Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny against the Russian army (Tree)
Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to attend the funeral of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed when his plane crashed last week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
The private jet Embraer Legacy 600 on which Yevgeny Prigozhin was traveling from Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed in the Tver region north of Moscow on August 23, with the loss of all ten people on board, including two of Wagner’s other top leaders and four men. allegedly Prigozhin’s bodyguards.
It’s still unclear what caused the plane to crash, but villagers near the crash site told Reuters they heard a bang and then saw the plane plummet to the ground.
When asked if President Putin would attend Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “The presence of the president is not foreseen.”
Peskov said the Kremlin had no specific information about the funeral plans and that arrangements were a matter for the relatives.
The day after the crash, President Putin sent his condolences to the families of the dead and said he had known Prigozhin for a long time, since the chaotic years of the early 1990s.
“He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life,” he said, describing him as a talented businessman.
The crash came two months to the day after Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenaries staged a mutiny against Putin’s top military commanders, seizing control of the southern city of Rostov and advancing on Moscow before turning back 200km from the capital.
The mutiny represented the biggest challenge to Putin’s regime since he came to power on the last day of 1999. The Kremlin has dismissed as an “absolute lie” the suggestion of some Western politicians and commentators – for which they have not provided evidence – that President Putin ordered Prigozhin killed in revenge.
US President Joe Biden said last week that he was not surprised by the death and that not much was happening in Russia that Putin did not support.
Investigators said on Sunday genetic tests had confirmed Prigozhin was among 10 people killed in the crash. Also on board were Dmitry Utkin, the co-founder of Wagner and the group’s top military commander, and Valery Chekalov, the head of Wagner logistics.
Russia’s Fontanka media reported on Tuesday that Chekalov’s associates had gathered at St. Petersburg’s Severnoye Cemetery for his funeral.
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