ST PETERSBURG/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Mourners gathered at a cemetery in Russia’s former imperial capital beneath a light-weight summer time rain bathe on Friday to rejoice a person they mentioned had given his life to serve his nation.
The dying in a fiery airplane crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Aug. 23 final yr on the age of 62 marked the weird ultimate chapter of one of the crucial vibrant figures in fashionable Russia.
Prigozhin, a meals caterer turned chief of the Wagner Group mercenary power, soared to prominence after Russia despatched its military into Ukraine in February 2022.Â
His fighters – together with 1000’s of convicts he recruited from jail – led the Russian assault on town of Bakhmut in one of many longest and bloodiest battles of the “special military operation”, the Kremlin’s most well-liked time period for the battle.
Beside Prigozhin’s grave in St Petersburg’s Porokhovskoye cemetery, an Orthodox priest in robes learn a prayer and crossed himself as a bunch of girls sang hymns.Â
Those that got here to pay their respects mentioned Prigozhin ought to be remembered as a hero of the motherland.
“There are such people, as for instance (Soviet astronaut) Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, (and) Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, whom we should be proud of,” mentioned a person who gave his identify as Dmitry, talking by the mercenary’s grave.
He described Prigozhin as somebody who took the “patriotic course” out of affection for his nation.
“Our growing children should be looking up to them,” Dmitry mentioned.
Others snapped footage standing in entrance of a life-sized bronze statue of Prigozhin, flanked by a Wagner flag and the Russian tricolour.
At a pop-up memorial on a busy avenue in central Moscow, admirers had left dozens of bouquets of purple and white roses beneath a wall adorned with images of Prigozhin and his Wagner loyalists.
Passers-by paused to gaze solemnly on the images. One man regarded up on the sky and crossed himself in reverence.Â
Prigozhin, who wielded Wagner’s appreciable social media presence to trumpet his successes on the battlefield, ran afoul of the Russian army institution final summer time when he repeatedly accused the highest military brass of incompetence and even treason.
In June final yr, he led a short-lived mutiny by which his Wagner fighters took management of the southern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don and marched in direction of Moscow earlier than turning again.
Precisely two months later, the Wagner chief was lifeless when his airplane mysteriously crashed north of Moscow, killing everybody aboard.
Since then, mourners have celebrated Prigozhin as a hero at makeshift memorials throughout the nation, though the Russian institution appears to be like much less favourably upon the person who mounted probably the most severe problem to President Vladimir Putin’s authority since he got here to energy in 1999.
On the cemetery in St Petersburg, some mentioned that the battle in Ukraine can be nearer to a conclusion if Prigozhin have been nonetheless alive.
“(His) composure (is what is needed now). His mental ability to organise things, to do (what is necessary),” mentioned a person known as Alexander.
“I think that if he was there together with Wagner group PVC (private military company) and continued his activity, the issue with Ukraine would be much closer to a solution.”
