Europe
Putin won’t attend Wagner boss Prigozhin’s funeral, Kremlin says
Bloomberg News
August 29, 2023
President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with Security Council permanent members via video link in Moscow, on Aug. 25, 2023. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Pool photo, AFP via Getty Images/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t plan to attend the funeral of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash.
“There are no plans for the president to attend,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Tuesday, according to the Interfax news service. “We don’t have any information about the funeral. This is a decision for family and friends.”
Russian investigators on Sunday confirmed Prigozhin’s death in the crash, as speculation continued to swirl over a possible Kremlin-ordered execution. All 10 passengers and crew, including some of Prigozhin’s top lieutenants, listed as having been onboard the Embraer SA Legacy 600 private jet died when it crashed en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Aug. 23.
Prigozhin led a failed revolt in June against Putin’s military leaders that threatened the Russian ruler’s nearly quarter-century grip on power. The U.S. has said the plane crash may have been an assassination approved by Putin himself, suggestions the Kremlin dismissed as an “absolute lie.” Early U.S. assessments indicated the jet may have been destroyed by a bomb, American officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In his first comments on the crash, Putin said on state TV that he’d known Prigozhin a long time and considered him a “talented businessman,” but one who’d “made serious mistakes in life.” He had earlier denounced the June rebellion as “treason,” saying it had brought Russia to the brink of “civil war.”
Prigozhin had sought to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close Putin ally, and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov during the mutiny, blaming them for failures in Russia’s faltering war in Ukraine and accusing them of seeking to “destroy” Wagner. Putin has stood by both men.
The Wagner founder led the private military company as it supported Kremlin efforts on battlefields in Ukraine, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. At its peak, Prigozhin’s group had about 50,000 mercenaries — many of them criminals recruited directly from prison — fighting in Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022.
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