For the past week, the arrangements for Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral have been shrouded in secrecy. Now it has been confirmed that the leader of the mercenary Wagner group was buried today in St Petersburg – just under a week after he was killed in a plane crash outside Moscow.
According to a statement released by Prigozhin’s press service, his funeral took place in private at the Porokhovskoe cemetery this afternoon. According to one anonymous cemetery worker, between 20 and 30 people attended the ceremony, which lasted approximately 40 minutes. Now the ceremony is over, anyone who wants to pay their respects is welcome to do so, the press service’s statement said.
Following a flurry of activity at several of St Petersburg’s graveyards yesterday, speculation had been mounting that Prigozhin and those killed with him would be buried today. Despite the lack of official information, the increased presence of security guards and metal detectors at the Northern, Beloostrovsky and Serafimovsky cemeteries this morning further fuelled suggestions that Prigozhin might be buried at one of those locations. Just before lunchtime, it was confirmed that the funeral of one of Prigozhin’s fellow passengers and Wagner colleague, Valery Chekalov, had begun at the Northern cemetery.
It appears that the authorities were perfectly happy to stoke confusion about when, where, or indeed if, Prigozhin’s funeral was taking place. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this morning that they had ‘no information’ about the funerals, but did manage to confirm that whenever the funeral did take place, Putin would not attend.
Meanwhile, security guards at the various cemeteries refused to disclose what events they were hired for. Reports that no fresh graves had been dug in at least one of the cemeteries, along with what was later suspected to be a decoy funeral convoy arriving at another cemetery, meant the St Petersburg authorities successfully managed to guard the details of Prigozhin’s burial until after it had taken place.
This strange clandestine behaviour suggests the Russian authorities, and therefore the Kremlin, were reluctant to allow public mourning at Prigozhin’s funeral. Potentially the reason for this was a nervousness that, following the Wagner leader’s aborted coup in June, any public grief or outpouring of support for him could be seen as a challenge to the president’s authority. At the time of his death, Prigozhin was still popular and had amassed a loyal following amongst certain Russians – no doubt the Kremlin will have wanted to avoid giving these like-minded individuals an opportunity to gather.
With this in mind, the sort of funeral Putin would allow Prigozhin to have was always going to be a strong indicator of how he might attempt to stage manage the Wagner leader’s posthumous legacy. In July, photos of Prigozhin’s home, taken in a police raid after his coup, revealed that he was in possession of a ‘Hero of Russia’ medal. The award of this medal meant that, in theory, Prigozhin was entitled to a funeral conducted with military honours, complete with a guard of honour and military band. Protocol for the funerals of ‘Heroes of Russia’ also dictates that they are buried at the Federal Military Memorial cemetery at Mytishchi on the outskirts of Moscow – something Prigozhin has also been denied.
Curiously, according to an unnamed source who spoke to the local Russian newspaper MSK1, Prigozhin’s funeral was held in private ‘in accordance with the wishes of relatives’. That the Russian state media has been at pains to emphasise this speaks volumes. Additionally, the decision to bury Prigozhin at the Porokhovskoe cemetery was reportedly made so that he could be buried alongside his father – a man the Wagner leader reportedly barely knew. Conveniently, then, the official line is that decisions around Prigozhin’s funeral had nothing to do with the circumstances in which he died (quite likely on Putin’s orders) or his damaged relationship with the Kremlin following his aborted coup in June.
It has now been several hours since the funeral service, and several Telegram channels report that Prigozhin’s gravesite is still cordoned off. Members of the police and Russian national guard are reportedly patrolling the cemetery with anti-drone guns and a demining machine.
Prigozhin’s clandestine burial suggests that the Russian authorities, and by extension the Kremlin, have been impatient to scrub him and the events of earlier this summer from Russia’s memory. But the legacy of the man who posed the biggest challenge to Putin in his 20 years of power might not be forgotten so easily.
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