PRIGOJIN WAGNER. A strongman of the Wagner armed group, whose troops entered Russian soil on Saturday June 24, 2023, entering into open rebellion against Moscow and the Russian military government, Evgueni Prigojine promises “to go all the way”. Can he afford it and what are his relations with Vladimir Putin?
Evgueni Prigojine, 62, is the head of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, a private army dispatched by Moscow. For Russia, it has been operating in different corners of the world and especially in Ukraine in the context of war since February 2022. Between Friday June 23 and Saturday June 24, 2023, Yevgueni Prigojine published a series of messages, entering into open war against the leaders Russian soldiers whom he has been criticizing for many months over the conduct of the war in Ukraine.
This time, the leader of Wagner accuses them of being the cause of the death of many of his soldiers, targeted by Russian strikes within the Wagner camps themselves, accusations denied in the wake of the Russian army. Prigojine demands the arrest of the Russian military leaders and assures that he will go “to the end”, even if it means heading towards Moscow.
The “cook of Poutine”, a legend? Yevgeny Prigozhin’s biography
Who is Yevgeny Prigojine, the man giving Vladimir Putin a hard time? A former delinquent, sentenced to twelve years in prison for “robbery” and “fraud” in the 1980s, he quickly became close to Vladimir Putin after his release. He gets his nickname “Putin’s cook” for having previously worked in the restaurant business and for being the man of the Russian president’s dirty deeds. He met Vladimir Putin in 2001, when the latter would have chosen his restaurant in Saint Petersburg for his meeting with French President Jacques Chirac. From then on, the two men are close and Prigojine, who has become an influential oligarch, is gradually transformed into a man in the shadows who will carry out the most shameful tasks in the Kremlin.
He is now known to be at the head of the Wagner group which he created in 2014. Although he preferred to remain in the shadows for a long time, Prigojine claims all his actions since the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, and has become very active on Telegram where Wagner broadcasts his propaganda non-stop. The secret private army thus quickly became official and its leader inaugurated the opening of an office in Saint Petersburg, a few months after the start of the conflict.
This new media visibility, combined with the difficulties of the Russian army on the Ukrainian front, could be the sign of its desire to distance itself from Vladimir Putin. “As long as he is simply perceived as an executor of Vladimir Putin, the fate of the latter will also be his”, explained before June 24 Jeff Hawn, specialist in security issues in Russia and external consultant for an American geopolitical research center, at France 24. A defeat of Putin in Ukraine would therefore be associated with him and his recent conflicts with the Russian general staff, until the escalation of June 24, were also signs of a certain distancing while some saw him as a possible strongman of a future Russia without Putin.
What future for Prigojine, what reaction from Vladimir Putin?
In this context of the beginning of the conflict against Moscow, the head of Wagner was careful not to attack Vladimir Putin directly. His accusations are, for the moment, aimed at the chiefs of staff and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu against whom he had already focused criticism. The rebellion that he has been leading since this Saturday, however, seems to be a turning point and any backtracking seems compromised. Especially since the Russian president announced late Saturday morning, May 24, that the “betrayal” of his private army would lead to “inevitable punishment”. Yevgeny Prigojine’s future seems obscure unless his coup really shakes Russian power… “There is no Russian state, no political chain of command. Who will obey? If Prigojine is still alive and free in 24 hours there will be a new reality in Russia”, noted this Saturday the former world chess champion and democratic opponent Gary Kasparov on his Twitter account.