Saturday 26 August 2023

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin went from mercenary warlord to coup leader. Then came his spectacular fall from grace.

Extract from ABC News

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Once a petty criminal who served time in a Russian penal colony for stealing a woman's boots off her feet, Yevgeny Prigozhin is now better known as the man who dared to cross Putin.

While his death is yet to be confirmed, he is believed to have been on a plane that went down in a Russian field on Wednesday local time.

It was a chance meeting with Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s that changed the course of his life, and may have played a role in his murky end.

As one of the Kremlin's favourites, he became an oligarch and then the chief executive of a private military company.

Vladimir Putin, George Bush and other guests sit at a round dinner table inside a boat. A man in a suit watches on
Russian president Vladimir Putin, US president George Bush and other guests at a dinner at New Island restaurant in St Petersburg in May, 2002.(Kremlin)

At his career peak, he was regarded as the saviour of Russia's disastrous campaign in Ukraine.

But Prigozhin had a lifelong habit of pushing things a step too far.

Earlier this year, he "had a meltdown", as he put it, sending his Wagner mercenaries towards Moscow as part of a rebellion against the Russian military.

A hastily-arranged deal ended the weekend of madness in June, allowing Putin to save face.

In what was seen as an extraordinary capitulation to a man he deemed a "traitor", Putin allowed Prigozhin to go free.

For two months, these former allies have circled each other.

Despite representing the greatest threat to Putin's power in his two decades in charge, Prigozhin flew around Russia with seeming impunity.

That was until this week when a plane came crashing down on a lonely field in Tver Oblas.

While it is unclear exactly what happened to Prigozhin, rumours are swirling that the man responsible for his rise may also be behind his very public fall.

From petty crime to hotdog salesman

Prigozhin's journey began, like so many of Vladimir Putin's inner circle, in Leningrad, now known as St Petersburg, in 1961.

While much of his background remains a mystery, he told reporters he was raised by a single mother after his father died when he was young.

He spent his childhood focused on sporting endeavours, attending a specialised academy where he honed his talent as a cross-country skier.

But when he finished school, he fell in with the wrong crowd and turned to a life of petty crime.

By 20, he and his accomplices had made a name for themselves on the streets of St Petersburg, breaking into luxury apartments and lining their pockets with whatever expensive objects caught their eye.

In one of his most infamous crimes, Prigozhin and his buddies accosted a woman on a dark street after midnight, grabbing her by the neck and pocketing her earrings as his friend slipped off her shoes.

But his trail of robberies eventually caught up with him, and the young thief was sentenced to 12 years in a high security prison camp.

It would turn out to be a crucial decade for Soviet Russia. As the young man sat behind bars, the society he once knew underwent an irrevocable shift.

With the socialist republic all but disintegrated, Prigozhin returned to his former home and reinvented himself into a hot dog salesman.

Yevgeny Prigozhin points his finger, his gaze his slightly past the camera
Prigozhin, despite having no military or secret service background, is believed to have profited from Wagner operations abroad.(AP: Alexander Zemlianichenko)

He climbed the ladder of the culinary world, expanding into restaurants, supermarkets and catering services, before drawing the attention of Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin was always looking for people higher up to befriend, according to those who knew him, and there was no bigger prize than the man who would one day be Russia's president.

Prigozhin and his papa

The thing about Vladimir Putin is he really only trusts people from his hometown, and for a Leningrad street rat like Prigozhin, that gave him his opportunity.

No-one is sure exactly when the two men first met, but in the early 2000s, Putin suddenly started bringing world leaders to eat at Prigozhin's upscale restaurant New Island.

Standing by the president's side like a personal butler, Prigozhin would dramatically remove the silver cloche on Putin's meal, whispering in his ear about what delights awaited him.

Two men stand over Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he is about to start a meal.
Yevgeny Prigozhin was once so close to the Kremlin strongman that he had the nickname "Putin's chef".(Reuters)

For a man who was paranoid about assassinations, it seemed significant that he happily ate what Prigozhin put down in front of him.

"Putin — as everyone knew — was mistrustful. Especially about food and drink, the easiest way to poison someone, as the KGB well understood," the Guardian's Russia correspondent Luke Harding wrote in Shadow State.

Earning himself the nickname "Putin's chef", Prigozhin's friendship with the president led to lucrative contracts catering Kremlin events, building casinos and setting up more restaurants.

Soon, Prigozhin was an extraordinarily wealthy man, flying around in private jets and building sprawling mansions for himself.

But one business idea would change his fate forever.

Russia has long been a nation that relies on private military companies (PMCs) to quietly spread Moscow's influence and power abroad.

For years, Prigozhin denied having anything to do with the shadowy PMC Wagner, even going so far as to sue an investigative reporter in 2021 for claiming he was the group's founder.

Wagner forces wave Russian and Wagner flags atop a damaged building in Bakhmut, Ukraine.
Wagner mercenaries were first active in a pre-invasion force before Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.(AP)

But when his old ally decided to realise a long-held dream in 2022 and launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin was by his side.

It would be the beginning of his downfall.

The war in Ukraine drove a wedge between them

In the early days of his invasion, Putin appeared to be confident that he could capture Kyiv and behead its government.

Wagner troops — who offered the Kremlin plausible deniability in foreign wars — were conspicuously absent, according to analysts.

But as months trickled by and Russian soldiers littered the battlefield, Putin appeared to be quietly working on another plan.

Soldiers walk past a destroyed Russian tank and armoured vehicles on a deserted street.
Russia's war in Ukraine did not go to plan in the early days of the war.(Reuters: Zohra Bensemra)

Prigozhin, once a prisoner in a Russian penal colony, went to jails around the country with an offer.

In exchange for their freedom, they could fight for Wagner on the battlefields of Ukraine. If they survived, they would never have to go back to prison.

He gave each man five minutes to decide, and quickly built himself a huge new platoon of fighters.

Experts say these men were often used as cannon fodder, forced to run towards relentless waves of Ukrainian bullets as Wagner tried to capture the city of Bakhmut.

The so-called "meat grinder" strategy was enough to keep Russia from full-blown defeat, and made Prigozhin a war hero in his own country.

"They should have just called me 'Putin's butcher' instead," he said earlier this year.

But as Wagner was increasingly celebrated for its successes, Prigozhin started to lash out, slamming the Russian military and demanding more recognition for his contribution to the war effort.

Head of Wagner Group military company Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks to fighters in a forest area.
The battle of Bakhmut was when cracks first started to emerge between the former chef and Russia's infamous leader.(AP: Prigozhin Press Service)

In May of this year, Putin was done. He demanded all Wagner paramilitaries sign contracts with the Russian army.

No longer in Putin's favour, the head of Wagner refused to go down without a fight.

"The war was needed. Not in order to return the Russian citizens to our bosom. And not in order to 'demilitarise and denazify' Ukraine," he yelled in a video posted to Telegram.

"It was needed for one star with additional embroidery so that one mentally sick man could look good on a coffin pillow."

The uprising began in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where Wagner forces faced no resistance.

Another column of Wagner men marched towards Moscow, getting 500 kilometres from the capital before they were suddenly turned back.

Behind the scenes, Putin was reportedly stunned into inaction, screening Prigozhin's calls as his men advanced.

Eventually, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, stepped in with a proposal: Prigozhin would cancel his rebellion and leave the country.

Waving to screaming fans from a black SUV, Prigozhin left Rostov-on-Don to an uncertain fate.

Yevgeny Prigozhin shakes hands with someone and smiles as he leaves the headquarters of the Southern Military District in a car
In the months since the coup, Prigozhin was spotted still in Russia.(Reuters: Alexander Ermochenko)

Few expected him to live long, but as the weeks turned to months, Russia watchers wondered: Would Prigozhin be the first person to humiliate Putin and get away with it?

The enduring mystery of Prigozhin's fall

Those who challenge Russia's president do not live long.

Investigative journalists, ex-KGB agents and double agents have all met untimely ends after crossing Putin.

Vladimir Putin rests one arm on a desk in front of him, scratching his upper lip with a concerned expression on his face
Many who have crossed Vladimir Putin have not lived long.(Reuters/Sputnik: Alexey Filippov)

But for two months, it appeared as if Prigozhin might have been the exception to the Kremlin's deadly rule.

Exiled to Belarus after his failed "march of justice" to Moscow, the Wagner chief insisted he had never intended to overthrow Putin and remained in Russia.

His deep connections to the country's ruling elite and military appeared to offer him some measure of protection.

Prigozhin continued working, seemingly focused on Wagner's presence in Africa and the coup in Niger.

Others who assisted him in his march in Moscow were not so lucky, as they were tracked down and punished for their defiance.

Prigozhin was apparently forgiven and forgotten, but all was not what it seemed.

There were whispers that his days were numbered.

"We had heard some weeks ago from a source that a contract had been put out on Prigozhin in Russia by senior members of the business community," Christopher Steele, who worked on MI6's Russia desk, told Sky News in the UK.

Some have suggested the plane crash may have been an elaborate revenge attack orchestrated by one of the elite.

"At the risk of stating the obvious, it is highly unlikely that the airline crash that appears to have killed Prigozhin was an accident," Brian Whitmore, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Centre, said.

"If Prigozhin were not forced to pay a heavy price for his rebellion in June, Putin's regime would have been severely weakened."

While others say it would not be surprising for Prigozhin, who was known to use body doubles as part of his security measures, to pop up somewhere, alive and well.

In some ways, the ambiguity surrounding the Wagner chief's end parallels his mysterious rise to power.

In Russia, Putin can bring great fortune, and can just as easily take it away.

A close up of a bald man wearing a jumper looking off camera in a snowy field.
Prigozhin made his name as a profane and brutal mercenary boss.(AP)


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