30 August 2023 , 17:36
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Rumours that Yevgeny Prigozhin is still alive have been further fuelled after his reported body-double's wife visited the tomb in a St Petersburg necropolis today.
A solemn woman seen at the Porokhovskoye graveyard was earlier identified as the warlord’s reclusive wife Lyubov Prigozhina, 52. But Russian media outlets later claimed it was Irina Krasavina, spouse of his main body double Leonid Krasavin, who attended the tomb.
The Wagner boss was killed in a suspicious plane crash last week, just two months after his brief mutiny that challenged the authority of President Vladimir Putin. A private funeral was held yesterday with a huge security presence after the country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.
Lyubov Prigozhina with Prigozhin (nazk.gov.ua)"The wife of Yevgeny Prigozhin's double visited his grave the day after the funeral", reported Baza news outlet. It continued: "Journalists [initially] confused the wife of Prigozhin's double [Irina Krasavina) with the real widow of the owner of Wagner PMC [Lyubov]." But she was evidently accompanied at the grave by Polina Prigozhina, 31, Prigozhin's eldest child.
Billionaire Progozhin was known to use body doubles, and famously, to have multiple disguises himself. Now, there has been extraordinary speculation that Prigozhin had not boarded the plane and cheated death in the crash. Dr Valery Solovey - a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations - insisted on Tuesday that Prigozhin put his body double on the plane. He said Prigozhin is now "alive, well and free" in an unnamed country. He continued: "First, the plane in which Yevgeny Prigozhin was supposed to fly was downed by a Russian air defence system. There was no explosion on board. It was downed from the outside."
Wagner paramilitary group boss claims he intends to run for president in Ukraine
Dr Solovey said he would reveal Prigozhin’s supposed country of exile early next month but denied it was in Africa where the Wagner private army has multiple interests. Today, the Telegram channel 'General SVR', which claims to have Kremlin insiders, said that Putin spoke to the warlord by video call soon after he was reported to have been laid in the ground.
A woman touches the wooden cross at the grave of Wagner private mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin (AFP via Getty Images)It wrote: "The president ordered to make contact with the ‘deceased’ via video link, which was done within 15 minutes. Prigozhin, alive and well, while in one overseas country, had a 20-minute conversation with Putin. We will publish more information about the terms of the deal between Putin and Prigozhin soon on our channel."
Also on Tuesday, a funeral was held at St. Petersburg’s Northern Cemetery for Wagner’s logistics chief Valery Chekalov, who was among the 10 people killed in the crash. Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, a retired military intelligence officer who gave the mercenary group its name based on his own nom de guerre, also was killed.
A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to crash, and Western officials have pointed to a long list of Putin’s foes who have been assassinated. The Kremlin rejected Western allegations the president was behind the crash as an "absolute lie."