![]() Perhaps it was at this time that Prigozhin discovered an appetite for fame – or at least infamy.īy the time of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Prigozhin was perfectly positioned, and clearly quite eager to use the war for self-promotion. They often included shots with a sledgehammer – a gloating reference to the murder of a prisoner in Syria that the mercenaries filmed. Garish films about Wagner’s exploits were produced. Yet he, along with his mercenaries, came to relish the notoriety. Officially, the private army did not exist and Prigozhin vigorously (and entirely spuriously) sued journalists who reported his links to it. In 2016, attempts to influence the US presidential election were traced back to the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” belonging to Progozhin run out of a St Petersburg office block. Primarily they were fighters – “our business is death, and business is good,” the mercenaries liked to say – but there was always a commercial undertone to their activities often involving gold, oil, or other commodities concessions.Īnd ever the entrepreneur, Prigozhin found other ways to make himself useful to the Kremlin in the “hybrid war” with the West. When fighting in Ukraine dropped off after February 2015, his mercenaries showed up in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Sudan. The regular army didn’t like the uncouth ex-convict, who had zero military experience.īut the idea fitted well with the brand of deniable warfare Putin was pursuing at the time, and the newly formed Wagner group was duly provided with a base in the Rostov region. With the chaotic war in Donbas at its height, he appears to have persuaded Putin to let him run an off-the-books mercenary group filled with ex-soldiers. It was a characteristically opportunistic move. ![]() It was in 2014, with Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine that he made the leap from caterer to warlord. But he was among a handful of shadowy people, most of them from St Petersburg, who Putin trusted and rewarded accordingly if they made themselves useful. ![]() He was not one of the president’s friends, or prominent politically. Over the next two decades “Putin’s Chef” would win multiple lucrative state catering contracts. Putin had been deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s, and once in the Kremlin he brought world leaders including Jacques Chirac and George W Bush to dine at Prigozhin’s floating restaurant. Eventually he diversified into other businesses.īy 2000, Prigozhin was an influential businessman running the most fashionable eateries in town.Īnd he had a patron in the new president. He was soon raking in $1,000 a month – a small fortune in those days. On his release, the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse and he found his feet in the new market economy selling hot dogs at an outdoor market in St Petersburg. It was a fundamentally formative experience that biographers say contributed to his reputation for violence and a short temper. He spent most of the next decade in the brutal environment of a Soviet prison colony. In 1981, when he was 19 and already had several arrests for extremely nasty assaults under his belt, he was jailed. In his late teens, he was drawn into violent crime and robbery. ![]() His father died young and he was raised by his mother and stepfather, who taught him cross country skiing. Born in St Petersburg – then known as Leningrad – in 1961, about a decade after Putin himself was born in the same city - Prigozhin led a rough, outsider’s life that left him prone to bouts of rage and violence.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |