At the end of August 2023, images of the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, with a halo of a saint above his head, appeared on social networks. It was alleged that such an icon was allegedly sold on Avito. We decided to check if this is true.
Many Telegram channels wrote about Prigozhin’s icon. In particular, a post was dedicated to her in on your channel publicist Alexander Nevzorov (678,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), later this entry reposted and TV presenter Dmitry Gordon (48,000). They wrote about Prigozhin’s icon, put up for sale on Avito, and some media outlets, for example, “New news"
The very existence of icons depicting people who have not been canonized by the official church is quite a common occurrence. For example, a lot is known icons with Stalin, A one of them It even hung quite officially for several days in the Church of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga in Strelna, a suburb of St. Petersburg. The icon was there with the blessing of the abbot. However, after the scandal broke out, the icon was removed and the rector left his post.
On other icons, Stalin is even depicted with a halo and signed “St. Joseph.”
In addition, since the 1990s, icons of pop singer Igor Talkov, who was killed in 1991, have also been popular among Orthodox monarchists. Most often, Talkov is depicted together with Nicholas II.
The reason for the news about the alleged icon of Prigozhin was an image on social networks - a screenshot from the Avito website.
This picture depicts Yevgeny Prigozhin with a shining halo above his head, next to the inscription: “Hieromartyr Eugene.” The screenshot has been cropped, so neither the estimated price, nor the date the ad was posted, nor other information is available. On Avito there are no traces of the icon: now, among similar objects of art, you can only buy an oil portrait of the founder of the Wagner PMC for 57,000 rubles.
A picture of the icon appeared on social networks on August 25, two days after death of Prigozhin in a plane crash. However, the image that has spread is not a real icon, but one modified in a photo editor stock photography.
There are no other images of the supposed Prigozhin icon on the Internet, except for photographs on a satirical Instagram account “Association of Worst Artists" The series of images is called “The Icon of the Most Holy Great Martyr Eugene is Delivered to the Church of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” But next to the signature, in order not to mislead subscribers, there is a hashtag #worst collage.
Thus, we can conclude that the image of the icon of Yevgeny Prigozhin sold on Avito is a fake, and at the time of writing there are no iconographic images of the founder of the Wagner PMC available and on sale.
Cover photo: screenshot “Verified” / social networks
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- Is it true that in 1941, on Stalin’s orders, a plane carrying a miraculous icon flew around Moscow?
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