Relatives and colleagues of Utkin said goodbye at a federal cemetery for war heroes and other dignitaries in Mytishchi on Thursday.
Dmitry Utkin is believed to have died with the other Wagner leaders in the high-profile plane crash the other week. He was the group’s military commander, while oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin was its financier who handled contacts with the Kremlin.
Utkin was a war veteran and outspoken neo-Nazi who used the call sign “Wagner” in combat. He was the commander of one of the military intelligence service GRU’s Spetsnaz units before becoming a mercenary – and later commander of a paramilitary group formed under GRU oversight. Utkin was held up early as a founder and leader and also got to give the Wagner Group its name.
In 2016, Utkin received a hero’s medal in the Kremlin, which also means that one may be buried under particularly ceremonial forms in Mytishchi.
Wagner conductor Yevgeny Prigozhin is also said to have been named a Hero of the Russian Federation, but he was buried in an ordinary cemetery in his hometown of St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
People are entering the heroes’ cemetery in Mytishchi on Thursday to say goodbye to Dmitry Utkin.