Bronze statue of the former leader of the mercenary group “Wagner“ Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash in August 2023, two months after an unsuccessful attempt to revolt against the Russian authorities, was discovered today at his grave in St. Petersburg, reported Agence France Presse quoted by BTA.
Dozens of supporters of the former billionaire walked past the imposing statue of Prigogine, which depicts him standing, with some of them placing bouquets of flowers on it, an AFP journalist noted.
A few of them were dressed in military uniforms and their faces were covered.
Prigozhin, who made his fortune in the early 2000s thanks to contracts to supply food to the Russian army, founded the mercenary group “Wagner“ in 2014. She was initially in charge of the Kremlin's covert operations in Africa and the Middle East before being mobilized to the front in Ukraine in early 2022.
Once considered close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin fell out of favor with Russian authorities after ordering his men to march on Moscow in June 2023, taking unopposed control of the Russian army headquarters in Rostov, in the southern part of the country.
Prigozhin accused the command of the Russian army of incompetent conduct of the war in Ukraine and corruption, as well as of concealing the real situation at the front from Putin.
Although Prigozhin and his fighters finally gave up their march on the Russian capital after the intervention of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, this episode remains the most dangerous moment of Putin's quarter-century rule, notes AFP.
Two months later, in August 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Kremlin denied having anything to do with the incident.
For his part, Putin later publicly called Prigozhin “talented“ a person who, however, committed “mistakes“.
Many of the fighters of "Wagner" have since been integrated into the Russian army or other structures.
For several months in the center of Moscow, near the walls of the Kremlin, an improvised memorial has been placed in honor of "Wagner", Yevgeny Prigozhin and his faithful deputy Dmitry Utkin, who also died in the plane crash.
The former boss of “Wagner“, who was very popular among supporters of the invasion of Ukraine in his homeland, would have turned 63 today.
In mid-May, Putin fired his close ally Sergei Shoigu, who had been serving as defense minister since 2012, and had been criticized by Prigozhin, while a number of high-ranking officers were arrested on corruption charges, according to AFP.
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