A Russian village no longer wants the dead Wagner mercenaries – but it seems hopeless

Freshly dug graves are lined up side by side. A simple wooden cross with a nameplate is stuck in the ground, next to it is a wreath with the insignia of the Russian Wagner group. This is what the cemetery of a village in southern Russia looks like.

International law stipulates that the bodies of fallen Russian soldiers must be returned to Russia. This also applies to Wagner fighters. But their funeral is now causing red heads in Russia – because not everyone wants to know the dead Wagners on their sacred earth. They’ve been there for months and dozens.

The funeral on the weekend

Amid the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, a mass funeral for members of the Wagner group was held last Sunday in the cemetery of the Russian village of Bakinskaya in Krasnodar Krai – despite previous public opposition from local authorities.

The reason for the official authorities’ refusal: The region has been set up as a spa. A monument to Wagner warriors makes a bold break with the idyll around the healing thermal springs.

A day before the planned funeral, Yevgeny Prigozhin – founder of the Wagners – grumbled on Telegram about the municipal administration. He was outraged that the paramilitary organization was forbidden from burying their dead in the region. The manager countered:

But the official authorities finally gave in to the “public outcry”, and the dead soldiers could still be buried in Bakinskaya. At least that is what the Telegram channel Gray Zone claims, which is very close to the Wagner forces.

The Goryachi Klyuch News television channel released video footage of the funeral, which was reportedly attended by “hundreds” of local residents and visitors. Not only do you see the priest walking along the rows of coffins waving incense, but also Prigozhin’s speech:

It’s one of the few times when Russian television also pays attention to war – at a memorial service for soldiers in an army that officially didn’t even exist until last fall. And with mourners full of revenge.

The cemetery during the last months

On March 18, Prigozhin’s press service published an audio file of a conversation showing that the city administration had reserved a total of 780 places in the Bakinskaya cemetery for the burial of Wagner mercenaries.

In late January, reporters from the Reuters news agency visited the cemetery. At that time about 200 graves were occupied. The conversation published on Saturday shows that 500 graves are now occupied.

The first dead were probably buried during last November, according to satellite data from the American company Maxar Technologies. Videos and photos of the graves first appeared on social media channels in December.

Reuters was able to identify 39 of the 200 dead. They were all convicts whom Wagner had specially recruited for the war in Ukraine. The promise: pardon after six months of service at the front, “a second chance at life” or “to redeem yourself”. The dead mercenaries included at least one assassin and several assassins.

At the time, Reuters was unable to reconstruct the exact circumstances of the mercenaries’ deaths, but the mother of one of the dead confirmed that her son was killed in the Donetsk region.

The Russian state news agency Ria Novosti published footage of Prigozhin visiting the cemetery in early January. In it, he crosses himself and lays flowers at a Wagner grave. Local media wrote that the Wagner boss explained at the time that the men had explicitly expressed their wish to be buried in a specific chapel near the town of Goryachiy Klyuch. However, it is now full, which is why the Bakinskaya cemetery was used, according to Reuters.

The cemetery is likely to continue to fill up – even if authorities continue to resist. Threats against Gorjachi Klyuch’s administration are now circulating on Telegram. A masked and armed Wagner mercenary stands amid similarly equipped colleagues and grunts hoarsely at the camera: