Evgeny Prigozhin, Leonid Slutsky attend Vladlen Tatarsky’s funeral in Moscow

War blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed on April 2 in an explosion in a St. Petersburg cafe, was buried in Moscow’s Troyekurovo Cemetery.

The Telegram channel Mash reported stepped-up security measures for the funeral — attendees had to pass through a metal detector at the cemetery’s entrance, and police were on duty nearby.

Between several hundred and a thousand people came to pay their respects to the pro-Kremlin “war correspondent.” Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin and Leonid Slutsky, the head of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (a right-wing populist political party), were among those in attendance. The latter used his speech to call for abolishing Russia’s moratorium on the death penalty.

An engraved sledgehammer was seen on Tatarsky’s coffin. It bore the inscription “To Vladlen Tatarsky from Wagner Group fighters. Your work lives on.”

Tatarsky was killed on April 2 in a Prigozhin-owned St. Petersburg cafe, where he was giving a speech. The following day, authorities arrested Daria Trepova, who allegedly gave Tatarsky a statuette stuffed with explosives.