Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin leading the armed rebellion against President Putin

From spending 15+ years in jail for theft, selling hotdogs to being known as Putin’s chef, Prigozhin has known President Putin since 1990s and both hail from St. Petersburg

Overnight, Russia has plunged into one of its worst ever internal crisis and President Vladimir Putin is facing the greatest threat to his authority in two decades after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group (a Russian private army who was fighting Ukraine with the Russian military) launched an apparent insurrection and declared that his mercenary group has taken control of military facilities in two Russian cities– Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh even as he vowed to topple Russia’s military leadership. Prigozhin, till yesterday an ally of President Putin, also declared that 25,000 Wagner troops are marching towards Moscow.

Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Born in 1961 in Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin is a high-profile, provocative mercenary leader, who has known Russian President Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.

According to Politico, Prigozhin and Putin hail from the same town, St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He received his first criminal conviction in 1979, aged 18, and got a suspended two-and-a-half-year sentence for theft. Two years later, he was sentenced to 13 years in jail for robbery and theft, nine of which he served behind bars.

Once out from jail, Prigozhin started selling hot dogs. Soon he opened expensive restaurants in St Petersburg. It was there that he began mixing with the high and mighty of St Petersburg and then Russia.

As per the BBC, Prigozhin used that connection to develop a catering business and won lucrative Russian government contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.” He later expanded into other areas, including media and an infamous internet “troll factory” that led to his indictment in the US for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier this year in January, the 62-year-old acknowledged founding, leading and financing the shadowy private mercenary company Wagner, an organisation that has worked alongside the Russian army during the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Notably, western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner mercenaries of human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in Central African Republic, Libya and Mali, NDTV reported.

Soon after the rebellion by Prigozhin and he threatening to capture Moscow soon, President Vladimir Putin, in a televised message said the actions of Prigozhin and the Wagner mercenary group were a “deadly threat” to Russia and amount to internal treason. The President said that ‘traitors’ will be punished.

Retaliating to President Putin’s message, Prigozhin ruled out surrender and said the Russian president was “deeply mistaken” in calling the Wagner fighters traitors. “On treason of the motherland: the president is deeply wrong. We are patriots of our motherland. Nobody plans to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB (security service) or anyone else,” he said in an audio message on Telegram, an NDTV report said.

What happened on Friday?

For months, Prigozhin has been locked in a power struggle with Russia’s military top brass. Prigozhin has been blaming them for his troops’ deaths in eastern Ukraine. He has repeatedly accused them of failing to equip his private army adequately, of holding up progress with bureaucracy, while claiming victories won by Wagner as their own.
On Friday, Prigozhin’s accused Moscow’s military leadership of ordering strikes on Wagner’s camps and killing a large number of forces. He then said that they had to be stopped and vowed to “go to the end”.
A long-running feud over the invasion of Ukraine between the Russian military and Yevgeny Prigozhin, finally escalated and blew up into an open confrontation on Friday and today.
While Prigozhin accused Russia of attacking his soldiers and appeared to challenge one of President Vladimir Putin’s main justifications for the war, Russian generals in turn accused him of trying to mount a coup against Putin.

Prigozhin’s moves set up the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority since he invaded of Ukraine early last year. Putin promised “decisive actions,” and Russian security forces scrambled to regain control in the country’s south, a New York Times report said.

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