‘Closed’ funeral for Wagner mercenary boss Prigozhin after unexplained plane crash

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group, has been buried in a private ceremony in Saint Petersburg, six days after dying alongside senior allies in an unexplained plane crash as they flew to the city from Moscow.

His press service said he was laid to rest in a “closed” funeral on Tuesday, hours after the Kremlin said there were no plans for the ceremony to be attended by Russian president Vladimir Putin, a long-time associate of Mr Prigozhin who accused Wagner’s fighters of “betrayal” when they launched a one-day revolt on June 23rd.

Mr Prigozhin (62) was expected to go into exile in Belarus after the uprising, and hundreds of Wagner fighters subsequently set up camp there. However he continued to travel in Russia until last Wednesday, when he was killed alongside six other senior Wagner members and three crew when their private jet suddenly plunged to earth, prompting speculation it was brought down by a missile or a bomb. The Kremlin has denied involvement.

[ Genetic tests confirm Yevgeny Prigozhin died in plane crash, Russia says ]

Wagner recruited thousands of convicts from jails to fight in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where they seized the devastated eastern town of Bakhmut in May despite huge losses that Mr Prigozhin furiously blamed on senior officials in Moscow. This created a deep rift between his mercenary fighters and his country’s top brass and defence ministry.

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“The president’s presence [at the funeral] is not anticipated. We do not have any information specifically about the funeral,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday morning.

[ Rule No 1 in Putin’s Russia: defy him at your peril ]

Ukraine’s military said it was continuing to attack Russia’s occupation force near Bakhmut and in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, and was resisting assaults by Moscow’s troops near the northeastern towns of Lyman and Kupiansk, where Kyiv says Russia has amassed a force of some 110,000 servicemen.

More than 1,400 civilians have left the Kupiansk area of Ukraine since it announced mandatory evacuations this month. Officials said several towns and villages in Zaporizhzhia would now be evacuated amid intense shelling and fighting as Kyiv’s forces tried to push towards the Azov Sea and cut Russia’s land link to occupied Crimea.

Ukrainian fighter pilot Andriy Pilshchykov (30), better known by his call sign “Juice”, was buried in Kyiv on Tuesday, after being killed last week with two other pilots in a crash during a training exercise. He was one of Ukraine’s best-known airmen, and travelled to the United States to lobby for F16 warplanes for his country’s outgunned air force; training on the US-made jets is now about to begin in several Nato countries.

The Vatican has defended Pope Francis from Ukrainian criticism of an address to young Russian Catholics in which he lauded the “great Russian empire” and its imperialist tsars, in comments that Mr Peskov called “very, very gratifying”.

“You are heirs of the great Russia – the great Russia of the saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, the great Russian empire, cultured, so much culture, so much humanity. You are the heirs of the great mother Russia. Go forward,” the pope said in an address to a Catholic youth gathering in Saint Petersburg last Friday.

[ Wagner’s lucrative African operations thrown into post-Prigozhin limbo ]

Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, responded: “It is precisely with such imperialist propaganda… that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages. It is deeply regrettable that such notions of being a great power, which contribute, in essence, to Russia’s chronic aggressiveness, are voiced by the pope”.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope “intended to encourage young people to preserve and promote all that is positive in the great Russian cultural and spiritual heritage, and certainly not to exalt imperialist logic and government personalities”.