Vladimir Putin won't attend Wagner chief Prigozhin's funeral, says Kremlin

According to the Kremlin on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to go to the funeral of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group who died in a plane crash last week. The incident happened two months to the day after Prigozhin and his hired guns staged a coup against Putin’s top military leaders, seizing control of Rostov in the south and making their way towards Moscow before turning around 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the capital. “The presence of the president is not envisaged,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked if Putin would attend. According to Peskov, the family was in charge of making the arrangements for the funeral and the Kremlin had no precise information about it. Genetic tests, according to investigators, have established that Prigozhin was one of the 10 people killed in the plane crash. Some Western politicians and commentators have claimed that Putin ordered the murder of Prigozhin as retaliation, but the Kremlin has dismissed this as an “absolute lie” and refuted it. (With agency inpputs)