Vladimir Putin has sent his condolences to the family of the Wagner group head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin has said, adding that it did not know when the warlord’s funeral would take place and whether the Russian president would attend.
“The Kremlin does not yet have information about the format and date of Prigozhin’s funeral, so there can be no answer to the question of whether Putin will attend it,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said, speaking to journalists during his daily call.
“As soon as a decision is made, it will be communicated to the public. Such decisions are always made together with the relatives,” Peskov added.
Russia’s investigative committee on Sunday confirmed Prigozhin was among the people killed in a plane crash last Wednesday. The committee said in a statement that after forensic testing, all 10 bodies recovered at the site had been identified, and their identities “conform to the manifest”.
Several Wagner members told the Guardian on Monday that they did not know when and where Prigozhin’s funeral would be held.
“We have not been told anything. I hope he gets the farewell that he deserves,” one Wagner soldier who fought with the group in Ukraine said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Makeshift memorials have sprung up across the country, with tearful visitors leaving flowers and other tributes to Prigozhin. In St Petersburg, one Wagner fighter identified as Yuri Novikov was detained after shooting in the air with an AK-47. Local media reports said Novikov was distressed about the death of Prigozhin.
Several channels on the Telegram messaging app close to Prigozhin have speculated that “enemies within Russia” had him killed in retaliation for his brief mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June. The Wagner group has not yet issued an official statement following Prigozhin’s death.
One Telegram account with links to Prigozhin suggested the warlord’s funeral may take place on Tuesday at a cemetery for Wagner fighters in the Krasnodar area of southern Russia.
Others have speculated that an event would be organised in Prigozhin’s home town of St Petersburg. The St Petersburg outlet Fontanka reported he could be buried either at the Bogoslovsky or Serofimov cemeteries in the city.
Meanwhile, the Russian investigative committee has not yet put forward a list of possible causes of last week’s deadly crash.
A preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the crash that killed the mercenary head along with nine others. One western official who described the initial assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion was in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”. Joe Biden also suggested Putin could be behind the plane crash
“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” the US president told reporters last week.
Raw flight tracking data indicates Prigozhin’s plane experienced a sudden drop in altitude and remained in the air for several more minutes before falling from the sky. Aviation experts have suggested that the precipitous drop and widespread debris found at the crash site indicated an explosion or sudden breaking apart of the aircraft rather than a mechanical failure.
The Kremlin has denied it killed the Wagner chief, calling western intelligence assessments of Putin’s potential involvement “an absolute lie”.
Also on Monday, Russian authorities said its air defences destroyed one drone approaching Moscow and two in a region bordering Ukraine.
Air defences in the Lyubertsy district south-east of the Russian capital “destroyed a drone flying toward Moscow”, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, wrote on Telegram without specifying whether it was Ukrainian.
Moscow and other Russian regions have been targeted by a series of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent weeks after Kyiv vowed earlier this summer to “return” the conflict to Russia.
