The challenge is huge. Years ago, before Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, he was known as Putin’s cook. Because Yevgeny Prigozhin, a petty criminal from St. Petersburg convicted of robbery, amassed his great fortune from his restaurant business and above all from his connections with Vladimir Putin, whom he had met in the city on the Neva and so on, got him juicy tenders and public orders. Prigozhin, who later became warlord of the Wagner mercenary company and played a key role in the invasion of Ukraine and many other conflicts as the unofficial armed wing of the Kremlin (until it fought Kiev), had always served Putin faithfully.
This Saturday crossed the line. It was after a long and pivotal night for Russia that Prigozhin launched a rebellion against Defense Ministry leadership and its chief, Sergei Shoigu, with whom he has maintained a rivalry for years, exacerbated by fighting in Ukraine , and whom he accused on Friday of attacking his rear camps.
The mercenary chief has dared to contradict the Russian president after Vladimir Putin made an angry speech accusing him of “stabbing the country in the back” with his rebellion and promising “brutal” consequences. “The President is deeply mistaken,” Prigozhin claimed in an audio message on one of his Telegram channels. “Wagner fighters are true patriots.” And now that Putin has spoken, the uprising, the mutiny, already has the connotation of a military coup.
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It’s a point of no return for Prigozhin, who until now has claimed to show loyalty to no one but Putin. Wagner’s boss showed his most ruthless face in Ukraine, where he expanded his revenge legend and accused the defense leadership of sending regular soldiers to the “meat grinder” while they sat comfortably in Moscow with money to be used for military campaigns. But he always tries to prevent anyone from forgetting his humble beginnings to get in touch with those he has been trying to recruit.
hot dog
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Born in 1961 when St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad, he started his business with a hot dog stand in the Neva city in the early 1990s and took advantage of the turbulent collapse of the Soviet Union to break into the top gastronomy of the modern Russian elite . This elite included Putin, who was already involved in politics and, after his way through the KGB (secret services), began to rise in the administration of St. Petersburg.
Putin was the big supporter of Prigozhin and his companies. Even as President of Russia, he often went to dinner at Prigozhin’s luxurious restaurant Staraya Tamozhnia, a floating facility on the Neva. He even took the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, or the Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshiro Mori, there. But at a Putin birthday party in 2003, where Prigozhin provided the catering, Putin’s (ironic) moniker “Chef” was born. Since then, he has remained close to the Kremlin, although he never took notice of the elites, who saw him as an outsider, a hillbilly, someone from the lower class who is simply useful to the regime (until he ceases to be). And so it has been – with certain setbacks in Ukraine – until now.
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The troll factory
Prigozhin became a millionaire thanks to gastronomy, a business for which he had complaints of poor quality and poisoning in a Russia where the powerful are almost never convicted of their crimes and those who report them are punished. He was also the backer of the so-called “troll factory,” which has been accused of interfering in Western election campaigns, including the American one in 2016 that ultimately gave victory to Republican magnate Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the mercenary company Wagner, whose parent company was a covert unit of the Russian army that began its transformation into a private military company in 2014 with the war in Donbass and the invasion of Crimea, was expanding. Since then it has deployed its mercenaries in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali and again in Ukraine.
During the full-blown war in Ukraine, Wagner – who never officially existed on paper and who included Prigozhin since Russia banned mercenaries – ceased operations in complete obscurity. It went from being the hidden paramilitary arm of the Kremlin to a tool that was not only highly visible, but also a key element in several of the few conquests made by Russian forces, such as those in Donbass.
Defense Ministry leadership has always been concerned about Prigozhin’s power, but Putin has allowed it to grow by capitalizing on internal conflicts that were previously fought out in private and are now played out in public. In recent months, Wagner’s boss has raised the tone against Minister Shoigu, approaching the point of no return this Friday and Saturday when his mercenaries took over the official buildings of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, with the Promises to do so are marched on Moscow if their demands to release Shoigu are not met.
Wagner assures that his men are already on their way to the capital and that the support of the Kremlin by the National Guard and security forces will be crucial in the next few hours. Prigozhin does not have the support of the elite and the intentions of others like him will depend on his luck.
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