Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was buried quietly in a leafy cemetery on the outskirts of St Petersburg on Tuesday, six days after he was killed in an unexplained plane crash.
The funeral took place away from the glare of the media and in stark contrast to the brazen, self-publicising style with which Prigozhin had fanned his reputation, in Russia and far beyond, for ruthlessness and ambition.
“The farewell to Yevgeny Viktorovich took place in a closed format. Those who wish to say goodbye may visit Porokhovskoye cemetery,” his press service said in a short post on Telegram.
Prigozhin, two top lieutenants of his Wagner group and four bodyguards were among 10 people who died when his Embraer Legacy 600 private jet crashed north of Moscow on August 23.
He died two months to the day after staging a brief mutiny against the defence establishment that posed the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule since he rose to power in 1999.
Reuters photos and video late on Tuesday showed Prigozhin’s grave strewn with flowers in the wooded cemetery, with a strong presence nearby of police officers and members of the Rosgvardiya national guard.
Independent news outlet Agentstvo quoted a cemetery employee as saying only 20 to 30 friends and family had attended the ceremony and that it lasted just 40 minutes.
In Washington, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave her strongest statement yet about the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed the killing of Prigozhin.
“We all know that the Kremlin has a long history of killing opponents,” she said. “It’s very clear what happened here.”
The secrecy surrounding the funeral meant it could not be turned into a large-scale public show of support for Prigozhin, a brutal figure who was nevertheless admired by some in Russia for throwing his fighters into the fiercest battles of the war in Ukraine and speaking openly about the shortcomings of the Russian military and its leadership.
In recent days admirers had heaped flowers on makeshift shrines to Prigozhin in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere.
The Kremlin has rejected as an “absolute lie” the suggestion that Putin ordered his death in revenge for the June mutiny. It said earlier on Tuesday that the president would not attend the funeral.
On August 29, Valery Chekalov, the head of Wagner logistics, was buried at another St Petersburg cemetery. His family was joined by dozens of people, some of whom Reuters identified as Wagner mercenaries and employees from Prigozhin’s business empire.
