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“Nobody ever deserted me; they helped me, they did every little thing that was crucial and supplied me with every little thing that was wanted,” stated Prapor, who added that he had personally met Mr. Prigozhin.
Many couldn’t consider that Mr. Prigozhin and his group’s prime army commander, Dmitri Utkin — whose name signal was stated to be the inspiration for the group’s identify — had died.
“We didn’t consider it to the final second,” stated Kirill, 31, who wore a Wagner hat and stated he had a relationship with the mercenary group however was not a soldier. He praised Mr. Prigozhin’s open, colloquial and infrequently profanity-laced communication fashion.
“Wagner leaders had been trustworthy — they informed us every little thing,” he unhappy. “They spoke to individuals informally, simply as they communicated with the broader public.” He known as Wagner’s seize of Bakhmut, which razed most of a metropolis that was house to 70,000 individuals earlier than the struggle, “an excellent success.”
Different mourners stated they appreciated Mr. Prigozhin’s populist messages, which included criticism of the army institution — notably the protection minister, Sergei Ok. Shoigu — and at occasions stretched to President Vladimir V. Putin himself.
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