Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group military company. Photo / AP
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group had kept a low profile for years, only acknowledging his force’s existence in September of last year.
For years, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary leader who conducted a brief rebellion against the Russian military, had been a loyal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s.
In recent months, he continued to steer clear of directly criticising Putin, even as he increasingly used social media to lambaste Russia’s military, accusing its leaders of treason and blaming them for failing to provide his forces with enough resources.
But over the past weekend, he assailed the rationale for Putin’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine, sent his forces to seize the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a military hub, and began to move Wagner convoys toward Moscow. Putin mobilised Russian troops to quell what he called an armed rebellion, and the Belarusian president, a Putin ally, negotiated a halt to the Wagner advance.
Here’s a look at Prigozhin’s history and some of the claims he has made:
The United States imposed sanctions against 15 Russian entities, including Prigozhin, for their dealings in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and in Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists seized territory the same year. The Treasury Department targeted businesspeople who were associates of Putin’s or were involved in activities that aided in Russia’s destabilisation of Ukraine.
Prigozhin was one of 13 Russians indicted by a federal grand jury in the United States for interfering in the 2016 presidential election through the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory that spread falsehoods and waged information warfare in support of the campaign of Donald Trump.
Prigozhin publicly acknowledged for the first time that he was the founder of the Wagner mercenary organisation, whose fighters were deployed alongside Russian troops in Ukraine. Previously, Wagner fighters had operated in support of the Kremlin’s military campaigns in Africa and the Middle East, occasionally battling against US forces.
Prigozhin was one of two powerful supporters of Putin’s to publicly turn on Russia’s military leadership after it ordered a retreat from Lyman, a key city in eastern Ukraine, emphasising that the retreat was a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.
Just a day before the US midterms, Prigozhin sardonically boasted that Russia was interfering in the election.
“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will interfere,” Prigozhin said in a statement posted by his catering company. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once.”
At the time, Wagner troops were advancing on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which had been under Russian attack for months.
Prigozhin accused two Russian military leaders of treason in a series of hostile audio messages. He claimed that Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, were withholding ammunition and supplies from his fighters to try to destroy Wagner.
Earlier in the month, Prigozhin said Wagner would no longer recruit fighters from Russian prisons, a practice that had raised criticism from human rights groups but helped fuel Moscow’s advances in eastern Ukraine.
Prigozhin issued a series of inflammatory statements. He once again accused Russia’s military bureaucracy of starving Wagner forces of necessary ammunition and threatened to withdraw them from Bakhmut. Days later, he appeared to backtrack on that threat after saying he had been promised more arms.
Late in the month, Wagner forces said they had captured Bakhmut, a claim it had made previously as well. Ukrainian officials quickly denied the claim, but days later, they acknowledged the loss of the city. Russian state media kept Prigozhin’s name out of its coverage of those events.
Earlier in the month, Prigozhin dismissed a report from The Washington Post saying that leaked intelligence showed he had offered to share Russian army positions with Ukraine.
Tensions between Prigozhin and Russia’s military rose higher. Prigozhin said Wagner would not comply with an order that would require it to sign a formal contract with Russia’s defence ministry by July.
The feud rapidly escalated June 16, when Prigozhin released a 30-minute video in which he described his country’s invasion of Ukraine as a “racket” perpetrated by a corrupt elite chasing money and glory without concern for Russian lives. He also challenged the Kremlin’s claim that Kyiv had been on the verge of attacking Russian-backed separatist territory in Ukraine’s east when Russia invaded.
“The war wasn’t needed to return Russian citizens to our bosom, nor to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine,” Prigozhin said, referring to Putin’s initial justifications for the war. “The war was needed so that a bunch of animals could simply exult in glory.”
Prigozhin also accused Shoigu of orchestrating a deadly attack with missiles and helicopters on camps to the rear of the Russian lines in Ukraine, where his soldiers were bivouacked.
The Russian defence ministry denied the allegations, saying in a statement that the messages Prigozhin had posted about supposed strikes on Wagner camps “do not correspond to reality.” His account of the attacks remains unconfirmed.
Putin mobilised Russian troops Saturday to defend Moscow from what he called an armed rebellion by Prigozhin, whose forces had claimed control of Rostov-on-Don and were seen moving north along a highway toward the Russian capital. Then, in a surprise turn of events, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, said he had secured Prigozhin’s agreement to halt his forces’ advance. Prigozhin confirmed that he was turning his forces around.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that Prigozhin would flee to Belarus and that Russia’s military operations in Ukraine would continue unchanged.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Gaya Gupta
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