Wagner Group security chief buried in St. Petersburg

A funeral of Valery Chekalov, the head of the Wagner Group’s security service who died in a plane crash last week alongside his boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was held in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, local news outlets Rotonda and Fontanka reported.

Around 100 people were present at the ceremony in the Severny cemetery, including several navy officers, Wagner fighters, and Prigozhin’s bodyguard Sergey Plaschenko.

Preparations are also reportedly underway at the city's Serafimovsky cemetery where Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is expected to be buried.

As well as Prigozhin and Chekalov, Wagner's military commander Dmitry Utkin, four Wagner fighters and three crew members were killed last Wednesday when Prigozhin’s private jet crashed in Russia’s Tver region while on the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg.