Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s “cook” who became an enemy of the Kremlin

Vladimir Putin accuses him of having “stabbed him in the back”. The leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhinhas asked his men to rebel against the Russian military command, which he blames for having bombed his subordinates.

As a result of this, the former protégé of the Russian president has claimed to have taken control of military sites in the city of Rostov (a key center for the Russian assault on Ukraine) and, once again, has accused Putin’s army of lying to the citizens. “A large number of territories” conquered in Ukraine “are lost” and “many soldiers are killed,” he revealed.

For months, Prigozhin has openly criticized the Russian military ‘establishment’, going so far as to ask his “protector”, Vladimir Putin, to carry out “Stalinist purges” in the Administration. France 24 tours the race of this warlord of Vladimir Putinwho became public enemy number one of the Kremlin.

Prigozhin, from the shadows to the light of the spotlights

This adviser, very close to the Russian president – ​​both grew up in Saint Petersburg and have known each other for 20 years – has always been presented as the “cook” of the head of the Kremlin and as his “dirty job” man.

The first nickname comes from his past as a restaurateur. He met Putin in 2001, when he owned one of the most prominent restaurants in St. Petersburg. Legend has it that the leader, recently elected president, had chosen his establishment to impress his guest of the day: the former French president Jacques Chirac.

From there, Prigozhin followed his new mentor to Moscow, where he became ‘the good little soldier’, entrusted with carrying out the most unspeakable tasks of the Kremlin both nationally and internationally. But nothing could be officially attributed to him, since Putin’s “leader” acted behind the scenes, fleeing from the spotlight as much as possible.

Before the Russian war in Ukraine, he was considered above all the founder of the Wagner group – a detachment of mercenaries whose very existence was denied by Moscow – and also the head of the Internet Research Agency, a kind of “information factory”. trolls“, famous in 2016 for its involvement in the manipulation of the US presidential campaign. But, again, Prigozhin denied being linked to it, even threatening legal proceedings to those who declared otherwise.

However, all this happened before the beginning, on February 24, of a “special military operation” that does not stop colliding with the Ukrainian resistance. Since then, the shadow man has become a media beast who confesses and claims almost everything.

The Wagner group? It is he personified, and on November 4 he did not hesitate to open a physical office in Saint Petersburg. what“Troll” From Russia? Again, Prigozhin. In 2022, on the eve of the US midterm elections, he confessed that in 2016 he tried to influence the outcome of the controversial presidential elections.

Gone are also the days when Putin’s henchman acted in silence. On November 14, he appeared on Telegram to applaud the brutal murder of a defector by his mercenaries.

He has also gone so far as to call for the arrest of Alexander Beglov, the governor of Saint Petersburg. The two have been fighting behind the scenes for years over dubious public procurement stories, except that last time Prigozhin brought their confrontation to light, denouncing Beglov of all the bad guys: from leading an “organized crime ring” in the same city of San Petersburg to promoting “Ukrainian nationalism”.

The revenge of a violent “gangster”

This new position of Yevgeny Prigozhin “is both surprising, because spent so much time denying everythingand it is completely understandable,” says Stephen Hall, a specialist in Russia at the University of Bath (in the United Kingdom).

As the deceptions in the Russian Army progress, “the security and technocratic apparatus in place loses credibility in the eyes of Vladimir Putin, and Prigozhin wants to take advantage of this to increase his political influence.“, analyzes Jeff Hawn, Russian security specialist and external consultant for the New Lines Institute, an American center for geopolitical research.

In fact, despite the numerous published portraits of “Putin’s leader” showing him as an intimate of the Kremlin leader, “(Prigozhin) was never in the first circle of political advisers”Hall stresses.

Because Prigozhin does not have the right profile. He never went through the Communist Party before the fall of the wall; he has no relief in the intelligence services; and he has no political support outside of Putin. “He’s a self-made Russian man, which is like saying he’s a gangster who got rich by being more ruthless than anyone else,” Hawn explains. And as a young man he was sentenced to prison for robbery and belonging to organized crime.

A perfect resume to put on the clothes of Putin’s henchman, but not to wear the suit of a respectable and crucial political adviser. Except that the invasion has removed these roles and now Prigozhin “see it as an opportunity to show that your methods are the ones that work best”says Stephen Hall.

The ex-boss’s increasingly public stances in the shadows “are the sign of a turf war going on behind the scenes of power,” Hawn develops.

In this sense, the opening of an office of the Wagner Group in St. Petersburg is not just an officialization of the existence of these mercenaries. “It is also stepping on the heels of the intelligence services that tolerated the actions of these mercenaries as long as they acted in Africa or Ukraine, but not in the national territory considered to be their domain,” says Jeff Hawn.

Surviving with or without Vladimir Putin

For Stephen Hall, Prigozhin’s efforts to assert himself on the media scene “have allowed him to begin to distance himself from Vladimir Putin.” It is a kind of life insurance that he will be trying to implement in case the president does not survive the war in Ukraine politically. “As long as he is perceived simply as an executor of Putin, the latter’s fate will also be his”reveals Jeff Hawn.

Although he has multiplied his accusations against the Russian military command, Yevgeny Prigozhin has always been careful not to directly criticize Putin. The Russian president had until now adopted the same strategy, turning a deaf ear, in public, to the repeated provocations of his protégé.

A status quo which bore fruit on the ground with the capture, in May 2023, of the city of Bakhmout by Wagner’s forces. But by declaring war at the command of the Army, Prigozhin has reached a point of no return.

Denouncing a “stab in the back” of his longtime protégé, whose name he never mentioned during his television speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made an iron promise to respond “relentlessly” against the perpetrators of this rebellion.