The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has many aspects, such as his businesses that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chief” and his illegal activities that brought him international sanctions. He is a businessman, ex-criminal, founder of a troll factory, mercenary and now a rebel who challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With more than 25,000 men from his private army, considered illegal in Russia but fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, he launched an uprising against the military command on Friday, amid the “chaos” he was in. became “100,000 Russian soldiers” who died because of the war and the Ministry of Defense.
Prigozhin has harshly criticized Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov in recent months for repeatedly questioning them with insults, shouts and accusations of incompetence and irregularity in strategy, in audio and video. .war in the neighboring country.
According to former fighters’ complaints and Skull Group’s videos, his experience as the head of the known, feared Russian mercenaries with their brutality, hammer and torture methods against themselves and their enemies was carried out in the following countries: Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic or Libya.
But in line with Putin’s argument used in February 2022, he wasn’t always the leader of the thousands of Wagner fighters, a group he created in 2014 “when the Genocide began in Donbas” but finally acknowledged in September 2022. To start a war against Ukraine.
From criminal to hot dog seller to restaurateur
Born 62 years ago in Saint Petersburg, Prigozhin was a former criminal businessman and spent 10 years in prison in the 1990s, although he never explained why.
When he got out of prison, he told in one of the rare interviews he gave to a portal in his hometown in 2011 that he was selling hot dogs by mixing mustard in his relative’s kitchen and making $1000 a month.
But he wanted more, much more, and knew how to establish good relations within the business community and later among the Russian political elite.
The ultranationalist soon managed to open his first restaurant and enter the world of food for gala dinners or distinguished guests from Russia.
By then, Putin was already president, and according to photos from that time, he sometimes sends his guests, including foreign leaders like George Bush, to St. Petersburg to restaurants in Prigozhin.
He soon won state dining and school contracts in Moscow through his company, Concord.
He had already earned the nickname “Putin’s chief”.
Prigozhin was to receive state contracts worth at least 2.5 billion euros, including one for delivering food to the Russian Army, according to a 2017 investigation into the now detained Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni.
your troll factory
Their aspirations did not stop there. Although he never publicly involved Putin in his illegal ventures, the notorious St. Petersburg trawler factory, he decided to serve the Russian state in another way.
He admitted that he was the founder of this structure, which started a campaign on social networks in 2016 to manipulate public opinion in the USA before the presidential elections won by Donald Trump, only in February 2023.
“I was never just the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I directed it for a long time. It was created to protect the Russian information space from the vulgar and aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian theses. The West,” he said. Through the Prigozhin press service.
He responded to accusations of alleged meddling in the US election in November 2022, saying for the first time that Russia “did it and will do it”.
When asked about alleged interference in last year’s US legislative election, Prigozhin replied, “Gentlemen, we did it, we continue to do it, and we will in the future.” said.
The US sanctioned Prigozhin and his three companies, including Concord Management and Concord Catering, for influencing the political processes in the United States.
Back to being a mercenary
In February 2022, the businessman decided to refocus his mercenary company and send his fighters to Ukraine. .
Conflict erupted this year in the fight for Bakhmut, and was eventually captured by mercenaries in May, Ukraine’s longest war to date, when Shoigu and Gerasimov’s men were accused of letting their men die without enough ammunition.
Since then, businessman’s attacks on the Defense have only increased, including so-called drone attacks on the Kremlin and southern Moscow, or Russia’s inability to defend border areas with Ukraine, such as Belgorod, from enemy attacks and bombings. .
He accuses the army command of lying about the real situation at the front and misleading the Russians and Putin. For some Russians and military blockades he is the only one who speaks the truth, for others it is dangerous and inappropriate, even now he dares to take a role in another direction: a rebel rising against the highest power structures.