The owner of PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, ordered an extras for the funeral at the military section of the Beloostrovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg, convict Dmitry Menshikov, who died in Ukraine. The Telegram channel “We Can Explain,” referring to a Petersburger who received money for attending the funeral, reports that they paid 1,500–2,500 rubles for participating in the ceremony.
According to the interlocutor of the channel, only 50 people agreed to participate in the funeral for money, although it was planned to gather 400 participants. “Extras were paid differently, from 1.5 to 2.5 thousand rubles, I can’t say the exact number, but about 50 people. Organized brought on buses. Among the extras, the majority had no idea about the personality of the hero, ”he said.
In order to organize the funeral in this very place, Prigozhin unleashed a conflict with the city authorities and personally with the governor Alexander Beglov. He demanded to bury Menshikov on the Walk of Fame, but the St. Petersburg authorities said that the PMC mercenaries were not military personnel and refused to be buried at the military site, adding that there was simply no Walk of Fame in the cemetery. Then Prigozhin addressed an open letter to the speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin and ensured that the Alley of Valor was opened at the Beloostrovsky cemetery in mid-December. This Alley will now be used to bury both servicemen and other categories of dead who take part in the war in Ukraine.
Dmitry Menshikov was recruited for the war in a colony, where he was serving a sentence for selling drugs (parts 3, 4, 5 of article 228.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). He was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in February 2022. Prigozhin, who personally attended his funeral, described him as a "simple guy" who grew up in an orphanage, went to prison because he wanted to earn money, and died in Ukraine "like a hero."