Why Russian Twitter Thinks Yevgeny Prigozhin Just Came Back From the Dead

Nearly a year has passed since Russia’s notorious mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash widely seen as a Kremlin-sanctioned hit, but “sightings” of the dead warlord keep making waves.

The latest, circulated by Wagner-linked social media channels earlier this week, centered on a blurry photograph of a middle-aged white man spotted wearing jeans and a blue button-up shirt in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, where Russian mercenaries have long had a foothold.

“Witnesses inform that in Africa they supposedly saw Prigozhin! He was supposedly present to lay flowers for Dmitry Utkin,” one pro-Wagner Telegram channel declared. Attached was a 22-second video from a ceremony marking the 54th birthday of Utkin, the neo-Nazi commander from whom the group got its name who was killed alongside Prigozhin in the crash in Russia’s Tver region last August. Members of the republic’s armed forces could be seen lining up to lay flowers at a monument while a man vaguely matching Prigozhin’s description stood in the background.

Read more at The Daily Beast.