Russians hail Wagner chief Prigozhin as patriot on anniversary of his death

ST PETERSBURG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Mourners gathered at a cemetery in Russia's former imperial capital under a light summer rain shower on Friday to celebrate a man they said had given his life to serve his country.

The death in a fiery plane crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Aug. 23 last year at the age of 62 marked the bizarre final chapter of one of the most colourful figures in modern Russia.

Prigozhin, a food caterer turned leader of the Wagner Group mercenary force, soared to prominence after Russia sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022. 

His fighters - including thousands of convicts he recruited from prison - led the Russian assault on the city of Bakhmut in one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the "special military operation", the Kremlin's preferred term for the conflict.

Beside Prigozhin's grave in St Petersburg's Porokhovskoye cemetery, an Orthodox priest in robes read a prayer and crossed himself as a group of women sang hymns. 

Those who came to pay their respects said Prigozhin should be remembered as a hero of the motherland.

"There are such people, as for instance (Soviet astronaut) Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, (and) Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, whom we should be proud of," said a man who gave his name as Dmitry, speaking by the mercenary's grave.

He described Prigozhin as someone who took the "patriotic course" out of love for his country.

"Our growing children should be looking up to them," Dmitry said.

Others snapped pictures standing in front of a life-sized bronze statue of Prigozhin, flanked by a Wagner flag and the Russian tricolour.

At a pop-up memorial on a busy street in central Moscow, admirers had left dozens of bouquets of red and white roses below a wall adorned with photographs of Prigozhin and his Wagner loyalists.

Passers-by paused to gaze solemnly at the photographs. One man looked up at the sky and crossed himself in reverence. 

Prigozhin, who wielded Wagner's considerable social media presence to trumpet his successes on the battlefield, ran afoul of the Russian military establishment last summer when he repeatedly accused the top army brass of incompetence and even treason.

In June last year, he led a short-lived mutiny in which his Wagner fighters took control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and marched towards Moscow before turning back.

Exactly two months later, the Wagner leader was dead when his plane mysteriously crashed north of Moscow, killing everyone aboard.

Since then, mourners have celebrated Prigozhin as a hero at makeshift memorials across the country, although the Russian establishment looks less favourably upon the man who mounted the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin's authority since he came to power in 1999.

At the cemetery in St Petersburg, some said that the conflict in Ukraine would be closer to a conclusion if Prigozhin were still alive.

"(His) composure (is what is needed now). His mental ability to organise things, to do (what is necessary)," said a man called Alexander.

"I think that if he was there together with Wagner group PVC (private military company) and continued his activity, the issue with Ukraine would be much closer to a solution."

(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and St Petersburg; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in London, Editing by William Maclean)