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Who was Wagner's boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin

2023-08-23 19:40:57Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Who was Wagner's boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin
Yevgeni Prigozhin

Yevgeny Prigozhin has died after a private plane crash in central Russia, according to the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency.

The news was also published by two of the main media in Russia, the newspapers Tass and Kommersant.

According to the Russian media, 10 passengers were among the victims and one of them is precisely the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Who was Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Born in 1961 in Leningrad, today Saint Petersburg, Prigozhin was sentenced to 9 years in prison in 1981 for robbery and fraud.

In 1990, after being released from prison, he started working as a street vendor of hotdogs. Very soon he managed to open a chain of restaurants, a catering service company called Konkord, as well as a casino. In the 90s, Putin worked in the City Hall of St. Petersburg and there they got to know each other because of Prigozhin's luxurious restaurants where he hosted very important people.

Benefiting from the recognition of the elites, and especially when Putin became President of Russia, Prigozhin with his company Konkord managed to obtain contracts for government services, one of the most famous of which was the visit of American President George W. Bush. The contracts won by Prigozhin did not end there as he managed to get a staggering contract for catering in schools in Russia. The contracts won by Prigozhin earned him the nickname Putin's Chef.

Themelimi i Wagner Group

For the first time, the name of the Wagner Group was heard in 2014 when the annexation of Crimea by Russia began. Western intelligence at the time had information that its founder was Evgeny Prigozhin, but such a thing was not admitted by the latter until September 2022 when Prigozhin himself appeared in several videos recruiting Russian prisoners.

The name Wagner

The commander or CEO of this company is Dmitri Utkin, a former lieutenant colonel of the Russian special forces, a veteran of the war in Chechnya. It is believed that Utkin's code name was Wagner during his time in the service and thus he named the company Wagner Group.

Since 2017, Wagner has also appeared on the African continent in several countries such as the Central African Republic, Mali and Sudan where there is a significant deployment of forces. According to humanitarian associations, Wagner is responsible for many massacres of the civilian population of these areas.

Initially, the Wagner Group had about 5,000 members, mostly former professional soldiers, but their numbers increased significantly during the war in Ukraine, reaching 50,000 soldiers, 80% of whom were prisoners.

Sanctions against Wagner

The United States has imposed a series of sanctions on Prigozhin and Wagner. Initially, they started in 2016 for the conflict in Ukraine until February 2018, Prigozhin and 13 other citizens were accused of having interfered in the 2018 elections in favor of the electoral campaign of Donald Trump.

Wagner's involvement in other conflicts

In 2015, mercenary forces are in Syria where they fight alongside government forces against rebel forces. In 2017, Wagner's forces appeared in Libya, supporting the forces of General Khalifa Haftar. They have also participated in military operations in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, while in Mali Islamic groups are fighting by supporting government forces.

Wagner's income

President Putin said Wagner Group had been awarded a $1 billion contract by the Ministry of Defense during 2022-2023.

According to the US Treasury Department, Prigozhin has made income with Wagner from their presence in several other countries. His companies own gold and diamond mines in the Central African Republic and Sudan. According to US authorities, one of Prigozhin's energy companies takes about 25% of all gas and oil fields that Wagner took from ISIS during the conflict in Syria.

Wagner's crimes

Prosecutors in Ukraine accuse Wagner of killing and torturing civilians near Kiev in 2022 alongside regular military forces. German intelligence says Wagner's troops are also linked to the massacre of civilians in Buchan in March 2022. The French government has accused Wagner of raping and robbing civilians in the Central African Republic. The United States in 2020 accused Wagner of laying mines around the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The rebellion against Putin

Prigozhin became famous for a June 24 revolt in which, through his mercenary group, he entered Russia and began a march on Moscow, where he even called for the ouster of Vladimir Putin at one point.

However, the rebellion lasted only 24 hours, after intensive talks with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, an agreement was reached for the withdrawal of Wagner from Russia and their departure to Belarus, where they were engaged for two months in the training of Belarusian forces on the border with Ukraine.

Wagner's role in the Ukrainian war has been complete, where he fought the most intense battles in the village of Bakhmut, for over six months against the Ukrainian forces, managing to take the territory.

However, this at a very high cost, as half of Wagner's troops were killed on the battlefield.

This led Prigozhin to rebel with harsh retorts at a distance against Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, whom he had repeatedly accused of seeking to wipe out Wagner's soldiers from the face of the earth.

Most recently, he appeared in a video in Africa, which he posted on Wagner's Telegram channels. Wagner is believed to have thousands of fighters in Africa, where he has lucrative business interests.


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