership. Prigozhin ordered his mercenaries to take over
the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then began
a march on Moscow. They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a
dozen pilots.
Putin had vowed to punish the
participants but hours later struck a deal that saw Prigozhin ending the mutiny
in exchange for amnesty and permission for him and his troops to move to
Belarus.
The fate of Wagner, which
until recently played a prominent role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine
and was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is
uncertain.
Putin said Wagner fighters
could sign a contract with the Russian military, move to Belarus or retire from
service. Several thousand went to Belarus, where they are in a camp southeast
of the capital, Minsk.
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