Strange funeral of Yevgeny Prigozhin: in St. Petersburg staged a confusing performance

I, like other correspondents, chose the Serafimovsky cemetery not by chance. The day before, it was here that a metal detector frame was installed, and guards were posted from early morning. In addition, this cemetery is considered one of the most prestigious in the city; Heroes of Russia are buried there.

From early morning, the press gathered near the main entrance. Vigilant guards asked questions: “Who are you going to?” People with cameras were turned around. I went in the company of a pensioner who was heading to the grave of a clergyman. Some correspondents climbed through the holes in the fence, which turned out to be quite a few.

Armed police officers were walking back and forth across the cemetery. In my opinion, there were about a hundred of them.

When asked what was happening here, the security forces shrugged their shoulders: “We have no idea, we are forced people, we just follow orders.”

– Will Prigogine be buried here?

We weren’t told, we don’t know.

This was the answer of absolutely all the policemen whom I interviewed. And apparently, they did not dissemble. In the evening, one of them issued: “Don’t understand what they arranged, on the day off they dragged me here. Some boys have been on duty since Monday. They didn’t really explain what was going on.”

Around noon, State Duma deputy from the LDPR Vasily Vlasov, son of Boris Gryzlov, Dmitry and LDPR member Sergei Abeltsev appeared on the central alley.

– Have you come to say goodbye to Prigogine?

“We are just walking here, there was free time, so we came,” said Vlasov. – We have an event.

– Here?

– No, behind the fence.

Note that a few days ago, deputy Vlasov proposed to rename Zolnaya Street in honor of Prigogine.

Cemetery employees were also reluctant to contact journalists. You can understand them. They have been waiting since 9 am for orders to prepare the grave. But they didn’t wait. However, they could not admit that they, like us, were fools.

– What are you doing here? The funeral is a family tragedy, the relatives of the deceased do not want to see you, that’s why they don’t come here, – one of the cemetery workers scolded us. – We have an instruction – to wait until 6 pm, we will not bury later.

Because of you, we can’t even start digging graves by tomorrow. Here on Wednesday we bury two people. But you will take it off and say that this is Prigozhin’s grave, as you have already removed the hearse of a completely different dead person here!

Due to the confusion, one hearse was indeed mistaken by colleagues for Prigozhin’s. But inside was the coffin of another person – the family of the deceased told me about this.

From time to time the Wagnerites came to the cemetery. Two strong guys were at the cemetery for a couple of hours: “We were not given any information, we ourselves go, we wait, we are constantly in touch with the guys. Some of our people are at the Northern Cemetery, someone went to Smolenskoye, some are still on guard somewhere.” (Deputy Evgeny Prigozhin, Valery Chekalov, was indeed buried at the Northern Cemetery. Nothing is known about the funerals of the other victims of the Embraer plane crash).

An employee of the local church sold flowers in the cemetery shop. The woman took an active part in the discussion of Prigozhin’s funeral.

“It is unlikely that they will bury him at night, I have been working here for 30 years, no one has been buried at night,” she reasoned. “Today, all day long, they talk only about him, people come up, they are interested, everything is discussed in the church. And in the morning a man came to the temple, I don’t know what organization he was from, but he immediately made it clear: today everything that happens here is misinformation. Yes, yes, he said so. Our father will confirm.

The woman thought.

– But Prigozhin was a good journalist, a professional.

– Why a journalist? – I was surprised.

– And who is he? After all, Prigozhin conveyed information to people, like he was an informer. We all talk about him like that. Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

While we were talking with visitors and workers of the cemetery, news outlets described the “farewell” to Prigozhin in the St. Petersburg Manege of the Cadet Corps, which turned out to be a performance – a funeral cortege drove up to the building, from there it went to the Beloostrovskoye cemetery, but all this turned out to be “empty” movements.

The head of PMC Wagner was “buried” at the Northern cemetery, at Smolensky, the same Beloostrovsky …

After 17.00, the press service of the Concord company reported that the funeral took place in a closed format at the Porohovsky cemetery.

I don’t know what reaction the management of the Serafimovsky cemetery had in private conversations to this message, but they all immediately jumped into cars and gave gas.

The cops immediately turned around. Ten minutes – and their trace caught a cold.

And I went to the Porokhov cemetery, which is on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The place is modest, next to it is a power line, there were no known people buried here before. The cemetery is half-closed, which means that they can only bury people there with relatives or bury urns with ashes.

By the time I arrived at the entrance, metal detector frames and fences had already been set up. Cynologists with dogs came out of the territory. I counted ten dogs. There was also a car with the inscription “Mine Clearance” standing there.

At the cemetery itself, the security forces stood almost under every tree.

“Today the entrance is closed, come tomorrow,” the riot police stopped me. “We’re staying here for the night so no one gets in.” And none of the cemetery workers are already there, they are superfluous here now.

One of the interlocutors held an anti-drone gun in his hand – protection from video filming from quadrocopters.

– Didn’t you also know that Prigogine would be buried here? I asked.

– Well, why not? We all knew … – the man grinned slyly and hurried to turn off the conversation.

Foreign journalists hovered around the cemetery in bewilderment. They didn’t really understand what it was. I removed the place of the grave of Yevgeny Prigozhin from the elevation because of the fence. It was next to a cell tower. From afar, the flag of Russia was visible, which was installed on the grave along with the banner of the Wagner PMC.

Prigozhin was buried between his father, who died in the early seventies, and his stepfather, Samuil Zharky, who died in 2016. Previously, it was impossible to find out where their graves were – no public information.

On the grave of Yevgeny Prigozhin, they put in a frame an excerpt from Joseph Brodsky’s poem “Still Life” with the lines “That is, dead or alive?” According to rumors, the organizer of the funeral was the mother of the founder of PMC Violetta.

I went towards the tram. On the way, I talked to a local woman. “My house is opposite, the windows overlook the cemetery, but I didn’t hear anyone being buried today. It was too quiet, she said. – The police only arrived in the late afternoon, when it was all over. In general, it is strange that Prigozhin was buried in such an old, unkempt cemetery. Maybe this is also a distraction?