As for his boss, Evgueni Prigojine, it is “at the request of his relatives” that Dmitri Utkin was buried privately. The man who gave his nom de guerre, “Wagner”, to the group of mercenaries of the same name, was buried near Moscow on Thursday August 31. But unlike Prigozhin, buried in the secrecy and anonymity of a cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Utkin, 53, was buried in the “pantheon of defenders of the fatherland”, in Mytishchi, a huge open complex in 2013 and destined to become the largest military cemetery in Russia. This admirer of the IIIe Reich, known for his Nazi tattoos, therefore rests near memorials to the dead of the Second World War.
The very discreet mercenary did indeed begin his career in the army, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the GRU, military intelligence. He then joined, in 2013, the Slavic Corps, the embryo of a private military company active in Syria, before founding his own group, Wagner, of which he will later transfer control to Prigojine.
Until his death on August 23, in the same plane crash as his boss, Utkin continued to direct Wagner’s military operations. “Hero of Russia” like his boss, he had been awarded the Order of Courage six times, which would constitute a record. According to Russian agencies, he was buried “with military honours”.
A society of mercenaries with unparalleled autonomy
Perhaps we should see in the difference in treatment between Prigozhin and Utkin the logical continuation of the words spoken by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, the day after the crash. The president had then mentioned the employees of the Wagner company, that ” we will never forget “and relegated Evgueni Prigojine, yet a close friend since the 1990s, to the rank of simple “talented businessman”.
By burying the last victims of the crash, the Russian authorities intend in any case to close a page – that of the mutiny of June 23 and 24 and, more generally, that of the existence of Wagner, a company of mercenaries with unequaled autonomy. . Thursday, the Bloomberg agency estimated that the last activities of Wagner, those that the group leads in Africa, gradually passed under the control of the army.
Another event, also occurring on Thursday, shows, however, that the political consequences of the mutiny are more difficult to erase. From the prison where he was detained before being tried for “extremism”, Igor Strelkov, former FSB, the Russian security service, and ex-military chief of the Donbass separatists, said his intention to present himself to the presidential election of March 2024.
You have 30.03% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.