The conflict in Ukraine allowed the unpredictable head of the Wagner paramilitary group to establish himself as a major player in Russia. But by calling for an uprising against the General Staff, Yevgeny Prigozhin crossed the Rubicon, writes AFP, referring to the beginning of the civil war.

The impetuous, shaven-headed and stern-faced billionaire accused the Russian military on Friday of bombing his Wagner group’s bases at the request of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom he vowed to “stop” with military force.

Claiming to have “25,000” fighters, mercenary leader Wagner, 62, called on the Russian military and population to join him, while saying what he was doing was not a “military coup”.

After his statements, Russia’s powerful secret services opened a criminal case against him for “calling for armed insurrection”, a serious charge that, in theory, could have sent him to prison for a long time.

But nothing is certain about Prigozhin, with his track record as a master of the art of provocation and turning situations.

“We still need to understand what’s going on,” says independent Russian analyst Tatiana Stanova, for whom the authorities “may seek to remove Prigozhin from the game with the latter’s active participation.”

“For the FSB and its employees, this is definitely happiness. At least Prigozhin got a shot in the head,” she adds.

Prigozhin, the master of provocations and his path from a man in the shadows to the image of the Russian offensive

The conflict in Ukraine seemed to provide an excellent opportunity for the businessman to emerge from the shadow cone in which he had worked for years to finally establish himself as a leading player in Russia.

In May 2023, after months of heavy and bloody fighting, Prigozhin gained recognition by announcing Wagner’s capture of Bakhmut (eastern Ukraine), celebrating a rare battlefield victory for Russian forces.

But even in this battle, the tension in the General Staff increased: Prigozhin accused the Kremlin military leadership of not providing ammunition to his fighter company, videos of him insulting the Russian command multiplied.

Unthinkable for anyone in Russia in conditions of total repression.

His journey from a shadow man to the light of victory at the front began in September, when the Russian army suffered a setback in Ukraine, a humiliation for Russian soldiers.

The turning point came when he first admitted that he was indeed the founder of Wagner’s paramilitary group, which operated in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa, and assumed leadership.

“These boys, heroes, defended the Syrian people, other peoples of Arab countries, the poor of Africa and Latin America, they became the support of our homeland,” he claims.

In October, he installs a glass building in St. Petersburg (northwest) for the headquarters of “Wagner’s private military company.”

A master of provocations, in February he released a video in which he, on board a combat plane, offers the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, to decide the fate of Bakhmut during an aerial duel.

The path from prison to founding the Wagner group

In order to have an army to match his ambitions, Prigozhin, a native – like Russian President Vladimir Putin – of St. Petersburg, is recruiting thousands of prisoners to fight in Ukraine in exchange for amnesty.

Evgeny Prigozhin knows the prison world very well, he himself spent nine years in prison during the Soviet era for criminal offenses.

He was released in 1990 during the collapse of the USSR and founded a successful hot dog business.

Then he opened a luxury restaurant that became one of the most popular in St. Petersburg, where Vladimir Putin saw his own political rise in parallel.

After Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, his catering company won contracts with the Kremlin, earning him the nickname “Putin’s Chef” and a reputation as a billionaire thanks to government contracts.

So the money is said to have been used to create Wagner, a private army originally made up of veterans of the Russian army and secret services.

In 2018, when this group, which had already been observed in Ukraine, Syria and Libya, was suspected of activities in Africa, three Russian journalists were killed in the Central African Republic, who were investigating the affairs of the paramilitary company.

Read also:

• Prigozhin takes the position of prosecutor in the ministry headed by Shoigu. Mysterious letters about “crimes” committed before and during the war
• VIDEO Prigozhin admitted for the first time that the invasion of Ukraine was based on a lie: “The war was not necessary for the demilitarization or denazification of Ukraine”
• ‘Putin’s Butcher’ warns of backlash after Shoigu orders media to stop writing about Prigozhin
• Prigozhin hammers home the grand figures of the Russian army regarding Ukrainian losses. “I think I’ve already destroyed the entire planet Earth five times”