Facetious netizens named it a “special funeral operation”, in reference to “the special military operation”, the euphemism employed by the Kremlin to designate the invasion of Ukraine from the beginning. The funeral of Evgueni Prigojine, Tuesday August 29, in Saint-Petersburg, took place in the greatest secrecy, and in incredible conditions.
Despite the dozens of journalists who tried to locate the ceremony in the four corners of the city, nothing filtered until the evening. It was finally the press service of the Concorde company, parent company of the Wagner mercenary group, which indicated on its Telegram site that the funeral had taken place earlier in the day, in the Porokhovskoye cemetery.
This bucolic place, located in the eastern suburbs of Saint Petersburg, already hosts the father of Mr. Prigojine. His administration claimed to have organized the ceremony “according to the wishes of the family”.
A simple tomb
No date, no place had been communicated. The Petersburg officials themselves admitted to having been kept outside the secret. In the morning, the Kremlin had also claimed not to be aware of any preparations, and assured that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, close to the businessman since the 1990s, had not planned to be present. .
According to several sources quoted by independent Russian media, only about forty people, among those closest to Yevgueni Prigojine, killed on August 23 in the unexplained crash of his plane, attended the funeral. The many mercenaries or ex-combatants of Wagner who so wished were therefore unable to pay homage to their leader, to whom they dedicate, for some, an unlimited devotion.
The images that began to appear in the evening showed a very simple tomb, surmounted by a wooden cross (Russian tradition only provides for the placement of a stele after one year). At her feet, an excerpt from the poem Still life by Joseph Brodsky.
Caution from the authorities
The authorities deployed treasures of imagination to mislead journalists and curious people. Preparations were reported during the day in three other cemeteries in the city, access to which had been restricted. In one of them, the Serafimovski cemetery, where Vladimir Putin’s parents are buried, one of Prigozhin’s lieutenants, Valeri Chekalov, was also buried on Tuesday. The dates and places of the ceremonies planned for the eight other people who were on board the plane, including Dmitri Outkine, founder of the Wagner group, are also kept secret.
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