Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group mercenary force, was reported dead after being on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday (23/8/2023) local time.
Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS quoted Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, as saying the 62-year-old man was indeed registered as a passenger on a private plane traveling between Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
The accident itself gave rise to a lot of speculation, because two months earlier, Prigozhin and his military group launched a failed rebellion against the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin since he came to power.
So what is Prigozhin like?
The owner’s full name is Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, who became famous after taking part in the war in Ukraine, where his mercenaries fought on behalf of Moscow after its regular troops experienced many problems resulting in setbacks.
Wagner’s troops raised the Russian flag in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in April after long and bloody fighting. They bagged a much-needed victory in the 15-month-long conflict.
Prigozhin, who was born on June 1, 1961, then turned that moment of victory into an opportunity a few days later to accuse Russian military officials of responsibility for the failure in Ukraine.
The feud with the defense ministry reached a peak in June when Prigozhin claimed his fighters had crossed from Ukraine into the Russian border city of Rostov-on-Don. They said they would fight anyone who tried to stop them.
Leader Wagner also questioned the Kremlin’s official version of Russia’s reasons for invading Ukraine.
“The Ministry of Defense tried to deceive the public and the president and told us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with all the members of NATO,” Prigozhin said in a video clip released on Telegram by his press service at the time.
In a televised emergency address, Putin said Wagner’s armed uprising was treason and anyone who took up arms against the Russian military would be punished.
The uprising was put down with a deal in which the Kremlin said that to prevent bloodshed, Prigozhin and some of his fighters would leave for Belarus and the criminal case against him for the armed rebellion would be dropped.
Confusion surrounds the implementation of the deal and Prigozhin’s future. The Kremlin said he attended a meeting with Putin five days after the uprising.
On July 5, state television said an investigation into him was still underway, and broadcast footage showing cash, passports, weapons and other items it said were seized in a raid on one of his properties.
But at the end of July, Prigozhin was photographed in St Petersburg while a Russia-Africa summit was taking place in the city. This week he appeared in a video he said was shot in Africa, where Wagner operates in several countries.
Prigozhin Background
Long before that, Prigozhin was convicted of robbery and assault in 1981 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. After his release, he opened a restaurant business in Saint Petersburg in the 1990s.
It was in this capacity that he got to know Putin, who was then deputy mayor. He used those connections to develop a catering business and win lucrative Russian government contracts earning him the nickname ‘Putin’s chef’.
Prigozhin later expanded his reach into other areas, including the media and the notorious internet troll factory that led to his indictment in the United States for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
In January, Prigozhin acknowledged the founding, leadership and financing of Wagner’s shadow companies.
He says he has 50,000 people ready to help at the best of times, with about 35,000 people on the front lines at any time.
He did not say whether the figure included inmates, but Prigozhin is known to have visited Russian prisons to recruit troops, and promised pardon if they survived half a year of frontline duty with Wagner.
Beginning of the Awakening
Prigozhin’s scarred face, shaved head and crooked, tobacco-stained teeth are well known, as is his vocabulary full of swear words.
Polls show him to be the fifth most recognized figure after Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
He staked out a political niche among Russian conservatives who revered Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and wanted to win the war in Ukraine, come what may.
Prigozhin also said that after losing tens of thousands of mercenaries in eastern Ukraine, his Wagner Group should recruit more people and transform into an ideological army.
To some outside observers, Prigozhin’s transformation may be part of the Kremlin’s plan to transfer power in the event of a collapse similar to the Time of Troubles between the death of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and the rise of the Romanov dynasty four centuries ago.
Source : CNBC
