Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin prepares for post-Putin according to Alfred Koch, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Boris Yeltsin in exile.
A member of the inner circle of the master of the Kremlin, he is a hard-line ultra-nationalist. It is carrying in the Russia of 2022.
Prigojine served a 9-year prison sentence in the 1980s for banditry, theft and fraud to then prosper in the restaurant business in Saint Petersburg where he befriended Putin, a regular at his luxurious restaurant. He then founded various companies before creating the Wagner group with Dmitri Utkin, a neo-Nazi ex-lieutenant-colonel of the GRU (military intelligence service) who would have given him this name in tribute to Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of Adolf Hitler. .
Wagner Group mercenaries are active in conflicts, including in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East where they have committed multiple violations of human rights and international law. Because of these abuses, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union sanctioned Prigozhin and Utkin.
Prigozhin helped Trump in 2016
He recently admitted to having interfered in the 2016 presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump with the help of his “Internet Research Agency” trolls. The FBI is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Asked about his interference in the mid-term elections, he said: “We interfered, we are doing it and we will continue to do so. Carefully, precisely, surgically, in our own way.”
As odious as Putin
In September 2022 an online video showed Prigojine promising freedom to inmates in a Russian prison if they enlisted in the Wagner Group to fight in Ukraine. It can end badly for the volunteers.
On November 13, images of a man killed with a club to the head are posted online. Mercenary of the Wagner group, recruited in prison, he would have passed to the Ukrainians before being taken over by the Russians. The horrifying sequences of the murder are accompanied by a comment from Prigojine: “Excellent work of direction, it can be watched in one sitting. I hope no animals were harmed during filming. »
Does he aspire to take Putin’s place? Prigozhin may enjoy the support of the same class of Russian “deplorables” that the US worships Trump. But, he still has several major hurdles to overcome to replace him as “Tsar of all the Russias”.
Bloomberg News reports that the Kremlin is concerned about its growing influence and its calls for “urgent Stalinist repressions” among the ruling elite where it is arousing hatred and greed. And the army hates him, like Secret Service executives. Will he, in turn, fall from a window like other senior Russian officials whose influence was considered pernicious?
With the fateful invasion of Ukraine, Russia entered a new turbulent period in its tragic history.