Questions swirled Tuesday around funeral arrangements for Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary chief who died in a plane crash last week, as the Kremlin said it had no information about the event except that President Vladimir V. Putin would not attend.
The secrecy reflected the sensitivities surrounding Mr. Prigozhin, a longtime ally of Mr. Putin who had received one of Russia’s top military honors before launching a failed mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership in June. He was killed along with nine others, including top leaders of his Wagner private military company, in the crash of a private jet northwest of Moscow last Wednesday.
Wagner’s logistics chief, Valery Chekalov, who was also on the plane, was buried Tuesday morning in Northern Cemetery in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in a ceremony that was not publicized in advance. Several hundred people came to pay their respects.
But details about Mr. Prigozhin’s funeral, including the date and whether members of the public will be allowed to attend, have not been clear. Mr. Prigozhin had received the Hero of Russia designation, one of the Russian military’s top honors, which generally accords special burials, including an honor guard and a military band.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Mr. Putin would not attend Mr. Prigozhin’s funeral, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. He said the Kremlin had no additional information about the event.
The confusion over the funeral is in line with the murky details about the crash. Its cause remains unclear, but U.S. and Western officials believe it was prompted by an explosion on board. Many Western officials have said they think it is likely that Mr. Putin may have played a role in having Mr. Prigozhin killed as retribution for the mercenary chief’s short-lived mutiny in June.
The deaths of Mr. Prigozhin, five other passengers connected to Wagner and three crew members were not officially confirmed until Sunday, when Russian investigators said that genetic testing showed that the victims of the crash matched the names on the jet’s manifest. The confirmation came after days of speculation about whether Mr. Prigozhin was really on the plane.
In St. Petersburg, Mr. Prigozhin’s hometown and the base of his business empire, speculation grew about how and where he would be laid to rest. Starting late Monday, the police cordoned off several of the city’s largest cemeteries and set up metal detectors at the Serafimovsky Cemetery, where Mr. Putin’s parents are buried.
But local news media outlets also reported that Mr. Prigozhin and Wagner’s chief commander, Dmitri Utkin, who the Russian authorities also confirmed died in the plane crash, could be buried at other locations.
Some analysts speculated that the Russian authorities were seeking to avoid a public outpouring of support for Mr. Prigozhin and his top lieutenants.
“It seems that the authorities, as expected, want to avoid a spontaneous rally in memory of the top leadership of Wagner and to do so, have imposed a fog around the burial place,” Farida Rustamova, an independent journalist, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Valeriya Safronova, Nanna Heitmann and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.
