According to the Orthodox Eastern Church, the spirit of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin now ought to have embarked in heaven or hell. The religion believes it takes 40 days after death for souls to reach their final destination, a threshold that the once hotdog seller reached on 1 October.
Dozens of everyday Russians and fighters gathered in Moscow and several other Russian cities to mark the occasion, amid notable silence from officials and state media. Prigozhin, who died in a plane explosion weeks after having led the biggest mutiny Russian president Vladimir Putin has faced in his 22-year rule, is thought to be buried at Porokhovskoye cemetery in St-Petersburg .
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It would be mistaken to believe that the mercenary boss was a strictly abiding orthodox during his life, however. Aside from a track record that would have questioned most claims to piousness, Prigozhin and his troops largely practiced Slavic neo-paganism , or Rodnovery, an ideology closely linked to nationalist sentiments within the Russian military, especially special forces and security forces.
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