Prigozhin's camouflage clothing & hat, as well as the watch on his right hand, matched his appearance in a video released on 21 August, which he also claimed was filmed in Africa.
Prigozhin was buried on Tuesday at a cemetery in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Russia, away from the glare of the media he had courted so ardently in life.
Prigozhin was aboard a plane that crashed last week, two months after he and his Wagner mercenaries staged a mutiny against Russian military commanders.
Russia's aviation agency had previously published the names of all 10 people on board. This list included Prigozhin & Dmitry Utkin, his right-hand man who helped found the Wagner group.
Throughout Putin's political career, dozens of powerful rivals have died—in circumstances far too opaque for Russian authorities to even trouble themselves with the pretence of an investigation.
Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky northwest of Moscow.
Vladimir Putin promised a full investigation, but its outcome is unlikely to shake a widespread belief that Prigozhin was killed as an act of vengeance for staging a mutiny late June.
From Oppn figure Alexei Navalny to businessman Boris Berezovsky & ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, many of Putin's critics have purportedly been targeted or died mysterious deaths.
Why are PM Modi and the BJP no longer commanding the news the way they did at the beginning of the Lok Sabha campaign? Is this a deliberate pull back or has the news media changed track?
A theme has not yet emerged for BJP & people see lack of a contest, which makes it unexciting. For all these reasons, 2024 is turning out to be an unexpectedly theme-less election.
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