The poem would be a clue that Prigozhin faked his own death to escape Vladimir Putin’s clutches Olga Maltseva/AFP August 30, 2023
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former leader of the Wagner mercenary group, was barely buried in St. Petersburg and conspiracy theories began to emerge that he was actually alive and in an “unknown country.”
According to British tabloid The Sun, conspirators were led to believe this hypothesis by a strange gift left in Prigozhin’s magnificent tomb. Among the rows of flowers and tributes on his gravestone was a framed poem, apparently full of mysterious clues.
According to the Kremlin’s Moscow Komsomol, which has permission to perform it, the poem says: “How I take the first step on the threshold, without understanding, without deciding. Are you my son or God? That means dead or alive?”
The words are an excerpt from a poem by former Soviet writer Joseph Brodsky entitled “Still Life.”
While many said it was just a heartfelt tribute, others believe it was more of an indication that Prigozhin was not deceased.
Those who believe the former Wagner Group leader is still alive say Brodsky’s work was an interesting choice since the author often clashed with Soviet leaders.
This came after a video resurfaced in which Prigozhin allegedly dramatically predicted his death. The former mercenary leader compared Russia under Vladimir Putin to a plane “on the verge of disaster” that could “fall from the sky.”
Russian expert Valery Solovey brazenly declared on Tuesday that the funeral may have been a sham claiming that “Prigozhin was not on board” the doomed jet. “His double flew in his place Vladimir Putin is fully aware of this,” Solovey teased.
“If you trust the Russian government’s official statements, what else can I add?”
Russian investigation
Although the Kremlin has not launched an international investigation into the crash, a spokesman said the Russian investigation considered the possibility that the crash was intentional.
“It is obvious that different versions are being considered, including the version you know what we are talking about for example, of a premeditated atrocity,” Moscow spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
A preliminary assessment of the explosion by US intelligence concluded that an intentional explosion had caused the plane to crash. One of the officials, who could not be named, said the blast was consistent with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”
Sources on Telegram said a shipment of “expensive wine” was brought aboard the plane minutes before takeoff. Another claim on social media was that explosives were hidden in the drink’s packaging.
Prigozhin’s flight attendant, Kristina Raspopova, 39, had hours earlier told her relatives about a mysterious flight delay and mysterious repairs on the jet.
The exiled Wagner boss’s private jet caught fire just 50 kilometers from Putin’s magnificent palace in Valdai in northern Russia.
The president expressed his condolences to Prigozhin’s family, but stressed that he had made “grave mistakes” and suffered a “difficult fate.”
From hot dog seller to head of the Wagner Group: Who was Yevgeny Prigozhin?
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is often in the news because of his role on the front lines in Ukraine. The organization traveled to Moscow last weekend to overthrow Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The stance was interpreted by President Vladimir Putin as rebellion. Find out who is the man leading a parallel army and having influence in multiple conflicts around the world
With aggressive public relations, foul language and a frequent presence near the front lines, the shavenheaded Prigozhin is one of the most visible faces of the war. He recruited thousands of Russian prisoners to fight for the Wagner group and openly feuded with the Defense Ministry over military plans and munitions supplies.
Prigozhin, 62, has been known for decades as “Putin’s cook” because of his company’s food supply deals with the Kremlin. It’s unclear how close he and the Russian president are, but they know each other and were both born and raised in St. Petersburg.
After serving a long sentence in the 1980s, Prigozhin began selling hot dogs in his hometown. He soon began building a stake in a supermarket chain and later opened his own restaurant and catering business. His restaurant gained a reputation for fine dining and was soon hosting city dignitaries, including thenDeputy Mayor Vladimir Putin. From then on, Prigozhin’s catering company, Concord, began winning state supply contracts, which brought its operations to a much higher level.
Prigozhin admitted last September that he founded the private military group in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It was his first public acknowledgment of a call, which he had previously denied, to the point that he sued journalists for reporting it. The Wagner Group has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other places.
The group also backed Russianbacked separatists who seized an area of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Last month, the group occupied the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after some of the most brutal fighting of the war. During the attack, however, Prigozhin broke the taboos of Putin’s tightly controlled political system with foul language insults at Moscow’s top politicians.
He then released a video thanking the Kremlin while launching his favorite speech: allegedly betraying Putin’s top politicians, particularly Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov.
The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Prigozhin for his role in Wagner. They also accuse him of funding a troll farm called the Internet Research Agency, which Washington says was trying to influence the US election.