The Russian president Vladimir Putin does not plan to attend the funeral of the head of the mercenary company Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in the plane crash in which he was riding last week, as the Kremlin announced today.

The crash came two months after Prigozhin and his mercenaries tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Putin taking control of Rostov in southern Russia and advancing towards Moscow before retreating 200km before the capital.

“The presence of the president is not foreseen”, the Kremlin spokesman said Dmitry Peskov to reporters when asked if Putin would attend the funeral.

According to Peskov, the Kremlin has no specific information about the funeral, and the arrangements for its holding are with Prigozhin’s family.

On Sunday, investigators concluded that tests of genetic material showed that Prigozhin is one of the ten victims of the plane crash.

The Kremlin has dismissed as a “blatant lie” the claim by some Western politicians and commentators that Putin ordered the assassination of Prigozhin in revenge.

Peskov, in the teleconference with journalists, also commented on the recent one failure of the Russian Luna-25 spacecraft to the moon, saying it was “no big deal” and that the main thing is to continue the Russian space exploration program.

“This is not a reason to despair, nor to pull our hair out. This is one more reason to analyze the causes (of failure) and rule them out next time. The main thing is not to stop. Our plans are quite ambitious and will be implemented further”he added.

The Russian Luna-25 spacecraft –the first Russian lunar mission since 1976– crashed on the moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit on August 19, in what the rest of the world described as a serious blow to the Russian space program. A few days later, Indian spacecraft successfully landed on the moon.

In the meantime, the Kremlin described as “pleasant” the comments made by Pope Francis, who called on young Russians to remember their history saying that the Russian state has a rich heritage and it is good that the pope knows history.

From his side, The Vatican announced today that the head of the Roman Catholic Church had no intention of glorifying past Russian expansionismreferring to the pope’s speech last week to young Russians, which has come under fire inside Ukraine.

“The pope aimed to encourage young people to preserve and promote all that is positive in the great Russian cultural and spiritual heritage and not of course to glorify the expansive logic and personalities of the government cited to highlight some historical periods of reference”the Vatican said in a statement.