Yevgeny Prigozhin: The warlord who led the Russian rebellion

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Yevgeny Prigozhin earned the respect of Vladimir Putin through the successes of his private militia – at least compared to the regular army’s disastrous performance on the battlefield.

Prigozhin, who like the Russian president is from St. Petersburg, started small. He spent the last years of the Soviet Union in prison for small-scale robberies and after his release began selling hot dogs from his kitchen in the city.

Business soon took off and he opened a restaurant where Putin, the then deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, occasionally dined.

After Putin became president, Prigozhin provided catering for state visits and other high-level events, winning valuable public tenders through his company Concorde and earning the nickname “Putin’s chef”.

His commercial success allowed him to branch out into other fields. He founded a troll farm called the Internet Research Agency, using fake social media accounts and news stories to manipulate the 2018 US election.

That, combined with his wealth that provided him with private jets and a yacht, and his expanding business empire landed him on the US sanctions list.

The US government labeled their businesses an “international criminal organization”.

Prigozhin went to war in 2014 when he set up a private military company that would allow Russia to pursue its goals in Ukraine, such as annexing Crimea and provoking a war in eastern Ukraine, with some degree of disapproval. He said so last year because the quality of Russian paramilitaries volunteering to fight in Ukraine was very low.

“Very soon I realized that half. , , Were crooks,” he said. “So I . . . did it myself . . . from that moment on, a group of patriots was born, which later received the name of Wagner.

The Wagner has since developed into a well-armed group of guns operating in conflict zones around the world.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the previous year brought Wagner a greater public profile. Within months, the formerly secretive group opened an official headquarters in a St. Petersburg skyscraper, launched its own social media channels and launched a recruitment drive with billboards and posters across the country.

Prigozhin, who vehemently denied any connection to the group, became its public forerunner.

He was filmed traveling to Russian prisons, addressing crowds of convicts and promising amnesty if he joined Wagner and fought in Ukraine. He raised an army that, at its peak the previous autumn, was estimated to be 50,000-strong. His fighters are credited with the only battlefield victory for Russia since the first weeks of the war: the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after months of fierce fighting.

But it also set Prigozhin on a collision course with his former mentor.

He soon became frustrated with the failures of the regular army and accused the army of starving its troops of ammunition.

In angry and abusive language, he criticized the top officers of the army. In a video this spring, Prigozhin stood over a field of corpses laid out in rows, and accused the Defense Ministry of being responsible for the deaths of Russian soldiers at Bakhmut’s “meat grinder”.

“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where are the weapons?” He shouted into the camera the names of Army Chief Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “You sit in your expensive nightclubs and your kids enjoy life making YouTube videos. , , These guys are dying to make you fat in their wood-paneled offices.

As his rhetoric increased, so did his confrontation with the army. Prigozhin accused the army of firing on Wagner’s soldiers. An army colonel accused Wagner’s fighters of kidnapping and torturing Russian soldiers.

Wagner’s battlefield prowess meant the Kremlin digested Prigozhin’s rhetoric. Excited, Prigozhin set his sights on ousting Shoigu.

The conflict escalated this month when the Ministry of Defense ordered all irregular units, of which Wagner is by far the largest and most prominent, to sign formal contracts and incorporate them into its structure. Prigozhin refused. Putin appeared on the side of his generals.

On Friday night, Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel that a Wagner camp in eastern Ukraine had been hit by a Russian military rocket attack.

In a voice memo he said: “The commanders of the Wagner PMC have decided. The evil being spread by the country’s military leadership must be stopped.”

He said that he was withdrawing his forces from the battlefield and turning them towards Moscow.

He threatened, “those who have ruined the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers will be punished.”