The Guardian newspaper reported: “Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation regulator, said Prigozhin was one of the passengers listed in the manifest as being on board the Embraer commercial plane that crashed on Wednesday night.” . The cause behind the accident is still unclear.
The Wagner head was last seen in a video he released earlier this week. He claims to be in Africa, where his people have been displaced since the failed mutiny. It has not been confirmed when the video was shot and whether he has returned to Russia since the video was taken.
So who is Yevgeny Prigozhin and how did he come to hold the world’s largest nuclear superpower?
A decade in prison, hot dogs and rapid advancement
Born on June 1, 1961 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St Petersburg, Russia), Yevgeny Prigozhin is one of Russia’s richest and most influential men. Before becoming a businessman, however, Prigozhin is said to have spent a decade in prison. According to The Guardian, he was involved in several robberies in the early 1980s, while still a teenager, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. He would leave in 1990 if the Soviet Union was about to collapse.
Realizing things were about to change, Prigozhin started his own business – initially as a humble hot dog vendor in St. Petersburg. According to The Guardian, from the very beginning, Prigozhin had his eye on bigger things and immediately got involved in a number of business ventures, from supermarkets to restaurants.
Finally, in 1995, he founded a network of restaurants and catering companies, including the famous St Petersburg-based Concord Catering. In the fertile economic climate of post-Soviet Russia, there are many opportunities to cash in on the booming foodservice industry, presenting Russians with luxuries they were denied in the industry. former communism.
Soon, Yevgeny Prigozhin became one of the richest people in the country.
Make friends in high places
As Prigozhin’s business grew, so did his proximity to the Russian ruling class. Concord Catering became extremely popular with many Russian government agencies, including the military. Prigozhin himself is someone who knows how to “deal” with the powerful.
“He can adapt to please anyone if he needs something from them. That was definitely one of his talents,” a businessman who knew him at the time told The Guardian. By the time Vladimir Putin came to power in 2001, Prigozhin was the caterer of choice for the rich and powerful in Russia.
Whenever Putin hosts an important person, such as George Bush or Prince Charles, Prigozhin will be the food service provider. In fact, old photographs of Putin’s meetings with officials often show Prigozhin in the background, humble but ever present. Prigozhin has always provided excellent service, and with a talent for attracting politicians, he soon developed a friendship with Vladimir Putin – a friendship that proved extremely fruitful for both of them.
Prigozhin is often favored for large government contracts. For example, in 2012 he won a contract worth more than 10.5 billion rubles (£200 million) to deliver food to schools in Moscow, The Guardian reported. However, despite the wealth the food industry brought him, in 2014 he diversified into a new sector – the private army.
The Invasion of Crimea and the Wagner . Group
It is not clear whose idea to start the Wagner Group – whether Putin asked Prigozhin for help or later offered to help him. Either way, the group survived Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. The troops of the Wagner Group are coordinated with the Russian armed forces but remain distinct from them. Notably, Prigozhin denied any association with the group until early 2022.
While private troops were (and still are) officially banned in Russia, Putin’s need for legitimate denial during the 2014 invasion meant that the Wagner Group’s troops operated with impunity, ensuring take on the most controversial missions, which may involve Russian regular troops. dice.
Following the capture of Crimea, Wagner’s private military contractors (PMCs) were sent to Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, where they supported the pro-Russian separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. from 2014 to 2015. Wagner’s success in these early operations led to a rapid expansion of the group – Wagner became Putin’s proxies, intervening where Russia wanted to intervene but on Officially it is not possible. And Yevgeny Prigozhin is its champion.
Syria, Wagner’s Global Expansion and the “Robot Farm”
At the end of 2015, Putin decided to intervene militarily in Syria to support Bashar al-Assad in the bloody and extremely complicated civil war. Prigozhin won contracts for food and supplies, and sent his Wagner troops there.
It was Wagner, not the Russian regulars, that saw some of the fiercest fighting in the country, and despite suffering extremely heavy losses, observers say that is why. behind the success of the Russian intervention. Also in Syria, the first accusations of war crimes were made against this group. In one incident, men with ties to Wagner were videotaped beheading and dismembering a Syrian man, The Guardian reported.
Thereafter, the Wagner Group PMCs became involved in almost every conflict in the world in which Russia had a role, from the civil wars in Sudan and Libya in Africa to Venezuela, to the presidential crisis. 2019.
At the same time, Prigozhin is also active again in Russia, reportedly having set up a number of “bot farms” to promote Kremlin views around the world. Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election is believed to have Prigozhin and companies linked to him behind a network of Facebook and Twitter profiles that support Donald Trump, apparently. clearly part of Russia’s efforts to boost Trump’s candidacy.
In a statement last year, Prigozhin appeared to have acknowledged the interference, saying, “Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfered and we will intervene. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know it. In precise operations, we will remove both the kidney and the liver at the same time.”
Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine
So when Putin decided to attack Ukraine in 2022, Prigozhin and his Wagner Group were at the center of Russia’s activities. As Russia’s advance stalled, Wagner’s manpower became increasingly important.
Prigozhin himself has ceased to deny affiliations with the company and has become an active recruiter and spokesman for the Group. A video that went viral in 2022 showed Prigozhin inside a prison, recruiting convicts to join the war in Ukraine. In the video, Prigozhin tells the prisoners that they will probably die at the front. But if they survived for six months, they would be fully released and well paid.
Most read
first
Chandrayaan-3 landing live update: Rover Pragyan rolls after Vikram lander soft landing
2
World Chess Final 2023 takes place: Pragnanandhaa and Magnus Carlsen tie after 30 moves
The Wagner Corporation suddenly expanded dramatically, with the rise of convicted fighters. It has seen some of the fiercest skirmishes of the ongoing conflict and has suffered massive casualties in it.
Everything turns sour
In May, the group seized the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine after some of the deadliest skirmishes of the war. During the onslaught, however, Prigozhin broke the taboos of Putin’s tightly controlled political system by hurling insults at Moscow’s top leadership. After capturing the city, he released a video thanking the Kremlin but also criticizing the accusations of treason by Putin’s most senior people, especially Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery. Gerasimov.
For several months, Prigozhin criticized the Russian military leadership for not caring about its troops and using them as cannon fodder. In a video that went viral on May 5, he showed a field filled with dead Wagner mercenaries who he said were killed due to lack of ammunition as a result of decisions made by Shoigu and Gerasimov.
This eventually led to an armed mutiny by the Wagner Group on June 24. But before Prigozhin’s men could reach Moscow, he ordered them to stop. This development comes after the office of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced that he had negotiated an agreement with Prigozhin to halt Wagner’s advance and take further steps to reduce tensions. Later, the Kremlin said Prigozhin would move to Belarus and would not be prosecuted.
Leave a Reply