Wagner says its chief has been buried, ending days of speculation

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary chief who died in a plane crash last week, has been buried in a private ceremony in St. Petersburg, his press service said Tuesday, ending days of speculation over how he would be laid to rest.

The announcement on the Telegram messaging app came as a surprise. Hours earlier, the Kremlin said it had no information about Prigozhin’s funeral except that President Vladimir Putin would not attend.

Prigozhin’s funeral “took place in a private format,” his press service said.

The secrecy reflected the sensitivities surrounding Prigozhin, a longtime ally of Putin who launched a failed mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership in June. He was killed along with nine others, including top leaders of his Wagner private military company, in the crash of a private jet northwest of Moscow last Wednesday.

Details about Prigozhin’s funeral, including the date and whether members of the public would be allowed to attend, were unclear for days. Prigozhin had received the Hero of Russia designation, one of the Russian military’s top honors, which generally accords special burials, including an honor guard and a military band.

The confusion was in line with the murky details about the crash. Its cause remains unclear, but U.S. and Western officials believe it was prompted by an explosion on board. Many Western officials have said they think it is likely Putin may have played a role in having Prigozhin killed as retribution for the mercenary chief’s short-lived mutiny in June.

The deaths of Prigozhin, six other passengers connected to Wagner and three crew members were not officially confirmed until Sunday, when Russian investigators said that genetic testing showed that the victims of the crash matched the names on the jet’s manifest. The confirmation came after days of speculation about whether Prigozhin was really on the plane.

In St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s hometown and the base of his business empire, speculation grew about how and where he would be laid to rest. Starting late Monday, police cordoned off several of the city’s largest cemeteries and set up metal detectors at the Serafimovsky Cemetery, where Putin’s parents are buried.

Wagner’s logistics chief, Valery Chekalov, who was also on the plane, was buried Tuesday morning in Northern Cemetery in St. Petersburg, in a ceremony that was not publicized in advance. Several hundred people came to pay their respects.

Some analysts speculated that Russian authorities were seeking to avoid a public outpouring of support for Prigozhin and his top lieutenants.

“It seems that the authorities, as expected, want to avoid a spontaneous rally in memory of the top leadership of Wagner and to do so, have imposed a fog around the burial place,” Farida Rustamova, an independent journalist, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.