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Less than a month after he trembled out of the Kremlin as his Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, photos of Yevgeny Prigozhin in his underwear in a tent have been leaked to the internet amid a campaign to discredit the exiled mutineer.
When Vladimir Putin – whose power many believe has been severely weakened by the popular mercenary boss’s armed uprising – was about to insist that Wagner never really existed, pictures of a disheveled-looking Mr. Prigozhin in a semi-naked state appeared on Telegram.
In the latest bizarre twist in the saga, the president insisted to the Kommersant newspaper on Friday that the private military company as a legal entity “simply does not exist” under Russian law – while his emboldened ally Alexander Lukashenko claimed that some of the exiles “simply did not exist”. “. Mercenaries now trained the Belarusian military.
While the latter’s remarks indicated that at least part of the agreement reached by Mr Lukashenko and Mr Prigozhin to relocate him and his fighters to Belarus was put into effect, their armed advance was less than 125 miles from Moscow last month stopped, consistent with efforts to undermine the mercenary leader appeared to be continuing.
Just days after a pro-Kremlin media outlet allegedly published photos confiscated during a raid on Mr Prigozhin’s St Petersburg mansion, showing him in various bizarre disguises including long wigs and clip-on beards, a new image began to surface on Russian social media on Friday circulate .
The picture appears to show Mr Prigozhin sitting in a Y-fronted tent and wearing a T-shirt, sparking further speculation about his whereabouts after weeks of uncertainty.
In claims that seem consistent with Minsk’s claim that Wagner fighters are instructing the Belarusian military at a camp near Osipovichi — about 50 miles from the capital — the pro-Russian Telegram account that first published the image claimed its Metadata showed it was taken on July 12, according to surveillance group Belarusian Gayun, which noted similarities to other photos from the camp.
The floorboards in the tent appear to match those in photos taken during an official tour of the formerly disused Osipovichi camp last week. Satellite images from Radio Free Europe and the BBC apparently showed dozens of newly erected tents and other structures.
Leaked image of Yevgeny Prigozhin fuels further speculation about his whereabouts
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Despite the activities at the camp and the possible presence of Mr. Prigozhin, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had told reporters as recently as Tuesday that the alliance had seen “no deployment or movement of Wagner troops to Belarus.”
Despite being a long-loved foreign policy tool of his own creation, Putin appears to have been desperate to expose the private military company whose militants took over the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and threatened Moscow last month.
In what he described as “high treason” the aborted mutiny, the Russian president acted cautiously in a televised address last month, in which he claimed the mercenaries – whose reputation on the battlefield in Ukraine enhanced their domestic popularity have – been “tricked into a criminal adventure”, without specifically referring to those under Mr. Prigozhin.
Putin criticized what he described as “a stab in the back of the troops and people of Russia,” but stressed that Wagner troops are free to join the Russian military, return to their families, or leave Russia for Belarus.
Putin appeals to Russian public after Wagner mutiny
The extraordinary mutiny came after Wagner withdrew from Bakhmut, which it had seized from Ukraine after months of bloody attrition in the front-line city of Donetsk, with Mr Prigozhin frequently venting his anger at an alleged lack of ammunition and coordination on the part of Russian military leaders to had expressed.
The 62-year-old’s scathing criticism surprised many observers given its apparent disregard for the Kremlin’s typically rigid stance on the narrative of its war in Ukraine, and was widely interpreted as a sign of the former convict’s growing political prominence in Russia.
A former hot dog vendor, Mr. Prigozhin rose to fame when he gained the attention and favor of the Russian President as a restaurant owner. Both men grew up in St. Petersburg.
He benefited from large government loans while expanding his business under Mr Putin’s supervision. He received millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals for public schools, the Kremlin and the Russian military – and in doing so also caught the attention of the anti-corruption foundation of imprisoned opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
Yevgeny Prigozhin captured the city of Rostov-on-Don last month
(PRIGOZHIN PRESS SERVICE)
Mr. Prigozhin claimed to have spent ten years in prison during the Soviet Union’s final turmoil, reportedly after violently abducting a woman he choked unconscious, and received permission from Putin to found Wagner in 2014, despite the Russian constitution providing for such groups prohibited.
After successes in Donbass and Syria, while also fighting for lucrative sums of money and assets for national leaders and warlords in Africa, Wagner became a household name during the Ukraine war because of his relative prestige compared to the ailing Russian military – and his apparent Brutality.
While Mr. Prigozhin’s prison recruitment campaign fueling “human wave” attacks is credited largely for Wagner’s gains at Bakhmut, footage has also circulated of his fighters beating a suspected deserter to death with a sledgehammer, symbolism that Mr Prigozhin has now taken over himself.
After long searching for a plausible denial of the Wagner issue to discredit Mr. Prigozhin after his short-lived mutiny, Mr. Putin reversed his position by attempting to assume ultimate responsibility for the group by insisting that the wages of the fighters came from state coffers.