Prigozhin has kept a low profile over the years. But in recent months, the 61-year-old businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin has become increasingly public about his activities, particularly regarding Moscow’s eight-month war in Ukraine. This week, he gained new attention by admitting his involvement – which he had previously denied – in the events that brought American officials under scrutiny: meddling in the US election.
“PUTIN’S CHEF”
Prigozhin and Putin go back a long way, both having been born in Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg. During the last years of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin served a prison sentence — 10 years by his own admission — although he did not say what it was for. Then he had a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants that caught Putin’s interest. In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French president Jacques Chirac to dine at one of them. “Vladimir Putin saw how I built a business from a booth, he saw that I didn’t mind serving the distinguished guests because they were my guests,” Prigozhin recalled in an interview published in 2011. Its activities expanded significantly to cater and provide school meals. In 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory built with generous loans from a state-owned bank. In Moscow alone, Concord’s company won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals to public schools. He also catered for Kremlin events for several years – earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef” – and provided catering and utility services to the Russian military. In 2017, opposition and anti-corruption fighter Alexei Navalny accused Prigozhin’s companies of violating antitrust laws by bidding on about $387 million in Defense Ministry contracts. MILITARY CONNECTION For years, media reports and Western officials linked Prigozhin to a Russian private military contractor called the Wagner Group, a mercenary force said to have been involved in conflicts in Libya and Syria, as well as under-the-radar military operations in at least half a dozen African countries. The group has also played a prominent role in the fighting in Ukraine. Prigozhin always denied having anything to do with Wagner. But in September, he acknowledged he was Wagner’s founder in a social media statement released by his companies’ press office. He said that when fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Kiev forces in 2014, he sought to “assemble a group (of fighters) that would go (there) and defend the Russians.” He also admitted that Wagner “defended the Syrian people, other peoples of Arab countries, disadvantaged Africans and Latin Americans.” Video recently surfaced of a Prigozhin lookalike visiting Russian penal colonies to recruit prisoners to fight in Ukraine. Asked about these visits, he neither confirmed nor denied it directly, saying only through his press service that he was once imprisoned and therefore in many prisons. Prigozhin also talked about building a “Wagner line” — a system of trenches and anti-tank defenses — in Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian provinces illegally annexed by Moscow in September, and setting up training centers for defense militias in Russia. Belgorod and Kursk regions bordering Ukraine Wagner also opened a business center in St. Petersburg to great fanfare, and Prigozhin boasted that it would become a platform for increasing Russia’s “defense capabilities,” promising to expand to other locations if successful.
ELECTION INTERFERENCE
In 2018, Prigozhin and a dozen other Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted in the US for a secret social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion ahead of the 2016 presidential election won by Republican Donald Trump . They were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. Prigozhin was later imposed by the US Treasury. After the indictment, the RIA Novosti news agency reported that he said, in a clearly sarcastic remark: “Americans are very impressionable people. they see what they want to see. I treat them with great respect. I’m not upset at all about being on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him.” The Justice Department in 2020 dismissed charges against two of the companies, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering, saying they completed a trial against a corporate defendant with no U.S. presence and no prospect of substantial punishment even if convicted. sensitive law enforcement tools and techniques. In July, the State Department offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Russian meddling in the US election, including Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll farm his companies were accused of funding. Prigozhin had denied involvement in any of this – until Monday, on the eve of the US presidential midterms. The press service of one of his companies posted on social media his response to a question from a Russian news agency about allegations of such interference. “Gentlemen, we have intervened, we are intervening and we will intervene. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do,” read the reply. “During our operations, we will remove both the kidneys and the liver at the same time.” Some Russian state-funded media described his comments as ironic. In response, the White House called him “a known bad actor who has been sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union,” and State Department spokesman Ned Price said Prigozhin’s “bold confession, if anything , appears to be a fair manifestation of the impunity enjoyed by crooks and cronies under President Putin and the Kremlin.” Prigozhin responded to Price’s comments in English, saying, among other things, that the US has been “rudely interfering” in elections around the world for decades. SARCASM OR BOOSTING HIS PROFILE? Whether sarcastic or not, the remark gained a lot of attention in the West. It also fueled long-held speculation that he was seeking a bigger role in Russia’s political scene. Prigozhin said through his press service that he does not intend to “officialize his political position in any way. … And if they offer it to me, I think I will refuse.” He has joined the powerful leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, in publicly criticizing Moscow’s military for the conduct of the war. Some media reports have suggested that Prigozhin’s influence with Putin is growing and he is seeking a prominent political position. But analysts cautioned against overestimating its political significance. “He is not one of Putin’s close people or a confidante,” Mark Galeotti of University College London, who specializes in Russian security affairs, said on his “In Moscow’s Shadows” podcast. “Prigozin is doing what the Kremlin wants and doing very well for himself in the process. But that’s the thing — he’s part of the staff rather than part of the family,” Galeotti said. Analysts say Prigozhin’s influence has grown but remains rather limited. Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the independent think tank R.Politik, in a recent Telegram post called Prigozhin “influential in his own way.” Although Prigozhin denies this, Stanovaya said he meets regularly with Putin, especially recently. He added that it has close ties to some security services and “with some of its functions, it can even claim the role of Putin’s private special service,” Stanovaya wrote. He noted, however, that its influence “is indeed greatly exaggerated in the West” and confined to a “narrow and peculiar” position.
