The former “Putin chef” Yevgeny Prigoyine and his Wagner militia are now a warlord who is making a martyr of Ukraine and whose political ambitions are worrying even the Russian elites.
The streets of Soledar were barely taken by his fighters when Yevgueni Prigojine rushed there to claim the benefits of victory. On January 11, he had his picture taken in the heart of the city, at the foot of the salt mines that gave the village its name. It was less about celebrating the actually less than strategic conquest of this Donbass city and more about “telling” the Kremlin: It was Wagner and not the regular army that, after five months of bitter setbacks, took action on the entire front, allows Moscow finally a win. On Soledar, instead of the three Russian colors, the militia’s skull and crossbones flag was hoisted. Forty-eight hours of bickering about information would follow.
We took Soledar. Go fight, stop measuring your penises with those of my fighters!
Prigozhin
The Russian Ministry of Defense first claimed to have participated in the victory, before replying from Prigoyine in that particularly rude style characteristic of them: “We and we alone took Soledar. Go fight, stop measuring your penises with those of my fighters! »
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This seeming confidence actually hides a deep concern. That he loses his place at the heart of Putin’s power, that is, his access to resources, primarily financial, combined with the goodwill of the regime. In Moscow, Mr. Prigojine’s position appears to be weakening somewhat. Indeed, while the fighting was still in full swing, Vladimir Putin at the head of the “special operation” in Ukraine initiated a new about-face. On January 10, he had Colonel-General Alexandre Lapin appointed Chief of Staff of the Russian Land Forces. Three months earlier he had relieved him of command of the Central Military District. Lyman’s defeat had just drawn sharp criticism from both Prigoyine and Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, another hawk among hawks.
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In these propaganda images circulating on Telegram, Wagner mercenaries are standing at the entrance to Bakhmout. ©DR
To ensure the success of Soledar and not let the regular army capture the city, Prigoyine would have relentlessly stumbled across the Ukrainian lines in the open at the expense of the sacrifice of hundreds of his recruits, who were sent in whole packages. The man with the Mephistophelic face (bald, sharp-nosed, cold-eyed) did not shy away from brutality, as usual, urging his leaders to shoot down those who resisted the attack.
As a result, several dozen executions of “traitors” received a great deal of media attention
In recent months, several dozen executions of “traitors” have received significant media attention, such as that of Evgueni Nouzhin, this 50-year-old who was released a few weeks earlier from his penal colony in Ryazan, where he was serving a twenty-four-year sentence years for murder. Filmed on November 11, he utters his last words, his head taped to a piece of concrete block. His misfortune: after surrendering to the Ukrainians, he fell into the hands of his former brothers-in-arms. In the midst of his final confession, a man in work suits placed behind him swings a heavy mass over his shoulders and then drops it onto his head. The whole body jumps under the force of the blow. Then a second blow is given to the forehead. This unprecedented violence partly explains the capture of Soledar.
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Arming a 152mm shell on a Russian gun. ©DR
It is also explained by the story of Evgueni Prigojine, now 61 years old, this ex-convict who, like Putin, was born in Saint Petersburg, who, as soon as he was released from prison and the USSR disappeared, founded a small chain of estates, where hot dogs were sold. In 1995 he opened his first restaurant, La Vieille Douane. Two years later, inspired by Parisian romance, he opened a chic boat restaurant, La Nouvelle Île, in the Venice of the North, where Vladimir Putin picked up his habits. In 2001, after becoming President of the Russian Federation, he brought distinguished guests like Jacques Chirac there. Therefore, Prigoyine got his nickname “Putin’s cook”.
Prigoyine becomes the man of low works of the Putin regime at the turn of the 2010s
This closeness to the boss led him to get into mass catering and win hefty jobs at schools or the Department of Defense. “He’s a real manager, a leader of men, but with his own style. He can be as condescending and protective of his associates as he is brutal. I’ve seen him thank us for our work by offering us hookers, just as I’ve seen him let his henchmen beat up guys because they wanted to find a job elsewhere,” says a European who once lived in worked at his restaurants. Even though the man now welcomes All-Moscow, he remains a “zek” (convict). “In the back rooms, he stripped in front of us to put on his butler suit, casually showing off his inmate tattoos just to scare his teams,” recalls the former employee.
Featuring Hayk Gasparyan, commander of an assault group, which he will decorate with the Soledar Medal. ©DR
With such a pedigree, Prigoyine became the man behind the Putin regime at the turn of the 2010s. His tools: a private army named after Wagner (Hitler’s favorite musician), his Patriot media group, and his troll farms. War in Ukraine from 2014, intervention in Syria, slump in the 2016 US presidential election, support for anti-France forces in Africa… So many “missions” considered essential by the Kremlin, which was not about to let go of Prigoyine any time soon.
Putin fired the head of the “military special operation” Sergey Surovikin
After his short detour to Soledar, Wagner’s boss returned to St. Petersburg, where President Putin was also due to arrive. Perhaps “to decide Wagner’s fate” (and defuse tensions with the Defense Ministry), a source from the Telegram channel Tcheka-OGPU believes.
After the capture of Soledar, Mr Putin fired the head of the “military special operation” Sergei Surovikin, whose appointment was celebrated by Prigoyine and Kadyrov in October. In his place he appoints the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army Valery Guerassimov, the same man who was recently insulted by Wagner’s men … This chair game seems to be a great consolation for the Ministry of Defense when it is forced to issue a statement in which Prigojine is credited with the victory as a result of “a direct attack on residential areas successfully carried out thanks to the courageous and selfless actions of Wagner’s stormtrooper volunteers”.
Prigojine remains 100% a prisoner in his way of being, in his speech, in his vision of the world
“These events are difficult to decipher, admits a political adviser familiar with the Kremlin’s secrets. To see more clearly, one must understand that Soledar’s victory is only symbolic and cost a disproportionate number of lives given the strategic interest. We also need to measure the number of enemies that Prigoyine has in Moscow, in the army, in the FSB, in the presidential administration, where such an important figure as Sergei Kirienko, a kind of governor of Donbass under Russian control, does not appreciate the rise the Wagner group hardly. »
While Prigoyine overshadows the regime’s caciques, his direct access to Putin and his ability to implement what the Russian state cannot openly do have made him indispensable in Ukraine. “Prigozhin is basically not afraid of anything. He remains 100% a prisoner in his way of being, in his speech, in his vision of the world. He is a man of the 1990s, a post-Soviet spirit used to struggling to survive in a world without faith and law,” explains a journalist who asked not to be identified: he was aware that three of his Russian colleagues had been murdered be Central African Republic in 2018 when they came there to investigate the activities of the Wagner group.
Today, however, Prigojine has to settle for a Pyrrhic victory
However, Vladimir Putin cannot let go of Prigoyine. He cannot forget for the moment that the founder of Wagner is among those who did the most to stem the backlash on the Ukrainian front, taking the initiative in September to recruit 40,000 fighters, particularly prisoners, to whom promised freedom they agreed to go and fight while the Kremlin still hesitated to issue a highly unpopular and politically risky general mobilization. What the sequel has shown: Since the mobilization was announced on September 21, 2022, as many as 700,000 Russians may have fled the country.
Today, however, Prigojine has to settle for a Pyrrhic victory. Perhaps to the point, observers say, that there has been a risk of not being able to play a leading role in the war in Ukraine, at least in the near future.