By Enyichukwu Enemanna
President Vladimir Putin was visibly absent at a private funeral reportedly held in St. Petersburg for the late Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, Kremlin’s former ally.
Prigozhin died in a plane crash on the 23rd of August.
A statement from Wagner said: “The last farewell to Yevgeny Viktorovich was held behind closed doors. Those who want to say goodbye to him can visit the Porokhovskoe cemetery.”
It is not clear if Prigozhin was actually buried in the mentioned cemetery as the statement did not mention that.
Earlier, the Kremlin made it clear that President Putin would not be at the funeral.
“The president’s attendance is not planned,” Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in his daily telephone press briefing, insisting that all arrangements for Prigozhin’s funeral were being handled by his family.
The country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.
The committee didn’t say what might have caused Prigozhin’s business jet to plummet from the sky minutes after taking off from Moscow en route to St. Petersburg.
Before his death, Prigozhin had returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to expand the Wagner Group’s activities.
A US preliminary intelligence assessment alleged that an intentional explosion caused the plane to go down, pointing to a long list of Putin’s foes who have been assassinated.
The Kremlin rejected Western allegations that the Russian president was behind the crash as an “absolute lie.”
