Brussels Concerns about Yevgeny Prigozhin attempting a coup are not new. “The FSB people are angry with him and see him as a threat to the constitutional order,” the Guardian quoted an anonymous Russian political elite source earlier this year as saying. The FSB is Russia’s domestic intelligence agency. After the war, Prigozhin will demand a reward, the source said.
It shouldn’t get that far now. Prigozhin has turned his troops against the Russian army and has already advanced to Rostov-on-Don, near the Ukrainian border. According to his own statements, he has 25,000 men under his command. In a video he announced that he would also advance on Moscow if it was necessary to achieve his goals.
For a long time little was known about him, in the past Prigozhin had long avoided being associated with Wagner’s private mercenary army. It was only last year that he himself sought publicity, when his role in the Ukraine war became increasingly important.
Prigozhin comes from Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg, where he was born in 1961. An athlete’s career failed, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbery.
When he was released in 1990, the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. Prigozhin was enterprising and was quickly economically successful in the turmoil of the 1990s. First he sold hot dogs, then he invested in restaurants, which soon became the meeting place for political elites. Among others, his guest was Vladimir Putin, who was then the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.
Prigozhin and Putin met in St. Petersburg.
(Photo: dpa)
This became a close connection. There are pictures showing Prigozhin personally serving food at state receptions with US President George W. Bush or with the then British Prince Charles. Prigozhin’s company also supplied the Russian army.
Vanguard of the Russian Army
The entrepreneur got a new task, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in violation of international law in 2014 and later occupied parts of the Donbass. Putin wanted this invasion to look like a local uprising. So he relied, among other things, on private mercenaries who brought the areas under their control without military identification.
The most important of these mercenary groups was the “Group Wagner” founded by Prigozhin. Only later did the official army move in.
Subsequently, Prigozhin is said to have set up the troll factories, which spread the Kremlin’s world view on social networks from St. Petersburg in order to create a pro-Russian mood in the West. Before the 2016 US election, they are said to have deliberately caused uncertainty in order to make Donald Trump’s election victory more likely.
Putin used the Wagner group in further conflicts in order to spare the military, to be able to proceed particularly unscrupulously or to disguise direct involvement of the Russian state. The group is active in various African countries, but its work in Syria is particularly well known.
There the group was accused of some war crimes. A video is said to show how the mercenaries behead and dismember a Syrian.
Above all, Prigozhin relies on serious criminals, tens of thousands of whom he recruits from Russian prisons. In addition to their pay, he was able to promise them impunity in consultation with the Russian authorities.
Too confident to submit
The Wagner group played a crucial role in Russia’s attempt to completely occupy Ukraine by February 2022. Officially, they are considered a “volunteer battalion”, by which the Russian leadership means that they do not have to take responsibility for their actions.
The mercenaries are extremely brutal, even against renegades from their own ranks. They apparently killed a mercenary who is said to have defected to the Ukrainians with a sledgehammer. Commenting on a video showing the crime, Prigozhin said it was “the death of a dog for a dog”.
In some cases, the Wagner group seems to be better organized and more tightly managed than the state army. She has some military successes, most recently they took the city of Bakhmut after months of fighting.
As a result, Prigozhin’s self-confidence is increasing. He now openly describes Putin’s story that Ukraine posed a threat as a lie.
More and more often he appears in videos in which he blasphemes about the Russian army. Above all, he considers Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov to be incompetent.
Shoigu is one of Putin’s closest confidants. In the past, both have been shown on camping holidays together.
In recent weeks, the Kremlin has tried harder to tame the Wagner troops. First, the group of ammunition shipments was cut off. Then Putin presented a plan according to which all “voluntary” fighters would be incorporated into the official army. The reason: This is the only way they could obtain social benefits from the state. Prigozhin resisted.
According to Prigozhin, Shoigu personally ordered a rocket attack that killed several Wagner mercenaries. Prigozhin then sent men stationed in Ukraine towards Russia. His stated goal is to be handled by Shoigu. For this he will also advance on Moscow, he said.
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