Mourners and troopers on Saturday laid flowers at a brand new statue to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a pro-Kremlin mercenary who staged a mutiny and died in a airplane crash, at his grave in Saint Petersburg.
Prigozhin was head of the Wagner non-public militia, which fought alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, capturing the town of Bakhmut in a grinding months-long assault.
He staged a 24-hour mutiny final June, seizing Russian army command buildings within the southern metropolis of Rostov and marching on Moscow in a bid to oust the nation’s army leaders.
In voice messages revealed to social media he had raged each day towards what he stated was corruption and mismanagement of the offensive by bureaucrats within the defence ministry and General Staff.
Two months later, after backing down and being scolded as a traitor by President Vladimir Putin, he died in a airplane crash.
On Saturday, when he would have turned 63, a bronze statue of Prigozhin was unveiled at his grave in Saint Petersburg’s Porokhovskoye cemetery.
Mourners, together with troopers carrying Wagner insignia, some with their faces coated, laid flowers on the toes of the statue, an AFP reporter noticed.
A makeshift memorial to Prigozhin, who was fashionable amongst his troops and supported by a lot of Russia’s pro-offensive army bloggers, has stood for months in Moscow near the Kremlin.
He was initially buried in a secret funeral following the airplane crash.
Putin, who stated grenade fragments had been discovered within the airplane’s wreckage, referred to as him a “talented” man who had made “serious mistakes” after his demise.
The Kremlin has denied involvement within the crash.
Putin final month eliminated long-time defence chief Sergei Shoigu, who had been the goal of Prigozhin’s criticism, and a number of other senior army figures have been arrested on corruption fees.
Source: www.anews.com.tr