A shadow figure, this 61-year-old close to the Kremlin revealed that he founded the group in 2014 to send fighters to Donbass in Ukraine.
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His influence in Moscow is great, but his name little known. Evguéni Prigojine, a businessman close to the Kremlin, admitted on Monday, September 26 to having founded the paramilitary group Wagner in 2014. This group intervenes unofficially in many conflicts around the world, including the war in Ukraine. For Yevgeny PrigozhinWagner is a “pillar” defense of Russian interests. L61 year old man, nicknamed “Putin’s cook” (because his catering company supplied the Kremlin) thus admits what Western powers and the media have been asserting for a long time.
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In a social media post from his company Concord (link in Russian)the businessman says he founded the group in order to send competent fighters to the Donbass in 2014, this region of Ukraine where Moscow orchestrated the emergence of an armed separatist movement. “It was then, on May 1, 2014, that a group of patriots was born which took the name of the Wagner Battalion Tactical Group”, he says in this press release.
Wagner, whose presence has been documented for eight years in Ukraine, Syria, Libya or even in the Central African Republic and Mali, is perceived by his detractors as Vladimir Putin’s shadow army, promoting Russian interests by providing combatants, but also military instructors and advisers.
The Russian president had denied, in October, that the group carried out its base works and served the interests of the Russian state. The confession ofYevgeni Prigozhin comes after a video emerged this month on social media that appeared to show him recruiting prisoners from a Russian penitentiary to fight in Wagner’s ranks on the Ukrainian front. The Russian army is in trouble there, and Vladimir Putin last week ordered a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to try to regain control.
Yevgeni Prigojine is one of the most troubled figures of the Putinian system. In Russia, he prosecuted the Kremlin’s number one opponent, Alexei Navalny, who is now imprisoned. He is also accused of being behind at least one “troll factory” which participated in the efforts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election which saw the victory of Donald Trump.