Malfrat, head of a restaurant chain, internet troublemaker, founder of a mercenary militia. Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has already known a thousand lives. And he is about to embrace the thousand and one: politics. But, who is this secret character that is now advancing in the open? And why has he chosen in recent weeks to come out into the open after years of discreet shadow work? BFMTV.com paints this Friday the portrait of Evgueni Prigokhine, the henchman of the Kremlin.
The boy from Leningrad
A brief look at Yevgeny Prigokhine’s marital status reveals an initial point in common with Vladimir Putin and perhaps the origin of their closeness. Aged 61, he is also the son of Leningrad, which reverted to Saint Petersburg when the USSR collapsed. However, the two men did not experience this Soviet episode in their lives in the same way. While Vladimir Putin is a pure product of the communist apparatus, first working in the KGB before converting his service to the FSB under Boris Yeltsin, Yevgeny Prigokhine first evolved on the fringes of society. He was thus imprisoned for nine years, from 1981 to 1990, for acts of banditry and robbery.
Everything changed for him at the dawn of the 1990s, so his trajectory followed that of a Russia seizing on the dream of American-style capitalism after the Soviet illusion dissipated. Yevgeny Prigozhin initially set up hot dog stands, mentioned here Duty, before opening -still in the ancient capital of the tsars- a luxury restaurant thanks to the success of his first business. It was in this privileged environment that his first meetings with Vladimir Putin took place.
You have to believe that the agreement is good because in the year 2000, since the ascension of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of the Russian Federation, the catering group that Evgueni Prigojine created in the meantime is in charge of feeding the Kremlin. Hence the nickname “Putin’s cook” that still sticks to him.
“Troll Farms”
Now running Concord, he diversified his activities. And in unorthodox directions. Starting in 2013, he planted many “troll farms” in his path, structures where netizens burn themselves to ashes to spread false information on the internet. He also encourages the multiplication of Telegram accounts. The objective is the same in one case as in the other: to try to influence or destabilize elections in foreign countries, in the way that obviously suits Moscow best.
However, for a long time, the company was so widely denounced, as in 2016 during the US presidential election, as unofficial, even clandestine. But that was before. Because the “cook” now assumes the pans from him. On November 7, at dawn. partial exams In the United States, Yevgeny Prigozhin came out of nowhere, through a statement published in Russian media and on the VKontakt social network:
“We interfere, we do and we will continue to do so.”
wagner man
This confession follows two months after another, even more spectacular confession. In September, in fact, he admitted having founded the Wagner group, a militia of private mercenaries, which currently operates in the Ukraine, but also in Syria and which could be found in particular on the African continent, including, recently, in Mali after the latter. . he ci refused the presence of regular French troops.
This squad, formed in 2014, also allowed him to get rich, as he remembers again Duty: Syrian oil, Central African diamonds, everything is good to inflate the pockets. Grateful to his men, he ended up paying them a strong and public tribute.
“These boys, heroes, defended the Syrian people, other peoples in Arab countries, disadvantaged Africans and Latin Americans, they became a pillar of our homeland.”
Since Yevgeny Prigokhine definitely has no intention of hiding anymore, he went a bit further by calling out his dirty deeds. In October he thus inaugurated the official headquarters of the Wagner group, in the heart of Saint Petersburg. Although in Russia, no more than elsewhere, such a force of private soldiers is obviously not legal.
“It means that he publicly opposes Russian law,” political scientist Vera Ageeva, a specialist in Russia and a professor at Sciences Po, also analyzed with BFMTV on Thursday night. The expert even estimated that Yevgeny Prigojine was “in the process of creating a kind of parallel state in Russia that lives by its own rules.”
Ukraine as theater
It must be said that in recent days he even seems to be emancipating himself from common morality, as well as from international law – which has been in his sights since at least 2014 and from the sanctions decided against Concord and his own patrimony in particular by Washington. Last Sunday, for example, he commented on the video circulating on Telegram accounts of the heinous mass execution of a Russian soldier accused of desertion in Ukraine.
“It is a magnificent work of realization, you can see it in one go. I hope no animals were hurt during filming.”
The current war offers you in any case a new track to move up a gear. Because, as noted here The world, a network of websites subservient to the father of “troll farms” continues to broadcast photos showing him at the front, often decked out in military medals, in the grand tradition inherited from the Soviet past. Evgueni Prigojine takes advantage of this exposure to acquire a new depth, without hesitating to set the Russian command on fire before those mired in the conflict.
“We’re going to send all these bastards to the front, with machine guns and bare feet!” he exclaims in a position taken at the beginning of november by franceinfo.
To the point of obtaining, with the support of the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, the hair of Alexander Lapin, until then general in chief of the Russian troops.
A party in hand
Successes that could well go to his head. “They say it comes out of the shadows, but above all it comes out of the control of the Kremlin,” observed political scientist Vera Ageeva on BFMTV. Hard to say to what extent the man plays his own game, continues to serve Vladimir Putin’s, or if one and the other merge. On the other hand, the truth is that Yevgeni Prigokhine is showing his political ambition in broad daylight.
According to information revealed by the Russian site jellyfishand repeated by The world, is about to launch his own party, defined as a “conservative political movement.” According to the reading that the correspondent of the evening newspaper of this aspiration has prepared, Evgueni Prigojine already has an electoral base in his sights, the Russia of small towns, and a prefabricated discourse, ultranationalism. All this enhanced by the clearly anti-elite position of the wealthy character.
If he realizes his desire to go into politics, will Yevgeny Prigokhine shake up Vladimir Putin’s “United Russia”? Is it about disturbing his master, thinking about the aftermath? Or simply endorse a radicalism with which the Russian president usually composes in a pool game with multiple cushions? One thing is certain: the “cook” is up to something and his former client is not eternal.
Source: BFM TV
