By Burc Eruygur
ISTANBUL (AA) – The Kremlin on Tuesday announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attendance at Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral is “not foreseen.”
“The president's presence is not foreseen. We don't have information specifically about the funeral. The decision on this matter is made by relatives and friends, here we can't say anything without them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in a press briefing.
Last week, an Embraer-135 aircraft went down near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region while traveling from the capital Moscow to St. Petersburg, killing all 10 passengers on board, including Prigozhin.
The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) released a list of the names of individuals onboard the aircraft, which also included Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin and other Wagner personnel.
Russia’s Investigative Committee later said on Sunday that it completed the genetic identification of those who died in the private jet crash, declaring they are the same as the list published by Rosaviatsiya.
Putin extended his condolences to the families of the victims, calling Prigozhin a "talented man with a difficult fate."
Prigozhin made headlines in June when he launched an "armed rebellion" against the Russian leadership before quickly aborting it after a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
- ‘Lunar program must continue’
Peskov also touched on Russia's failed Luna-25 mission earlier this month, saying that the country’s lunar program must continue.
“Of course, the whole country followed the lunar space mission. But we know that the path to the stars lies through thorns. There is nothing terrible in this. The main thing is to continue the Russian space program, a unique space program that also contains a lunar element," Peskov said.
Expressing that space exploration and the implementation of space programs are not without failures, Peskov said this is not a reason to despair and that this is a reason to analyze the causes of failure and eliminate them.
“The main thing is not to stop … We know that the plans are quite ambitious, they will be implemented further," he said.
Luna-25 was launched on Aug. 11 from the Vostochny Space Launch Center, 5,500 kilometers (over 3,417 miles) east of Moscow.
Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years was expected to land on Aug. 21. According to state news agency Tass, the mission aimed to study the internal structure of the moon and explore natural resources, including water.
However, the Luna-25 moved into an “unpredictable orbit” and “ceased to exist” after colliding with the surface of the moon, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced on Sunday.