2023-06-24 10:11:11
Vladimir Putin accuses him of having planted a “stab in the back”. The leader of Wagner paramilitary groupEvguéni Prigojine, called his men to an uprising once morest the Russian military command, Friday, June 23, which he accuses of having bombarded his men.
The former protege of the Russian president has since claimed to have taken control of military sites in the city of Rostov, a key center for the Russian assault on theUkraine, and once more accused the army of lying to citizens. “A large number of territories” conquered in Ukraine “are lost” and “many soldiers are killed”, he hammered.
For months, Yevgeny Prigojine has openly criticized the military “establishment”, going so far as to ask his “protector”, Vladimir Putin, to carry out “Stalinist purges” in the administration. France 24 retraces the career of this warlord of Vladimir Putin who became public enemy number one in the Kremlin.
Prigojine, from shadow to light
This close adviser to the Russian president – they both grew up in Saint Petersburg and have known each other for twenty years – has always been presented as both the “cook” of the master of the Kremlin and his man of the dirty works.
The first nickname comes to him from his past as a restaurateur. He met Vladimir Putin in 2001 when he owned one of the most prominent restaurants in Saint Petersburg. Legend has it that Vladimir Putin, newly elected president, opted for his establishment in order to impress his guest of the day : Jacques Chirac.
Yevgeny Prigozhin then followed his new mentor to Moscow, where he became the good little soldier tasked with carrying out the Kremlin’s most unmentionable tasks, both domestically and internationally. But nothing might be attributed to him officially, as Putin’s “chief” acted behind the scenes, fleeing the spotlight as much as possible.
Before the war in Ukraine, he was mainly considered to be the founder of the Wagner group – a detachment of mercenaries whose very existence was denied by Moscow – and to be the boss of the Internet Research Agency, the notorious ‘troll factory’ credited with being central to 2016 US presidential campaign influence operation. But there once more, Evguéni Prigojine refused to be associated with it, even threatening legal proceedings for those who claimed the contrary.
Read alsoBehind the scenes of Russia’s troll factory, the Internet Research Agency
But that was before the start, on February 24, of a “special military operation” which never ceases to come up once morest Ukrainian resistance. Since then, the man in the shadows has turned into a media beast who confesses and claims almost everything.
The Wagner group? It is indeed him, and he hastened to open an official office of this agency of mercenaries in Saint-Petersburg, Friday November 4th. Chief troll in Russia? Him once more. On the eve of the 2022 midterm elections in the United States, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Gone also are the days when Putin’s henchman acted in silence. He appears on Telegram to applaud, Monday, November 14, the brutal murder of a deserter by his mercenaries from the Wagner group.
He also called for the arrest of Alexander Beglov, the governor of Saint Petersburg. The two men have been fighting behind the scenes for years over dark public procurement stories. But this time, Yevgeny Prigojine made the confrontation public by accusing Alexander Beglov of all the evils: he would lead an “organized crime network” in Saint Petersburg, but would also regularly promote “Ukrainian nationalism”.
The revenge of the violent “gangster”
This new posture of Evguéni Prigojine “is both surprising, because he spent so much time denying everything, and completely understandable”, affirms Stephen Hall, specialist in Russia at the University of Bath (England). ).
As the disappointments of the Russian army progress, “the security and technocratic apparatus in place has lost credibility in the eyes of Vladimir Putin, and Yevgeny Prigojine wants to take advantage of this to increase his political influence”, summarizes Jeff Hawn, specialist in security issues in Russia and external consultant for the New Lines Institute, an American center for geopolitical research.
Indeed, despite the countless portraits of the “head of Putin” published which depict him as an intimate of the master of the Kremlin, “he was never in the first circle of political advisers”, underlines Stephen Hall.
Evguéni Prigojine does not have the right profile. He never passed through the Communist Party before the fall of the wall, has no relay in the intelligence services and has no political support apart from Vladimir Putin. “He’s a Russian self-made man, which is like saying he’s a gangster who got rich by being more ruthless than the others,” says Jeff Hawn. He was sentenced to prison in his youth for robbery and belonging to organized crime.
A perfect CV to put on the clothes of Vladimir Putin’s henchman, but less so to wear the costume of a respectable political adviser who counts. Except that the war has reshuffled the cards “and Prigojine sees it as an opportunity to demonstrate that it is his methods that work best”, assures Stephen Hall.
The increasingly public positions of the ex-man in the shadows “are the signal of a turf war taking place behind the scenes of power,” says Jeff Hawn.
In this regard, the opening of an office of the Wagner group in St. Petersburg is not only an officialization of the existence of these mercenaries. “It is also walking on the toes of the intelligence services which tolerated the actions of these mercenaries as long as they acted in Africa or in Ukraine, but not on the national territory considered as their preserve”, explains Jeff Hawn.
Survive with or without Poutine
But Yevgeni Prigojine’s efforts to impose himself on the media scene “at the same time allowed him to begin to distance himself from Vladimir Putin,” said Stephen Hall. It is a kind of life insurance that he is trying to put in place in case the president does not politically survive the war in Ukraine. “As long as he is simply perceived as an executor of Vladimir Putin, the fate of the latter will also be his,” says Jeff Hawn.
If he multiplied the accusations once morest the Russian military command, Evguéni Prigojine was always careful not to criticize Vladimir Putin. The Russian president had adopted the same strategy, turning a deaf ear, in public, to the repeated provocations of his protege. A status quo that paid off on the ground with the capture, in May 2023, of the city of Bakhmout by Wagner’s forces. But by declaring war on the army command, Yevgeny Prigojine has reached the point of no return.
Denouncing a “stab in the back” from the one who has long been his protege, whose name he never mentioned during his speech on television, the Russian president promised on Friday an “implacable” response. ” once morest the perpetrators of the mutiny.
1687610845
#Yevgeny #Prigojine #Putins #cook #turned #enemy #Kremlin
