The funeral of Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin was held at a private cemetery on the outskirts of his home town of St Petersburg, his press service said on Tuesday hours after the Kremlin announced that Vladimir Putin would not be attending.
“The farewell to Yevgeny Viktorovich took place in a closed format. Those who wish to say goodbye may visit Porokhovskoye cemetery,” the press service said in its first post on Telegram in two months, ending days of speculation over how the warlord would be laid to rest.
Pro-Russian media also published images of Prigozhin’s headstone at the Porokhovskoye cemetery. Prigozhin’s name is written on the headstone, alongside a poem by the St Petersburg-born Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky.
Earlier in the day, the Kremlin said that Vladimir Putin had no plans to attend Prigozhin’s funeral.
“The president’s presence [at Prigozhin’s funeral] is not envisaged. We don’t have any specific information on the funeral,” said Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.
Prigozhin died when his business jet crashed last week, two months after he staged an aborted mutiny against Russian military commanders in which his Wagner troops briefly took control of the southern city of Rostov and advanced towards Moscow.
Rumours swirled all week in Russia over the timing and location of Prigozhin’s funeral.
The secrecy appeared to demonstrate the Kremlin’s unease over Prigozhin’s legacy, a former ally of Putin who had received one of Russia’s top military honours before being labelled a traitor by the president.
There was confusion on Tuesday over where Prigozhin would be buried. On Monday evening local police closed off several of the city’s largest cemeteries and set up metal detector gates at the historic Serafimovsky cemetery, leading to speculation that Prigozhin would be buried there.
The announcement by Prigozhin’s press service on Tuesday evening that the funeral of the mercenary leader had already taken place at the less well-known Porokhovskoye cemetery came as a surprise and was reminiscent of the warlord’s life, where many of his movements were shrouded in mystery.
Some analysts suggested that the Russian authorities were seeking to confuse the public on Tuesday over the location of Prigozhin’s funeral to avoid a spontaneous demonstration of support for Prigozhin and his top aides.
Ever since Prigozhin’s death, the Kremlin appeared to make sure not to turn Prigozhin’s funeral into a large-scale public show of support for the warlord.
Prigozhin’s plane crash has received modest coverage on Russian state television, a noted contrast to the widespread outrage aired over the murders of prominent propagandists, including Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky.
The Kremlin has also appeared to deny Prigozhin a state funeral, despite being a recipient of the Hero of Russia order. Earlier in the week several hardline pundits urged Moscow to bury Prigozhin – who remained a popular figure among Russian ultra-nationalists before his death – with state honours.
The private ceremony was in stark contrast to Prigozhin’s aggressive, self-promoting image that he cultivated during his life through the daily use of social media, which brought him popularity among some Russians unhappy with the foundering invasion.
It was not immediately clear if Prigozhin’s funeral was attended by any high-profile Russian officials. Over three decades, Prigozhin had built a powerful network and was believed to be close to the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and the governor of Tula oblast, Alexei Dyumin. The absence of prominent politicians would be a notable sign pointing to the urge among the elites to distance themselves from Prigozhin after his death, which many believe was an act of revenge by the Kremlin.
The haze surrounding Prigozhin’s funeral was in line with the Kremlin’s vague response to his death.
The day after the crash, Putin described Prigozhin as a “talented businessman” while cryptically adding that he “made some serious mistakes in life”.
The Russian investigative committee has not yet put forward a list of possible causes of the crash but western intelligence assessments concluded that an intentional explosion killed the mercenary head along with nine others.
The US president suggested Putin could be behind the plane crash. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” Joe Biden told reporters last week.
The Kremlin has denied it killed the Wagner chief, calling western intelligence assessments of Putin’s potential involvement “an absolute lie”.
But many in Moscow have speculated that the Russian government could have been behind Prigozhin’s death while observers have argued that the Kremlin would aim to play down Prigozhin’s funeral, given the uncomfortable questions his death raised over Putin’s role in the incident.
Ilya Ananyev, a pro-Kremlin commentator, said on Telegram that the funeral posed “a difficult dilemma for Vladimir Putin himself” amid widely circulating rumours in Russia that the Kremlin played a role in the crash.
“After the plane crash … conspiracy theories about ‘Putin’s trace’ in the death of Prigozhin are the most discussed,” Ananyev wrote. “The Kremlin will have to deal with the reputational risks of this theory, which, in my opinion, is almost impossible to control.”
