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Dmitry Utkin, cofounder and military commander of the Wagner Group, was buried Thursday in a quiet ceremony at a military cemetery near Moscow, after dying in a plane crash that also killed his boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The ceremony came as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow for talks in a bid to revive the Black Sea grain deal. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments on the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

As Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was laid to rest after a fatal plane crash, videos purportedly showing graves of the group’s fighters being demolished went viral on social media channels. But despite claims to the contrary, this footage does not show a large-scale effort by the Russian state to erase all traces of the mercenary group.

Wagner military chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was officially confirmed dead by Russian authorities on Sunday. The fate of his mercenary group – and its operations in Africa and the Middle East – now hangs in the balance. FRANCE 24 spoke to Anastasiya Shapochkina, a political analyst and researcher with a focus on Russian domestic policy, about possible scenarios for the private army’s future.