Founder of the private military company Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin made headlines two months ago when he led a rebel march on Moscow in late June.
Since then, Russian observers have described Prigozhin as “a dead man walking”, writes the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC.
The head of Wagner’s army, a former prisoner, cook and hotdog vendor, had many admirers in and outside his mercenary army. He received cheers for his insurrectionary march, the purpose of which was to put Russia’s military leadership in order.
However, after a surprising turn, Prigozhin announced that the Wagner forces would turn back and the soldiers would return to their camps.
Even earlier, Prigozhin became known for his raucous performance and criticism of the Russian military leadership.
Prigozhin has had a strong connection with the president to Vladimir Putinbut last year there was a change, says the military professor Aki-Mauri Huhtinen From the National Defense University.
Previously, it was estimated that Putin’s administration would not like to take actions that might raise some kind of unrest.
Now the think tank ISW writes that Putin has sufficiently detached Prigozhin from the Wagner group and can kill him without making him a martyr in the eyes of the group.
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.
Meduza news site and British of The Guardian newspaper 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, he opened one of the first luxury restaurants in the 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 site.
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 writethat 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 is called.
Prigozhin received a plot of land for a training camp in Molkino, located in southern Russia, from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Through it, mercenaries began to travel to Syria, where Russia supports Bashar al-Assad administration in a bloody civil war. News agency Reuters reported 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 textwhere 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 site.
An influential figure of the streets
According to Huhtinen, Prigožin had an exceptional ability to network. He was a kind of “street influencer” who moved 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 came from outside the security organizations after spending almost the entire 1980s in prison, so he did not share the KGB-background fraternity of Putin’s inner circle.
Instead, he was able to trade and handle dirty business. He had connections to both the security apparatus and the business world.
Prigozhin cherished the image of a hard man of the people
According to Huhtinen, Prigožin had a carefully crafted image against oligarchs, i.e. rich big businessmen.
– He may have been rich, but he skillfully sided with 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.
The relationship between the official Russian armed forces and Wagner was very tense for a long time.
Putin has used to allow some kind of competition between the different camps of his administration, but even that has its limits.
If Putin is behind what Prigozhin did, that line was apparently crossed.