Yevgeny Prigozhin

This little priggy.

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Dentist priggy, lookin' fly.

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (Евгений Викторович Пригожин) (1961–2023) was a Russian oligarch and founder and commander of the Wagner Group. He was an important figure in the Russo-Ukrainian war as he led and directed Wagner forces into the battlefields of Syria, Georgia, various African countries, and Ukraine. Prigozhin was also responsible for overseeing a massive amount of war crimes and human rights violations during his time as the chief of Wagner.

Prigozhin was an ardent Russian nationalist, and he and Wagner troops adhered to an ultranationalist variant of Z Putinism (basically what the Nazi Party was to the German Workers’ Party). On top of that, Prigozhin, the head of a Neo-Nazi mercenary outfit, was of Jewish descent.

From criminal to hot dog vendor to oligarch warlord

Prigozhin started out his career in robbery, fraud and assault, spending his 9 of his first 11 years as an adult in prison. After release from prison in 1990, he became a humble hot dog vendor in Saint Petersburg (then known as Leningrad during the time of the Soviet Union). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1995 he decided to pursue founding businesses to gain prominence and grow his monetary influence (much like every other Russian oligarch was doing during that time). Because of this, he became known as "Putin's chef" for serving Putin at his restaurant, but this was a misnomer as he himself said in 2023 that he could not cook, making him more Putin’s butler than his chef.

Prigozhin then used his influence to become a significant member of the Russian oligarchy and an important and close ally of Putin within his inner circle. Putin often relied on Prigozhin’s military expertise to direct troops on the battlefields of various republics and countries that Wagner operated in.

Days in the battlefield

Though Prigozhin himself has rarely been outside of Russia while Wagner made their presence in various countries, he did lead the organization and give orders from the bowels of the Kremlin, with Prigozhin himself following the orders of Putin. Ukraine and Belarus are most likely the only countries Prigozhin has been to outside from Russia (which makes sense because of the close geographical proximity of all three countries).

Prigozhin recruited thousands of Russians (many of them former prisoners released by the government as a pardon for their crimes if they participated in the war and fought for Russia) in Wagner's headquarters. Many of these trainees also consisted of young men and older men (with families of their own, as lamented by Prigozhin himself in videos that he filmed of showing the bodies of these soldiers), and there were high casualties in the battlefield due to a lack of training from the recruits, running short on ammo, and incompetence of Russian military leaders.

It’s not a rebellion, it’s a special disagreement

After losing his shit from seeing so many of his soldiers die for nothing (and the incompetence of the Russian government), Prigozhin went on a rant against Sergei Shoigu (then the Minister of Defence) and Valery Gerasimov (Chief of the General Staff), praised Ukrainian resistance fighters (contradicting the Russian government’s official narrative on the war), and planned a rebellion to overthrow Shoigu and Gerasimov using his remaining army of men to drive from occupied eastern Ukraine to Russia in Moscow.

The mutiny was taken so seriously by the Kremlin that they literally blew up roads to prevent Wagner troops from arriving in Moscow, but this did little to halt them. Russian citizens witnessing the chaos unfold were surprisingly supportive of Wagner, presumably because they saw the group as a necessary evil to take down Putin and save Russia (though Russia’s future under Wagner would probably be much worse since it’s an ultranationalist variant of Putinism, akin to Nazism). The troops were close to their destination of Moscow but stopped at the last minute after a deal was negotiated by Alexander Lukashenko (the Belarusian president) between Prigozhin and Putin to halt the advance and call everything off. The deal basically ensured that all parties would leave unharmed as long as Wagner troops left. While Wagner’s troops were dismissed by the Kremlin to return to the battlefield in Ukraine, Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus as punishment for his planned coup.

An early retirement

Prigozhin was sent to Belarus as punishment for the attempted putsch, and was stripped of his power and his position within the Wagner Group. He remained in Belarus for several weeks until he returned to Russia. Despite the Russian government claiming that Prigozhin wouldn’t face punishment, what happened later when he returned would be the final punishment for his actions (presumably by the Russian government, because who else?)

Death

Prigozhin was presumed dead on August 23, 2023 from a plane crash in Tver Oblast. He was on the plane with Dmitry Utkin, another Wagner leader who died in the crash. However, it was not initially confirmed due to the constant spread of misinformation online surrounding his death, especially on Russian social media. The bodies were recovered from the crash site, and DNA tests were conducted on them. A thorough test confirmed that one of the bodies was Prigozhin, thus officially confirming his death.

See also

• Vladimir Putin - his former boss, Prigozhin was presumably iced on his orders after the coup.
• Dmitry Utkin - fellow Wagner soldier who died alongside him in the plane crash.