Moscow:

At memorials to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in an unexplained plane crash exactly 40 days ago, dozens of mourners hailed the mutinous mercenary chief as a patriotic hero of Russia who had spoken truth to power.

The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St. Petersburg crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on Aug. 23, including two other top Wagner figures, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards, and a crew of three.

It is still unclear what caused the plane to crash two months to the day since Prigozhin’s failed mutiny. The Kremlin said on Aug. 30 that investigators were considering the possibility that the plane was downed on purpose.

At his grave in the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg, his mother, Violetta, and his son, Pavel, laid flowers. Supporters waved the black flags of Wagner which sport a skull and the motto “Blood, Honour, Motherland, Courage”.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, it is believed that the soul makes its final journey to either heaven or hell on the 40th day after death.

At memorials in Moscow and other Russian cities, dozens of Wagner fighters and ordinary Russians paid their respects, though there was no mass outpouring of grief. Russian state television was silent.

“He can be criticized for certain events, but he was a patriot who defended the motherland’s interests on different continents,” Wagner’s recruitment arm said in a statement on Telegram.

“He was charismatic and importantly he was close to the fighters and to the people. And that’s why he became popular both in Russia and abroad,” it said.

Prigozhin’s mutiny posed the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule since the former KGB spy rose to power in 1999. Western diplomats say it exposed the strains on Russia of the war in Ukraine.

“Leader”

After months of insulting Putin’s top brass with a variety of crude expletives and prison slang over their perceived failure to fight the Ukraine war properly, Prigozhin took control of the southern city of Rostov in late June.

His fighters shot down a number of Russian aircraft, killing their pilots, and advanced towards Moscow before turning back 200 km (125 miles) from the capital.

Putin initially cast Prigozhin as a traitor whose mutiny could have tipped Russia into civil war, though he later made a deal with him to defuse the crisis.

Mourners spoke of respect for Prigozhin.

“He was a real authority, a leader,” Mikhail, a serviceman in Russia’s armed forces who refused to give his second name, told Reuters.

Moscow resident Marta, who also refused to give her surname, said the people believed in Prigozhin but that Wagner had been “decapitated” by the deaths of him and co-founder Dmitry Utkin.

“Hope for justice died with him,” she said. “People believed in him.”

Pro-Wagner groups posted a video of Prigozhin flying to Mali where, after a thunderstorm, he met a senior commander known by his call sign “Lotus” – Anton Yelizarov – who is now reported to be leading the group.

Opponents such as the United States cast Wagner as a brutal crime group that plundered African states and meted out sledgehammer deaths to those who challenged it.

Putin was on Friday shown meeting one of the most senior former commanders of the Wagner mercenary group and discussing how best to use “volunteer units” in the Ukraine war.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Britain on Friday officially proscribed the Russian mercenary Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation, after announcing the move last week, which will make it illegal to be a member or to support it.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A view shows a flag of the Wagner private mercenary group at the site of the plane crash that killed Wagner PMC top figures, including Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, in the Tver Region, Russia on September 1, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Russian mercenary Wagner Group is set to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the U.K. Government, the BBC reported on Tuesday citing a draft order.

The draft order will allow Wagner’s assets to be categorised as terrorist property and seized, BBC said, adding that it will be illegal to be a member or support the organisation according to the order.

U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the BBC that Wagner was “violent and destructive … a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia”.

Also Read | Explained | Understanding the Wagner mutiny

“They are terrorists, plain and simple – and this proscription order makes that clear in U.K. law,” she said.

Proscribing Wagner as a terrorist organisation would mean it would be a criminal offence in Britain to belong to or promote the group, arrange or address its meetings, and carry its logo in public.

The Wagner mercenary group was deployed in Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion last year.

By December, the group took a central role in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after enlisting thousands of prisoners in Russian jails to fight for it on front lines and until recently was the mainstay of the Russian offensive.

Britain’s move to declare Wagner a terrorist group comes after lawmakers on the Foreign Affairs Committee in July urged more targeted sanctions on what it said were a “web of entities” beneath the Wagner Group.

Britain sanctioned Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2020, the Wagner Group as a whole in March 2022, and in July this year sanctioned individuals and businesses with links to the group in the Central African Republic, Mali and Sudan.

Prigozhin died when his private Embraer jet crashed while travelling to St. Petersburg from Moscow on August 23. Russia said it would investigate the crash, but no cause has yet been made public.

London:

Britain is to ban Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation, media reports said on Tuesday, quoting Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The UK was set to make the Wagner Group a “proscribed” organisation under anti-terror laws, putting it on a par with Islamic State and al-Qaeda, a report in the Daily Mail said.

“Wagner is a violent and destructive organisation which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas,” the newspaper quoted Braverman as saying.

“While Putin’s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner’s continuing destabilising activities only continue to serve the Kremlin’s political goals.”

Under the Terrorism Act 2000 the home secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation if they believe it is involved in terrorism.

A proscription order makes it a criminal offence to support the group.

“They are terrorists, plain and simple — and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,” a BBC report added, quoting the minister.

“Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders,” Braverman added in the Daily Mail.

The group’s operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa “are a threat to global security,” she said.

“That is why we are proscribing this terrorist organisation and continuing to aid Ukraine wherever we can in its fight against Russia.”

Draft measures to ban the Wagner Group under the act will be laid in Parliament on Wednesday, the reports said.

In July, Britain announced sanctions against 13 individuals and businesses it said had links to the Russian group in Africa, accusing it of crimes there including killings and torture.

The people and entities targeted — which are no longer able to deal with UK citizens, companies and banks, and have any UK assets frozen — were allegedly involved in Wagner’s activities in Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan.

They included the purported head of Wagner in Mali, Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov; its chief in CAR, Vitalii Viktorovitch Perfilev; and the group’s operations head there, Konstantin Aleksandrovitch Pikalov.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died last month in a plane crash, had already been sanctioned by Britain alongside several of his key commanders who had participated in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin — a Kremlin confidant turned “traitor” — died two months after ordering his troops to topple Russia’s military leadership.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow:

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash two months after staging a short-lived mutiny, was on Tuesday laid to rest in a secret ceremony in his native Saint Petersburg.

He was believed to have been buried at the Porokhovskoye cemetery amid heightened security after his firm said a private ceremony had been held for the warlord “in a closed setting”.

The cemetery was cordoned off and access was restricted, but an AFP photographer saw the back of what appeared to be Prigozhin’s fresh grave, which was marked by a wooden cross.

At the burial site, mourners left a framed excerpt from “Nature Morte”, a poem by Soviet poet and Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, which contains the words “dead or alive?”

Prigozhin’s press service only said that a private ceremony had been held for Prigozhin — who held the title of the Hero of Russia, the country’s top honour — at the cemetery located on the northeastern outskirts of Saint Petersburg.

“Yevgeny Viktorovich’s farewell was held in a closed setting. Those wishing to say goodbye can visit the Porokhovskoye cemetery,” his firm said.

Ukrainian officials pointed to the secrecy surrounding the ceremony, suggesting the Kremlin feared possible protests.

“The secret funeral of Wagner ex-chief Prigozhin as an absolute symbol of Putin’s genuine fear,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on messaging app Telegram.

The funeral appears to draw a curtain on an extraordinary chapter in recent Russian history that saw Prigozhin help lead Moscow’s assaults for cities and towns in eastern Ukraine and challenge Moscow’s leadership.

– ‘Shrouded in secrecy’ –

“The funeral of Prigozhin marked the culmination of a covert operation aimed at his elimination,” wrote political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya.

“Conducted under the strict oversight of the security agencies, the entire process was shrouded in secrecy and involved deceptive tactics.”

Russian authorities said that Prigozhin died in a private jet crash along with nine other people last week.

The spectacular plane crash in the Tver region took place two months after Prigozhin ordered his troops to topple Russia’s military leadership, in what was the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s authority since he came to power in 2000.

Many military analysts said the downing of Prigozhin’s plane appeared deliberate, with some suggesting it might have been blown out of the sky by a missile and others pointing to a possible bomb.

The Kremlin has dismissed suggestions that it orchestrated the crash in revenge for Wagner’s march on Moscow in June.

But political commentators said that, with next year’s presidential election in Russia approaching fast, Prigozhin had become a huge liability for the Kremlin.

Russian officials opened an investigation into air traffic violations after the crash but have not disclosed details about a possible cause.

– Questions over death –

After the mutiny, Putin accused Prigozhin of treason, but following the crash, the Russian president said that he had known Prigozhin since the early 1990s, describing him as a man who made mistakes but “achieved results”.

Putin’s comments did little to stem mounting questions over Prigozhin’s death, with makeshift shrines to the Wagner chief springing up across Russian cities.

The Kremlin said earlier Tuesday that Putin would not attend Prigozhin’s funeral.

“The president’s presence is not envisaged,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The Wagner outfit had taken a prime role in Putin’s offensive in Ukraine, taking on the most dangerous frontline work, as the regular army appeared to falter, while sustaining what Western sources have described as huge losses.

Unlike Russia’s generals, who have been criticised for shirking the battles, the stocky and bald Prigozhin regularly posed for pictures alongside mercenaries allegedly on the front lines.

Prigozhin was allowed to openly recruit for new members in Russian prison camps and savaged Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Prigozhin has been described as a billionaire with a vast fortune built on state contracts, although the extent of his wealth is unknown.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)