The ‘conqueror of Bakhmut’, as he seems to be portraying himself to the Russians, has decided in the last few hours to soften his tone towards the army and the defense minister. Mainly because Evgeniy Prigozhin wants to withdraw his militiamen from the devastated city within a few days and entrust their control to the regular armed forces. “Because he knows that otherwise he would be torn apart,” say the Ukrainians. Because Wagner’s men would have to “rest in the background” and wait for new difficult tasks, according to the version of the former restaurateur, former robber and thief, who became an indomitable fighter on behalf of Vladimir Putin.
And after giving the Kremlin lord the only notable win on the field in many months, his odds are now skyrocketing, even though there are probably more in Moscow who would like to knock him out than those who love him. But Prigozhin and the private army, for which the name of the great German musician was chosen, have been an essential instrument in Vladimir Vladimirovich’s strategy for power and conquest for some time. Who is fully aware of the inadequacy of the official structures and for this reason tolerates Prigozhin’s runaways, even if he speaks, apparently in reference to him, of a “happy grandfather, convinced that everything is going well”. And he wonders, “purely hypothetically,” if it would then turn out that “this grandfather is a co-licensee.”
The fact is that for many years, at least since 2014, Prigozhin, using completely unorthodox methods, has been achieving results that the tsar’s other lieutenants cannot even imagine.
Before the birth of the private militia created by former GRU (military espionage service) lieutenant colonel Dmitry Utkin (Wagner was his combat name) and used in the invasion of Crimea and Donbass. Then there are the initiatives, some of which are still ongoing, in various African countries, above all in the Central African Republic and Libya, as well as in Syria.
Prigozhin also came up with the idea of building the so-called troll factory in St. Petersburg. A building that housed dozens of computer experts who were used to spread fake news and direct internet debates in specific ways to influence the 2016 American election. A valuable man, even if it is difficult to keep him on a leash, so much so that in the Russian capital there are some who have hypothesized that Prigozhin may have political ambitions, perhaps unlike those of Putin himself .
However, the president doesn’t seem to have that concern, as he is confident in his long-term strategy, which is based on playing off the factions surrounding him against each other. The two had met in a restaurant in the Baltic Sea city when the new president arrived at the Prigozhin restaurant (a floating boat on the Neva) in 2000 with then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. It was the man now known as “Putin’s cook” who personally served the two illustrious guests.
The tsar appreciated this and allowed the restaurateur to become rich by forcing him to distribute food supplies for various state apparatuses, including the armed forces.
And considering that Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin certainly didn’t start his adult life well in what was then Leningrad. In 1979, just 18 years old, he received his first suspended sentence for theft. Two years later he was jailed for 12 years for robbery and burglary. He was released from prison only in 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the USSR. His rebellious spirit and habit of thinking outside the box brought him rapid success during this extremely turbulent period. He started selling hot dogs from a cart parked under his parents’ house, and the biznes (as they said back then) were doing so well that his mother “couldn’t count the wads of rubles that were accumulating there.” , as he said himself.
Then a grocery store; then a supermarket chain and the first casinos in the city that was just renamed St. Petersburg. Until meeting Putin in his elite restaurant.