Wagner’s Godfather, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Is Emerging From the Shadows and May Have Political Intentions for the Post-Putin Era.
Yevgeny Prigozhin wants to present himself as the leader of a hard line against Vladimir Putin who is increasingly criticized in Russia.
We have never heard of him and only a few rare photos have been taken of him, the most famous one showing him as a butler presenting the menu to a “client” who is none other than Vladimir Putin. The two men had known each other in the 1990s when the former had opened a luxury restaurant in St. Petersburg, where the future Russian president had just moved from the secret service to the city hall.
For a long time in the shadows, craftsman of the Kremlin's dirty work, ex-convict - he did nine years in prison for various crimes during the USSR -, sulfurous businessman and boss of the Wagner group's mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin has recently thrown off the mask.
Shocking videos, hyperactivity on Telegram, “bazooka” comments on the “special military operation” in Ukraine, not a week goes by without the man who earned the nickname “Putin's chef” giving his voice. As if the war that has been raging for eight months played the particle gas pedal in the black box of power, sharpening rivalries and ambitions.
On Sunday 13 November 2022, three days after the bitter Russian setback in Kherson, Yevgeny Prigozhin commented on the alleged execution, with a blow of a sledgehammer on the head, of one of the former members of Wagner accused of desertion. Telegram accounts close to the group published a video showing a man, his skull taped to a block of stone, being hit on the head with a club.
According to these sources, this would be a soldier of the group who deliberately surrendered to the Ukrainian army, but was then recaptured by the Russians.
“In this show, we see that this man did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met unkind but fair people,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said, “quoted by his press service, showing himself as a ruthless hawk. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking, and it's a great watch in one sitting. I hope no animals were harmed in the making of it.”
Until recently, he was just a figure, acting behind the scenes to enable Moscow to carry out unclaimed military actions, especially in Africa, but also on the Internet with “its troll farms.”
Now, at 61 years old, with a shaved head and a tough look, Yevgeny Prigozhin is openly aligned with the spearheads of “the hard line.” An out-and-out patriot, he does not hesitate to attack the army staff, like another “ultra” of the regime, the Chechen Ramzan Kadyrov. Both appear to be more useful than ever to the Kremlin and to roll for it, while never losing sight of their interests.
“Putin has no choice but to rely on aggressive actors like Prigozhin or Kadyrov, given the poor performance of the Russian armed forces and lukewarm support for the war in his government,” said a senior Russian official, quoted last week by Bloomberg.
And, for the past three months, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been making thunderous statements.
A few days ago, on the eve of the last American Midterms, he conceded, after years of denial, that he had carried out election manipulation operations. “We have interfered, we do it and we will continue to do it,” says the man who has been under international sanctions for several years.
In mid-September 2022, Yevgeny Prigozhin reveals another open secret by revealing that he is indeed the founder, in 2014, of the paramilitary group Wagner, active in Ukraine as in Syria, but also in Africa. A phantom army intended to advance the interests of the Kremlin, where it prefers to act stealthily. And this allows Yevgeny Prigozhin's companies to reap juicy profits, for example in Syria, on oil revenues.
In October 2022, in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin installs in a glass building the headquarters of “the private military company Wagner,” which is now open for business. He admits, just as publicly, that his group is currently fighting in Ukraine, notably in Bakhmut, in the east of the country - at the cost of enormous losses, which he does not go into. He also announced that he had started the construction of a “Wagner Line” - a sort of Russian version of the Maginot Line of the post-First World War period - which was supposed to keep Ukrainian troops away from the occupied territories of the Luhansk region.
A symbolic project with unclear contours, to establish his narrative of the ultimate defender of the national territory, castigating “enemy bureaucrats” of Moscow who do not support him. Finally, he claims that Wagner will train militiamen and build fortifications in the border regions of Russia, such as Belgorod or Kursk, which are regularly targeted by bombings.
Why did Yevgeny Prigozhin come out of the woodwork?
“It is a means of survival for him,” says Marat Gabidullin, a former member of Wagner, who gave his unpublished testimony in the book “I, Marat, ex-commander of the Wagner army - The underbelly of Putin's secret army finally revealed”. "There is currently a lot of tension in the upper echelons of power. Yevgeny Prigozhin has made many enemies there and he understood that in this struggle for influence, to keep his position, it was necessary to formalize it to consolidate it," explains the former soldier of fortune who knew “Putin’s chef” well.
Among his opponents is the governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, whom Yevgeny Prigozhin accuses of refusing an operating permit for his Wagner center.
Recently, Prigozhin has also called for “immediate Stalinist reprisals” against various business leaders whom he accuses of being too lukewarm in supporting the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
His bad relations with the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, are notorious. In 2016, when the Wagner liberated Palmyra for the first time, Vladimir Putin reportedly praised them highly. Sergei Shoigu then took umbrage, it is said, as a result of which the supply and arming of mercenaries would have been significantly reduced ...
This year, after criticizing the Russian army staff for its strategy in Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin would have pleaded for the appointment of General Sergei Surovikin, former head of operations in Syria with whom he is linked “by blood,” according to Marat Gabidullin. “He knows a lot about Surovikin, who owes all his victories in Syria to mercenaries,” the former Wagner member believes.
However, according to him, Prigozhin's influence should not be overestimated, as his talent would be mainly to be a super-communicator. For example, says Marat Gabidullin, “in Ukraine, Wagner's merits are mainly the result of a powerful public relations campaign. The Russian population must think that Wagner's men occupy half of the lines and front line when in fact they are operating in only one area.”
How far can Yevgeny Prigozhin go?
“Yevgeny Prigozhin might be able to compete for power. Not under Putin, but after him,” goes so far as to estimate Andrei Kolesnikov, of the Carnegie Institute, quoted by Bloomberg. According to most observers, however, the Kremlin's super-agent of influence remains first and foremost a businessman, and as such driven primarily by his interests.
“He wants to become the king of the Donbas and get his hands on all the industrial potential of the region,” says Marat Gabidullin.
In Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin is playing for big money. “For the moment, he is needed and he is not a serious enough competitor in the eyes of those who hold the official powers, in the FSB in particular, and who could get rid of him,” analyses the former Wagner fighter.
Some reading
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