- Yevgeny Prigozhin is a Russian tycoon with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- He founded the Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have played a crucial role in the Ukraine conflict.
- After his failed coup in June, he was exiled. In August, he was reportedly a passenger on a plane that crashed in Russia.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of a Russian mercenary group known as Wagner, has played an active role in the war in Ukraine.
Wagner was formed in 2014, but Prigozhin only claimed to be the founder of the group in September last year.
The group is not a legally-registered entity and mercenaries are illegal under Russian law, according to The Times. But it is still seen as a de-facto private military service for the Kremlin.
According to the BBC, Wagner troops were first deployed during Russia's annexation of Crimea. Wagner also sent soldiers throughout Africa and the Middle East, according to The Times. UN investigators accused the group of committing war crimes in 2021.
While Prigozhin has played an active role in the war, he has increasingly criticized Putin for not supplying his troops with enough ammo. He vowed earlier this month to pull his troops from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the site of one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Russian invasion.
Prigozhin has previously been described as one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest allies.
Prigozhin does not hold any official government position but became a confidant to the Russian leader for many years, even in matters of state affairs.
Before becoming Putin's friend and amassing his wealth, Prigozhin served several years in a Russian penal colony.
Born on June 1, 1961, in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Russia, Prigozhin was convicted of assault, robbery, and fraud in 1981, according to court documents obtained by Meduza, an independent Russian publication.
He was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony but was released in nine years around the fall of the Soviet Union.
According to The New York Times, Prigozhin started his foray into the food business soon after his release by opening up a hot dog stand.
He then opened a convenience store before he started a chain of restaurants with a few partners in St. Petersburg.
His relationship with Putin began after Prigozhin set up a catering business, which frequently served the Russian leader, earning him the nickname "Putin's chef."
Prigozhin founded one of his major companies, Concord Catering, in 1996 as he started his restaurant business, Wired reported.
According to The Times, he soon earned the nickname of "Putin's chef."
It's unclear when he received the moniker, but over the next decade, Prigozhin's catering business received lucrative government contracts to feed Russia's schools and military, as well as an opportunity to host state banquets.
Concord Catering served at the inaugurations of Dmitri A. Medvedev and Putin, the New York Times reported. Putin would also celebrate his birthdays at Prigozhin's restaurants.
The state contracts in a span of five years were reported to be worth $3.1 billion, according to an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Foundation that was cited by The Times.
Prigozhin also heads up other companies and financed one that has been accused of meddling with the US election.
As well as his catering business, Prigozhin is publicly known to have founded Concord Management and Consulting Company and started his own online news service, according to The Times.
A 2018 indictment from the Justice Department also alleged that Prigozhin financed a so-called troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency.
The indictment, which included 12 other Russians and Prigozhin's Concord catering and consulting businesses, alleged that the Internet Research Agency "engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes."
The company did so in part by creating "false US personas" and operating social media pages discussing politics and social issues.
Prigozhin previously denied his involvement, but on November 7, 2022, he admitted to interfering in Western elections in a post on the Russian social media site VKontakte.
"We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere," Prigozhin said. "Carefully, accurately, surgically, and in our own way, as we know how to do."
"During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once," Prigozhin added, alluding to the surgical-like nature of the operation.
Over the decades, the oligarch has earned the ear of Putin. When Putin's invasion of Ukraine faltered, Prigozhin told him where he was going wrong.
With his control of the Wagner mercenary group, he's also been an influential player during Russia's war in Ukraine.
But as reports of Russia's losses in Ukraine circulated in September last year, Prigozhin expressed misgivings about the Kremlin's management of the war to Putin, the Washington Post reported at the time.
Prigozhin denied the report to The Post and said that he "did not criticize the management of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during the conflict in Ukraine."
But Prigozhin has previously expressed criticism against the country's military leadership.
When the Chechen Republic's head, Ramzan Kadyrov, called out a Russian commander and senior officers after Russia was forced out of Lyman in Ukraine, Prigozhin echoed those critiques, according to BBC.
As Russia's invasion of Ukraine wore on, Prigozhin began recruiting convicts to serve in the Wagner Group, and by extension help the Kremlin in its fight.
In September 2022, footage emerged of a man strongly resembling Prigozhin addressing convicts in a Russian prison yard.
In it, the man offered a deal: fight for the Wagner Group in Ukraine for six months, and you get a pardon. Those who sign up and then run away will be executed, he said.
—Dmitri (@wartranslated) September 14, 2022The video echoed reporting by The Wall Street Journal that Wagner was recruiting fighters from Russian prisons, something that was later confirmed by Russian state media.
In January this year, Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti shared footage of what it described as Prigozhin releasing his first batch of convicts from service.
He told the newly-pardoned men that society should respect them — and casually warned them against committing new crimes, like rape.
"Don't drink, don't use drugs, don't rape broads, behave yourselves," he said.
Prigozhin's threat that he would punish any recruited prisoner who deserted was chillingly backed up in November 2022.
Video emerged of the brutal killing of a man who identified himself as Yevgeny Nuzhin, and who said he had signed up to serve with Wagner as a prisoner but then surrendered to Ukraine. He said he was told he would face retribution.
It is unclear who committed the execution.
Prigozhin acknowledged the video by calling Nuzhin a "traitor" in a statement that celebrated the man's death.
But in February 2023, Prigozhin announced that he was stopping the recruitment of prisoners. Several reports emerged that many convicts refused to join because they were worried they would simply for used as "cannon fodder" in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said in a Telegram statement that the mercenary organization had "completely" stopped recruiting prisoners. He offered no explanation for this.
A prisoner in Russia's Tula region told the independent Russian media outlet Meduza in a report that inmates no longer want "even to discuss the possibility" of joining the war in Ukraine.
In February, Prigozhin said the number of Wagner units "will decrease," saying that the group "will also not be able to carry out the scope of tasks that we would like to."
Source: Insider, The Guardian
The announcement also sparked rumors about a growing rift between Prigozhin and Putin after the Wagner Group grabbed headlines.
Russian state media have been told by the Kremlin to stop promoting Prigozhin and his group, according to Reuters.
"The position of the (Kremlin) political bloc is not to let him into politics. They are a little afraid of him and find him an inconvenient person," Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin advisor, told Reuters.
But Prigozhin assured a Russian interviewer that he had "zero" political ambitions.
Source: Reuters
Prigozhin has also been taking credit for Wagner's efforts to secure some territorial gains, particularly in the battles in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
In January, Wagner claimed victory in the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar, only for the Ministry of Defense to later say it was Russian soldiers who took the town.
"They are constantly trying to steal victory from the Wagner PMC [Private Military Company] and talk about the presence of the unknown, only to belittle their merits," Prigozhin said in a statement published by the press service of Concord on its Telegram channel.
Source: Politico
This has irked some military officials, including Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who feels like he's being compared to Prigozhin, an intelligence report said.
In March, Russia released a video of Shoigu meeting soldiers on a rare visit to Ukraine.
An intelligence report by the British Ministry of Defence said the video was published possibly "in response to recent footage of [Prigozhin] visiting his fighters on the front line."
"Wagner is in a high-profile dispute with the Russian Ministry of Defence and Shoigu is likely sensitive to being compared to Prigozhin," the briefing said.
Last month, Prighozin also attacked Shoigu's son-in-law for apparently liking a series of anti-war posts on social media, calling him a "Z-lowlife," The Daily Beast reported.
Source: British Ministry of Defence
Prigozhin published photos of the corpses of dozens of Wagner troops in Bakhmut and directly blamed Shoigu and the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov for their deaths.
Prigozhin said that all of the mercenaries were killed on February 21, 2023, and that their deaths could have been avoided if Russia's Defense Ministry would have provided them with ammunition.
Russia denied his claims.
"All statements allegedly made by assault units on shell shortages are absolutely untrue," it said in a statement published by the BBC. They did not name either Prigozhin or the Wagner group.
But the public feud has led Putin to slowly distance himself from his former friend.
In a message on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said that all of his direct lines to the Kremlin have stopped responding.
"To get me to stop asking for ammunition, all the hotlines to office, to departments, etc., have been cut off from me," Prigozhin said, per a translation from CNN.
"But the real humdinger is that they've also blocked agencies from making decisions," Prigozhin added, per CNN.
Source: Insider
In May, the feud came to a tipping point when Prigozhin went ballistic on the Kremlin in an expletive-laden video.
In the video, released on Telegram, Wagner complained that the mercenary group was running short of ammunition.
"We have a 70% ammo shortage! Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where the [beep] is the ammo?" he said in the video.
He also said that Russian military leaders, like Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, would "have their insides eaten in hell."
"You animals are hanging out in expensive clubs," Prigozhin continued. "Your children are enjoying their lives, making videos for YouTube. Do you think that you are the masters of this life and that you have the right to control their lives?"
Source: Insider
Leaked documents also suggested that Prigozhin offered Ukrainians the locations of invading troops in exchange for sparing his mercenaries in January.
The documents, first reported on by The Washington Post, said that the Wagner leader proposed sharing Russian intelligence with Kyiv in exchange for territory around Bakhmut on multiple occasions.
One Ukrainian official told the Post that Kyiv leaders, skeptical of his objectives, declined.
Prigozhin has since denied the reports, saying in an audio statement: "Who is behind this? I think that either some journalists decided to hype, or comrades from Rublyovka have now decided to make up a beautiful, planted story," CNN reported.
In June, Prigozhin claimed that his Wagner fighters have seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, including "all military facilities," in an apparent armed rebellion.
Fighters from the Wagner Group entered the southern Russian city after crossing the border from Ukraine, with Prigozhin saying that they would "destroy" anyone who stood in their way.
Addressing the news on June 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the group's actions were a "betrayal" and constituted "treason."
"Those who mutiny have betrayed Russia and I urge anybody involved in it to cease any kind of participation in armed conflict," he said, per a translation by The Telegraph.
Putin has since ramped up security in Moscow, with both the National Guard and riot police called in to defend key government buildings and transport infrastructure, according to Sky News.
Prigozhin has denied that his troops are carrying out a coup, saying that it was a "march for justice."
Editor's note: This list was first published in October 2022 and has been updated to reflect recent developments.
Prigozhin's whereabouts after the coup were all over the place.
Prigozhin's whereabouts were murky since he agreed to the exile. After calling off his troops on June 24, he had a face-to-face meeting with Putin five days later.
In early July, he was spotted in St. Petersburg, and then rumoredly in Moscow, before disappearing and then reappearing in Belarus on July 19.
In a video apparently filmed at the group's exile camp, Prigozhin said Wagner had the "biggest job in the world coming up," possible a "new journey to Africa," and wouldn't be returning to Russia or Ukraine until "we are confident that we will not be forced to shame ourselves."
Prigozhin was also spotted attending Russia's critical summit with African leaders, an unclear sign of his role in Russian foreign and military relations.
In late August, Prigozhin was reportedly among those on a private jet that crashed in Russia.
On August 23, Russian state media reported that Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed in Russia.
Everyone was killed in the crash, but it's not immediately clear if he was on board.
If Prigozhin did die, he could join a long list of people Putin is suspected of having killed.
Editor's note: This list was first published in October 2022 and has been updated to reflect recent developments.
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