MOSCOW/HELSINKI Founder of the private military company Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin has become known for his raucous performance, but in a video published on Tuesday, the day of his victory, he appeared to be committing a direct majesty crime.
Prigozhin was already heard criticizing the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself when he spoke of a “happy danger”, which might turn out to be “the enemy’s last asshole”.
In the past, Prigozhin has criticized the Ministry of Defense. He has complained about insufficient ammunition supplies to his Wagner forces fighting in Bahmut.
– Prigozhin is clearly raising his stake now, professor at the National Defense University Aki Huhtinen says.
He estimates that Prigozhin is talking primarily to himself.
Prigozhin has the support of Russian war bloggers and hard-line nationalist circles. They want more and more brutal war.
Prigozhin has had a strong bond with Putin, but it can now falter, Huhtinen estimates.
Prigozhin has publicly denied that he spoke about Putin. According to the sources of the Meduza news site (you will be transferred to another service) Opinions are already circulating in the Kremlin that Prigozhin is not working for the common good but is pursuing his own cause.
According to the article, Prigozhin may face serious problems for his statements, even though he has patrons in high circles.
Professor Huhtinen estimates that Putin’s administration does not like to take actions that could raise some kind of unrest.
Prigozhin has behind him a mercenary army and supporters in pro-war nationalist circles.
An influential figure of the streets
According to Huhtinen, Prigožin has an exceptional ability to network. He is a kind of “street influencer” who moves nimbly in many places.
– If you need leather jackets, car tires, hotdogs or media coverage, call “Putin’s chef”, Huhtinen describes Prigožin’s position.
Prigozhin comes from outside the security organizations after spending almost the entire 1980s in prison, so he does not share the KGB-background fraternity of Putin’s inner circle.
Instead, he is able to trade and do dirty work. He has connections to both the security apparatus and business life.
From the underworld to a restaurant entrepreneur
Born in Leningrad in 1961, Prigožin graduated from a sports college, but a sports career did not appeal and he ended up in petty crime circles.
In 1981, he received a 13-year prison sentence for robbery, fraud and enticing teenagers to commit a crime.
of the Meduza news site (you will switch to another service) and British The Guardian newspaper (you will switch to another service) the trial transcripts seen give a dark picture of the young Prigozhin.
In one case, Prigozhin and his three companions had set out to follow a lonely woman through the streets of Leningrad. Prigozhin strangled the woman until she lost consciousness. The gang robbed the woman of her boots and golden earrings.
Prigozhin was released from prison in 1990, in the middle of the disintegrating Soviet Union.
In Russia transitioning to capitalism, Prigozhin started his entrepreneurial career by selling hotdogs.
In 1996, Prigožin opened one of the first luxury restaurants in New St. Petersburg. Staraja tamožnja, or Old Customs House, located on Vasilis Island, became a favorite place for St. Petersburg’s elite.
Mayor Anatoly Sobchak dined there and sometimes brought his deputy mayor Vladimir Putin with him.
When Putin became president, he was happy to bring his guests to his former hometown. At that time, Prigožin’s restaurants were often the places to eat.
– Vladimir Putin saw how I turned the stall into a business. He saw that I don’t hesitate to personally carry a plate for my distinguished guests, after all they have arrived as my guests. We met when he became the prime minister of Japan [Yoshirō] Mori with, then [Yhdysvaltain presidentin George] Bush’s with, Prigozhin told To the Gorod 812 website (you will go to another service).
Soon, Prigožin’s catering company Konkord began producing catering services for important state events and then winning significant public supply contracts. In 2012, it started delivering food to schools in Moscow. The company also received food orders from the armed forces.
Prigozhin began to be called “Putin’s chef”.
Become a private warlord
In 2014, the occupation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine brought a new addition to Prigozhin’s services.
Prigozhin began to finance the private military company Wagner.
The Russian leadership sought to conceal its involvement in the war, and Wagner provided opportunities for that.
The Guardian write (you switch to another service)that in the summer of 2014, a meeting was organized at the Russian Ministry of Defense, where Prigozhin asked the ministry for land as a training camp for “volunteers” going to Eastern Ukraine.
According to the newspaper, Prigozhin said the order came from “Father”, as Putin was called.
Prigozhin received a plot of land for a training camp in Molkino, located in southern Russia, from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Mercenaries began to pass through it to Syria, where Russia supported it Bashar al-Assad administration in a bloody civil war. The news agency Reuters reported (you will switch to another service)From the Molkino camp in 2019.
Prigozhin also had another way of offering favors to the Russian leadership.
He created the Internet Research Agency, which later became known as the St. Petersburg Troll Factory. The company produced online propaganda and influence operations both in Russia and abroad.
Prigozhin’s company, among other things, ran a network of fake profiles on social media during the 2016 US presidential election, which sought to support Donald Trump’s campaign.
It is dangerous to challenge Prigozhin
Prigozhin denied for a long time his connection to both Wagner and the Internet Research Agency.
Journalists who investigated Prigozhin’s actions experienced both threats and lawsuits.
The head of a slaughtered ram was delivered to the editorial office of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and a funeral wreath was delivered to the home of the journalist who wrote about Prigozhin.
In 2018, three Russian journalists were murdered in the Central African Republic when they tried to investigate the activities of the Wagner company.
When Russia launched its major invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the tide turned. Now Prigozhin wanted to take full credit for both Wagner and “Peter’s Troll Farm”.
In 2022, a video became public in which a man who looked like Prigožin gave a recruitment speech to prisoners in a penal colony. It turned out that Wagner was recruiting prisoners for the war against Ukraine.
Pian Prigozhin’s press service published the text (you will switch to another service)where he said that he founded Wagner in 2014.
Prigozhin admitted his connection to election influence in the United States in March of last year.
– Gentlemen, we messed up, we’re messing up and we’re going to mess up. Precisely, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how, Prigozhin wrote his Konkord company On the Vkontakte website (you will go to another service).
Wagner made leka murders his signature
Recruiting prisoners also brought to the surface the brutality of the Wagner group.
Already in 2017, raw footage of the war in Syria spread, in which Wagner’s fighters they are torturing a Syrian man (you will switch to another service) and finally murder him, among other things, by beating him with sledgehammers.
In November of last year, Greyzone, a channel of the Telegram messaging service connected to the group, published a video in which Wagner’s fighters murdered a former fighter of Wagner’s, who was imprisoned in Ukraine, with a stick. Yevgeny Nuzhin. Prigozhin comment on the video (you will go to another service) approvingly on his company’s website.
When the European Parliament declared Wagner a terrorist organization, Prigozhin sent to the Parliament bloody leak (you switch to another service).
Prigozhin cherishes the image of a tough man of the people
National Defense University professor Aki Huhtinen says that Prigožin has a carefully crafted image against oligarchs, i.e. rich big businessmen.
– He may be rich, but he skillfully positions himself on the side of the millions of Russians who hate the luxurious lifestyle of the oligarchs. Instead of fine fashion and European capitals, he appears in the trenches, Huhtinen describes.
Now the relationship between the official Russian armed forces and Wagner is very tense.
Putin has been in the habit of allowing some kind of competition between the different camps of his administration. The question mark is how long he can allow the current standoff to continue.
– The big question is also, where is the limit and whether Prigožin is carving a place for himself and how high, Professor Aki Huhtinen reflects.