A monument to the late co-founders of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin has been unveiled in southern Russias Krasnodar region, photospublishedto Wagners official Telegram channel on Friday showed.The statue depicts Prigozhin in a flak jacket holding a two-way radio and Utkin gripping an automatic rifle behind him.Engraved on the monumentsbase are the words First and Ninth Prigozhin and Utkins respective call signs along with their dog tags.Wagners Telegram channel said the statue was erected in front of the mercenary groups chapel in the spa resort town of Goryachy Klyuch, which is also near its former training base and the largest publicly known burial site for Wagner fighters.Wagnerdisbandedlate last year and its fighters were transferred to units under the control of the Russian armed forces after Prigozhinlaunched a failed mutiny against Russias military leadership.In August, the mercenary chief and his close associates were killed in a plane crash that is widely believed to have been an assassination plot orchestrated by the Kremlin.Pro-war bloggers firstshared photos of the Prigozhin and Utkin monument last month while it was in the process of being transported.Municipal authorities in Goryachy Klyuchtold Russian media at the time that it did not authorize the statues installation.
They added that no authorization was needed since the monument was located on private property.