Who is Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin?

I’ve already done it They criticized the country’s military leadership Because of his failures in the war in Ukraine, he is known for his long conflict with the Ministry of Defense.

A look at the role of the 62-year-old Prigozhin and Wagner in the war:

What did Prigozhin say?

Prigozhin released a series of angry video and audio recordings accusing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a missile attack Friday on the Wagner field camps in Ukraine, where his forces are fighting on behalf of Russia.

Prigozhin said that his troops would now punish Shoigu in armed rebellion and urged the army not to offer resistance.

Prigozhin declared: “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice.”

The Ministry of Defense denied carrying out the missile attack.

The National Counter-Terrorism Committee, part of the Federal Security Services, or FSB, said he would be investigated for advocating armed rebellion.

The FSB urged Wagner’s contract soldiers to arrest Prigozhin and refuse to follow his “criminal and treacherous orders”. It described his remarks as a “stab in the back for Russian forces” and said they amounted to provoking an armed conflict in Russia.

Riot police and the National Guard rushed to tighten security at key facilities in Moscow, including government agencies and transport infrastructure, Tass reported.

What is Prigozhin’s background?

Prigozhin was convicted of robbery and assault in 1981, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. After his release, he opened a restaurant business in Saint Petersburg in the 1990s. In this capacity, he became acquainted with President Vladimir Putin, and then the vice-mayor of the city.

Prigozhin used this connection to develop a catering business and win lucrative contracts for the Russian government that earned him the nickname “Putin’s Chef”. It later expanded into other areas, including the media and the infamous internet “troll factory” that led to him being accused in the United States of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In January, Prigozhin acknowledged founding, leading, and financing the shadowy Wagner Company.

WHERE WAS WAGNER RUN?

Wagner was first seen operating in eastern Ukraine shortly after the separatist conflict There broke out in April 2014In the weeks following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

While Russia has supported the separatist rebellion in Donbass, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Russia has denied sending its weapons and troops there despite ample evidence to the contrary. Engaging private contractors in the fighting allowed Moscow to maintain a degree of deniability.

Prigozhin’s company was named Wagner after the surname of its first commander, Dmitry Utkin, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Russian Army Special Forces. It quickly established a reputation for Brutality and cruelty.

Wagner personnel too spread in SyriaRussia supported the government of President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war. in LybiaThey fought alongside the forces of Commander Khalifa Haftar. The group also works in Central African Republic and Mali.

Prigozhin reportedly used Wagner’s reach in Syria and African countries to secure lucrative mining contracts. US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said in January that the company was using its access to gold and other resources In Africa To finance operations in Ukraine.

Some Russian media have alleged that Wagner was involved in the 2018 killing of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic who were investigating the group’s activities. The killings remain unsolved.

What is Wagner’s reputation?

Western countries and UN experts have accused Wagner’s mercenaries of committing human rights abuses across Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.

In 2021, the European Union accused the group of “gross human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings”, and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

The video surfaced to show some of the activities that contributed to Wagner’s fearsome reputation.

An online video from 2017 showed a group of armed men, said to be on contract with Wagner, torturing a Syrian, beating him to death with a sledgehammer before mutilating and burning his body. The Russian authorities ignored requests from the media and human rights activists to investigate.

In 2022, another video showed a former Wagner contractor being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer after he allegedly fled to the Ukrainian side and was repatriated. Despite public outrage and demands for an investigation, the Kremlin turned a blind eye.

What is the role of WAGNER in Ukraine?

Wagner took over An increasingly visible role In the war the Russian regular forces suffered severe attrition and lost territory in humiliating setbacks.

Prigozhin toured Russian prisons to recruit fighters, promising amnesty if they survived a half-year tour of front service with Wagner.

In the May interview, he said that he had recruited 50,000 convicts, of whom about 10,000 were killed in Bakhmut; A similar number of his fighters died.

He said he had 50,000 men at his disposal “at the best of times”, with 35,000 on the front lines at all times. He did not say whether these numbers included convicts.

The United States estimated that Wagner had about 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts. Nearly half of the 20,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine since December are Wagner soldiers in Bakhmut, a US official said.

The United States estimates that Wagner spends about $100 million a month fighting. In December, Washington accused North Korea of ​​supplying weapons to the Russian company, including missiles and rockets, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Both Wagner and North Korea denied the reports.

How did Prigozhin criticize the Russian army?

If the US accusation is correct, Wagner’s access to North Korean weapons may reflect its long-running dispute with the Russian military leadership, dating back to the company’s creation.

Prigozhin took full credit in January for the capture of the salt-mining town of Solidar in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and accused Russia’s defense ministry of trying to steal Wagner’s glory. He repeatedly complained that the Russian army had failed to provide Wagner with sufficient ammunition to capture Bakhmut and threatened to withdraw his men.

Allegedly Wagner contract forces in Ukraine recorded a video in which they hurled insults at the chief of the Russian Army’s General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, and accused them of not providing ammunition.

Prigozhin also singled out Shoigu for his harsh criticism of the Russian military leaders of incompetence. His repeated complaints are unprecedented for Russia’s tightly controlled political system, where only Putin can make such criticisms.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said last month that Prigozhin’s remarks critical of the war “could be kind of a shocking way for him … to claim credit for everything they’ve been able to achieve on Bakhmut, but also try to publicly embarrass the Department of Defense.” More than that the cost was borne in blood and treasure by Wagner, not the Russian army.

Once an obscure figure, Prigozhin increasingly raised his public profile, bragging almost daily about Wagner’s alleged victories, satirically mocking his enemies and complaining about the military officers.

When asked recently about a media comparison between himself and Grigori Rasputin, a mystic who gained murderous influence over Russia’s last tsar by claiming to have the power to cure his son’s hemophilia, Prigozhin stunned, “I don’t stop for blood, but I shed the blood of our motherland’s enemies.”