Russian mercenary leader, oligarch, restaurateur, former owner of Wagner PVC (1961–2023)
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (Alternatively: Yevgeniy Vicktorovich Prigozhin, Russian: Евгений Викторович Пригожин; 1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian oligarch and former close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was nicknamed "Putin's chef" because his restaurants and catering businesses hosted dinners which Putin attended with foreign dignitaries. Prigozhin controlled a network of companies including Wagner Group, a Russian state-backed mercenary group operating in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine; and three companies accused of interference in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections. Prigozhin long denied any connection to Wagner, however, a video in September 2022 showed Prigozhin in a Mari El prison recruiting inmates, promising them freedom if they served six months with the Wagner Group. On 26 September 2022, Prigozhin further admitted that he had founded the Wagner Group specifically to support Russian forces in the War in Donbas, in May 2014. Prigozhin also long denied his role in Russian interference in U.S. elections, but in November 2022, he admitted his role in such operations, saying they would continue. Prigozhin himself spent nine years as a convict in prisons in the Soviet Union. According to an investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, and Der Spiegel, Prigozhin's operations "are tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU". Prigozhin, his companies and associates face economic sanctions and criminal charges in the United States. In June 2023, he launched a short-lived rebellion against Russian Armed Forces, but a truce was agreed within 24 hours negotiated by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and it was said Prigozhin would move to the country.
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Prigozhin has earned a reputation as the cruellest commander among those leading Russia's grim invasion [of Ukraine]. He appeared to tacitly endorse a video showing the murder, with a sledgehammer, of a Wagner defector who had apparently been handed back by the Ukrainians in a prisoner exchange. "A dog’s death for a dog," Prigozhin said in a statement at the time.
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In recent months Prigozhin, former robber, convict, hot-dog seller, entrepreneur, Putin chef, Kremlin caterer, supplier of food to the Russian army, state-sponsored troll farmer, Trump and Brexit booster, who as recently as 2021 avoided attention and denied his involvement with Wagner, has pushed himself into the limelight. This is partly the result of the role Wagner has played in battles with the Ukrainian army in the small towns north-west of Donetsk, where well-equipped, experienced veterans of Russia's recent interventions in Africa and the Middle East alternate with squads of convicts used as human consumables to absorb Ukrainian fire with their bodies. And it’s also down to Prigozhin’s adept use of the social media platform Telegram to promote his evolving brand: the ruthless patriot, the rueful butcher, the hands-on manager of the people’s dirty work.
I will answer you very subtly, and delicately and I apologize, I will allow a certain ambiguity. Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere [...] Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.
«Если мы воюем дальше, надо объявлять мобилизацию уже сейчас», Meduza (31 May 2023)
Soon, he was cooking up a lot of trouble: His Internet Research Agency became a tool of Russian disinformation, helping to attack the 2016 U.S. election, and his Wagner Group became a tool for Putin to project power in Africa and the Middle East with a patina of implausible deniability. When Putin decided in 2014 to seize Crimea and foment an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Wagner — full of former special forces operatives from the Russian military — was one of the instruments he used.
Wagner Group is currently the best army in the world. Of course, out of propriety, I have to say that the next best one is the Russian army, but I think the Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies. They’re highly organized and highly trained, they have good intelligence, and they have a diverse arsenal. They work equally well on any systems, whether Soviet ones or NATO ones.
Then there will be a hard war. I don't know how long it will last. If you do it right, then my forecast is to liberate Donbas in two years, to reach Kiev in three or four. If we mobilize the whole of society now, turn on the production of all ammunition, weapons and everything that is required, make planned production, declare a general mobilization. After all, when we come to mobilization, the mobilized will again prepare for an hour and then go to the front.