It was just the latest sign of how the catering boss-turned-warlord — known as “Putin’s chef” — has become one of the most powerful voices in Russia, with a say in how Moscow deals with everything from war scandals in Ukraine to powerful rivals in Washington. But it’s not just Russia’s foreign adversaries who have Prigozhin to worry about—not even officials at home are safe from his attacks. Last week, Prigozhin accused the governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, of corruption. Prigozhin’s company, Concord, published its appeal to the Prosecutor General of Russia, demanding an investigation into “the possible involvement of Governor Beglov in the creation of an organized crime group on the territory of St. Petersburg for the purpose of looting the state budget and enriching corrupt officials which are part of his cycle”. This is an unprecedented situation in modern Russia. “Prigozin going after Governor Beglov is a sign that the species in power are starting to eat each other in a Darwinian way,” St. Petersburg MP Boris Vishnevsky told the Daily Beast. “Putin’s men are running out of resources.” Alexander Cherkasov, president of the Nobel Prize-winning human rights agency Memorial, told The Daily Beast that it is now up to the attorney general to decide whether to investigate Beglov or ignore Prigozhin’s request by transferring it to a different law enforcement agency. . Prigozhin himself, meanwhile, seems immune to such responsibility. “When Memorial submitted our request to investigate a brutal killing by Prigozhin’s men in Syria, the authorities simply ignored it,” Cherkasov told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “We had a video for the investigators showing how the militias beat the person to death and then burned the body, but our video did not seem like enough evidence for the investigators.” Prigozhin has regularly attacked senior Russian officials in recent weeks, criticizing the Russian military for mishandling the war in Ukraine. His soldiers, meanwhile, are building a “Wagner Line” of fortifications near the border with Ukraine, which is now controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service. Last month, RIA FAN, one of the news sites linked to Prigozhin, reported “certain problems” with local authorities trying to stop the construction of fortifications in the Belgorod region. The governor of Belgorod himself, Vyacheslav Gladkov, went so far as to personally ensure the continuation of construction work. “Everything seems to be allowed to Prigozhin these days, he can even arm local men in the Belgorod or Kirov regions,” Olga Bychkova, a longtime observer of Kremlin politics, told The Daily Beast. “But this is a very dangerous situation: today Prigozhin is criticizing local governments, arming local people, and tomorrow someone who thinks they control the situation in Russia will not be able to control it.” “No one is going to dare to stop this criminal. He is a brutal leader.” Just as his catering company is trusted to keep Putin’s hyperparanoid regime fed, Prigozhin appears to have been given a free hand in Russian politics, foreign policy and the war in Ukraine. In another dangerous development, commandant Wagner, who was jailed for 12 years in the 1980s for theft, fraud and assault, has recently been filmed recruiting thousands of prisoners around Russia’s penal colonies and prisons, promising the inmates freedom in exchange for struggle. in Ukraine. Gambidoulin said that he did not enjoy working under Prigozhin during his time with Wagner. “Wagner’s group shouldn’t exist, it’s criminal and he’s not spending a lot of his own money on it,” Gabidulin told The Daily Beast in a recent interview. “It sends untrained soldiers, including criminals, to die in the slaughter at the front.” “As long as Prigozhin is loyal to Putin, no one will dare to stop this criminal. He is a brutal leader,” added Gambudulin. Some experts who spoke to The Daily Beast even suggested that Prigozhin was trying to take over Putin’s presidency. “Prigozhin’s catering company feeds Putin and his men, so he has a huge network of agents in the Kremlin, who are always giving information about where the wind is blowing, what Putin dislikes. Prigozhin is missing none of Putin’s signals,” one of the world’s leading Kremlinologists, Vasily Gatov, told the Daily Beast. During Russian operations in Ukraine, Syria and Africa over the past eight years, Prigozhin, 61, apparently went to great lengths to keep his underground role in the Wagner mercenary group a secret. Three journalists were killed in 2019 trying to investigate the operations of Prigozhin’s men in the Central African Republic. But recently, it seems that Prigozhin has decided to let it go. In late September, he began boasting about his achievements, admitting that he had founded the Wagner Group in 2014. “I went to training grounds … and tried to throw money around to get a team to go and defend Russians,” he boasted. on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin’s Cap. Sources who spoke to The Daily Beast about Prigozhin were all skeptical of his efforts to rock the boat and become a leading voice in Russia, with many saying he could be dangerous to Putin’s “stability” in Russia . In terms of the hierarchy of Russian military power and law enforcement, Prigozhin does not appear to hold any top positions — at least not yet. “There are commanders in charge of much larger militaries, including Special Operations Forces and Putin’s personal security, the FSO,” Gatov told The Daily Beast. Olga Romanova, the founder of Russia Behind Bars – an independent group that monitors Russian prisons – believes that while the situation could soon change, Putin’s power in Russia is still unchallenged. “Putin is the main crime boss,” he told The Daily Beast. “Everybody understands that.”
