“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.
ADVERTISEMENTPeskov added that the Kremlin has no information on the date of the funeral and that the decision is being made by “the relatives and friends” of the former Wagner’s chief.
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. Just before the crash, Prigozhin had returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to expand the Wagner Group’s activities.
US says intentional explosion caused crash
A preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to go down, and Western officials have pointed 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.”
The crash came exactly two months after Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership, leading his mercenaries to take over the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then launching a march on Moscow.
They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen pilots. Putin denounced the revolt as “treason” and vowed to punish its perpetrators but hours later struck a deal that saw Prigozhin ending the mutiny in exchange for amnesty and permission for him and his troops to move to Belarus.
