Yevgeny Prigozhin Buried: What His Burial Reveals

Deceptive maneuvers, hide-and-seek games and special operations by the Russian secret services accompanied Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral last Tuesday. In St. Petersburg, several burials were staged and mourners, onlookers and the press were driven back and forth between three cemeteries in the metropolis. A Moscow cemetery was also discussed – the one where all “heroes of Russia” are buried. In the end, the man whom Vladimir Putin himself bestowed with this title was buried quietly and secretly. Where nobody expected him to be.

In the evening, the Prigozhin press service announced the place of his final resting place. “At the request of the relatives, Prigozhin’s funeral took place only in their presence and in the presence of his closest friends,” quoted the .

Cemetery management told the independent TV channel Dozhd that Prigozhin was buried next to his stepfather – without the military honors that the longtime leader of Wagner’s troops would have deserved as a “Hero of Russia”.

“There were 20 to 30 people there. Only friends and relatives,” one of the cemetery’s employees told the independent medium “Agency”. “The ceremony lasted 40 minutes. Everyone was in civilian clothes, I didn’t see any military personnel. I’ve worked in the industry for more than 30 years, for me it was nothing unusual, just a VIP funeral,” the source said.

Mother buried Yevgeny Prigozhin

The Porokhovskoye Cemetery is located in the northeastern part of St. Petersburg and is considered semi-public. Mainly family graves can be found there, but also mass graves from the time of the Second World War.

Among those present was Prigoschin’s mother Violetta, who ordered the burial last Monday, according to cemetery workers. Her son was buried in the closed coffin carried by Wagner fighters as seen in pictures. Apparently, Prigozhin’s children and wife did not attend the funeral. A simple wooden cross and several wreaths now adorn the grave site. Police forces cordoned off the cemetery.

However, after the Kremlin was certain that the death of the fallen Wagner boss would not trigger mass protests or marches by former mercenaries, Russian authorities last Wednesday allowed the public access to his final resting place. There was no rush. In the first hours of the morning, observers counted around 30 visitors, mostly Wagner fighters. Nevertheless, there was a traffic jam in front of the cemetery because all visitors would be searched at the entrance.

“You can still see dog handlers and police officers all over the cemetery,” said a resident of St. Petersburg. “Not that many people came to the grave itself within several hours, between 30 and 50. They are Wagner people, his business partners from St. Petersburg, a young man with the imperialist flag on his shoulders and elderly women . The most interesting thing there are the cats that walk over the grave site,” was her unexcited verdict.

Special operation funeral

The closed coffin, the deceptive maneuvers and hide-and-seek games – all of this is fueling wild speculation that Prigozhin might still be alive. And yet, for the time being, the Kremlin has achieved what it wanted: it quietly put Prigozhin under the ground.

“Any mass event, whether it’s a funeral, a wedding or an excursion, could degenerate into a political event,” explained the current situation in the Russian exile politician Maxim Resnik. “Prigozhin, together with Strelkov (Igor Girkin, editor’s note), despite their mutual enmity, is a symbol of the ultra-fascists for whom the government is not cannibalistic enough. In this sense, Prigozhin, even if he is dead or buried, becomes in a political context still exist.”

It was therefore important for the Kremlin not to let the funeral degenerate into a “kind of political manifestation”. “It was therefore necessary to carry out a special operation – a format that is so traditional in Putin’s politics. There have been election operations, a special military operation, now there is a special funeral operation,” said the opposition politician from St. Petersburg, who had to leave Russia in September 2022.

“The war is not a war, the hero is not a hero”

The result: Putin has climbed over Prigozhin’s corpse and is now marching on. “It was crucial to create an ambiguous situation. How everything is ambiguous: the war is not a war, the hero is not a hero, we are strong but weak. Nothing is ambiguous,” says Russian writer and playwright Artur Solomonov, who known for his play about the death of Joseph Stalin.

“The special operation funeral is only part of this general trend. The situation was made very ambiguous and in the end it became very murky.” This is in line with the absolute trend of attaching multiple meanings to every event. “Now we’ve buried someone, but we don’t know who. And we don’t know if anyone was buried at all.”

Wagner founder Utkin can remain a “hero”.

While in the case of Prigozhin the special operation burial aimed to keep his grave from being a place of pilgrimage for Wagner supporters, another mercenary leader enjoyed military honors: Dmitri Utkin, Prigozhin’s right-hand man and the man to whom the Wagner troupe owes its name. He was aboard the plane that crashed in Russia on August 23, along with Prigozhin and other Wagner commanders. On Thursday, Utkin was buried – in the cemetery of “Heroes of Russia”.

According to the Telegram channel “Shot”, Utkin was buried with military honors in the memorial cemetery. An orchestra played during the ceremony. Police and National Guard provided security. The security forces were equipped with anti-drone weapons, among other things.

Utkin’s funeral was also held behind closed doors. But unlike Prigozhin, he was allowed to remain a “hero” even after his death. After all, he hadn’t marched on Moscow either.