The cryptic traces from Mr. Brodsky’s poem “Nonetheless Life,” a dialog between Jesus, dying on the cross, and his mom Mary echoed the uncertainty swirling round Mr. Prigozhin. “As I step on a threshold, / I do know not nor determine: / Are you my son — or God? / Are you useless — or alive?”
The ultimate stanza, wherein Jesus responds to his mom, might be taken as a mirrored image of Mr. Prigozhin’s larger-than-life standing and his professed devotion to his motherland: “Lifeless, or alive / There isn’t any distinction, girl / Son or God, I’m yours.”
A lot of Mr. Prigozhin’s adherents have refused to imagine that he’s useless.
“I simply don’t imagine in it,” mentioned a person who laid carnations in entrance of a spontaneous memorial on the Wagner Heart, a sprawling, trendy advanced in St. Petersburg. The person, who walked with a limp, mentioned he had served with Wagner till three weeks in the past and that Mr. Prigozhin had been his direct commander, however refused to provide his title to Western media.
The controversy over Mr. Prigozhin’s dying might loom over Russian historical past for many years, mentioned Aleksei A. Venediktov, who headed the liberal Echo of Moscow radio station earlier than the Kremlin shut it down final 12 months.
“Who killed Kennedy?” he requested rhetorically in his workplace in an interview final week. “Look, this comparability is basically essential, as a result of there are various variations on the market within the public area in addition to the official model.”
Valeriya Safronova contributed reporting from Vienna, Austria, Jesus Jiménez from New York, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Milana Mazaeva from Washington, and Oleg Matsnev from Berlin.
