The internal conflict between the head of the “Wagner” PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense, after seeming to have calmed down at the beginning of spring, sharply escalated.

On Friday morning, Prigozhin recorded a video in front of, according to him, the bodies of dozens of mercenaries of the “Wagner” PMK, killed that day near Bakhmut, Donetsk region (You can watch the clip with hard footage here)

In a profanity-laced speech, Wagner’s boss directly blamed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for the deaths of the soldiers, saying that Wagner had been deprived of the ammunition he needed to continue the assault on Bakhmut.

Later that day, another video was broadcast, in which Prigozhin, standing in front of a line of Wagnerites, declared that if he was not provided with the necessary ammunition, he would completely remove Wagner from Bakhmut on May 10, the second day. after the Victory Day celebration in Russia.

“My boys will not suffer unnecessary and unjustifiable losses in Bakhmut without ammunition. If, because of your petty jealousy, you don’t want to give the Russian people the victory of conquering Bakhmut, that’s your problem,” Prigozhin added in the video.

The incident is Russia’s worst open domestic conflict since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with potentially serious consequences for Russia’s military effort.

The escalation also comes at a crucial time, as Russian forces under Wagner have captured more than 90 percent of Bakhmut, while the rest of the Russian military prepares for an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Prigozhin changed the sign again

On May 7, three days before he threatened to withdraw, Prigozhin announced that he had received new shipments of ammunition, thanking in particular General Sergei Surovikin, Russia’s former war chief, while continuing to insult the rest of the ministry.

In an audio message posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Prigozhin said: “At night I received an order to fight, for the first time in all this time,” according to Reuters.

Vladimir Putin with Sergei Soigu and General Valery Gerasimov Photo: Kremlin Pool / Alamy / Profimedia Images

“We were promised as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue operations. We were promised that everything necessary to prevent the enemy from blocking our paths (supplies) will be deployed on the flank,” he added.

Fierce fighting continued in Bakhmut on Sunday after a Ukrainian military spokesman said late Saturday that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s tirade about an acute shortage of ammunition was a “complete bluff.”

“His business depends on the Kremlin”

Kyiv Independent spoke with one of the world’s leading experts on Russian security, London-based political scientist Mark Galeotti, professor emeritus of the School of Slavic Studies and East European Studies of University College London, senior researcher at the Royal Joint Services Institute and director of Mayak. Intelligence.

“Wagner is a shadow of what he once was. His video is a true expression of the degree of desperation. They are one of the few ways to contact Putin, given that he has no direct line. But let’s be honest, he’s made similar threats to quit in the past, but he hasn’t followed through,” says Galeotti

He estimates that Prigozhin will seriously suffer from the retreat, especially since he has many enemies, but he believes that everything is a bluff.

“Honestly, if he retreated from Bahmut, it would be a disaster for him, it would be seen as a betrayal. This is a person who is completely dependent on the Kremlin in all his business activities,” added Mark Galeotti for the Kyiv Independent.

Who is Prigozhin and why did he go to prison?

Yevgeny Prigozhin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in 1961, nine years after Putin. His father died when he was young. According to Prigozhin, his mother worked in a hospital. Young Prigozhin was sent to a sports school, where daily activities often included hours of skiing.

He failed to become a professional athlete, and after graduating from school he fell into the circle of petty criminals. His story is told in court documents from 1981, seen by The Guardian and first reported by independent Russian investigative site Meduza.

One March evening in 1980, during the final years of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s reign, 18-year-old Prigozhin and three friends left a St. Petersburg bar around midnight and noticed a woman walking alone down a dark street.

Yevgeny Prigozhin unleashed against the leaders of the Russian army Photo: Handout / AFP / Profimedia

One of Prigozhin’s friends turned the woman away by asking her for a cigarette. While she was about to open her purse, Prigozhin crept up behind her and grabbed her by the neck, squeezing her until she lost consciousness. Then his friend took the shoes, and Prigozhin deftly took off the gold earrings and put them in his pocket. The four then disappeared, running away, leaving the woman lying in the street.

The court found that this was only one of many robberies that Prigozhin and his friends committed in St. Petersburg over several months.

He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and spent the rest of the decade behind bars, missing Brezhnev’s death and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. It was released in 1990, when the Soviet Union was in its throes.

What did he do after prison?

Returned to St. Petersburg. The city was on the verge of a monumental transformation, and there were great riches waiting for those clever or cruel enough to claim them.

Prigozhin started modestly, selling sausage. He was mixing mustard in the kitchen of his family’s apartment. “I earned $1,000 a month, which was a mountain in rubles; my mother could barely count them all,” he told the St. Petersburg news portal “City 812” in 2011 in one of his rare interviews.

But Prigozhin had bigger ambitions than fast food and knew how to make the right contacts. “He was always looking for honest people to befriend. And he got away with it,” said a businessman who knew him in the 1990s.

In a short time, Prigozhin managed to get a share in a chain of supermarkets, and in 1995 he decided that it was time to open a restaurant together with business partners. He found Tony Gere, a British hotel manager who had previously worked at the Savoy in London and now worked at one of the few luxury hotels in St. Petersburg.

Prigozhin hired Geer to run first a wine shop and then his new restaurant, Stara Mytnytsia (Vama Viche, no) on St. Petersburg’s Vasilovsky Island.

• Read also: How Prigozhin met Putin

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the hot dog seller who headed Putin’s military machine

In the midst of Russia’s illegal invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, several high-ranking Russian officials gathered at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense. They were going to meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, a middle-aged man with a shaved head who many in the audience knew only as the person in charge of the army’s food contracts, The Guardian reported.

Wagnerites in Bakhmut (PHOTO: Yevhen Biyatov / Sputnik / Profimedia)

How Wagner was born

Now Prigozhin himself came to the army with a request. He wanted land from the Ministry of Defense that he could use for training “volunteers”. They were not to have an official connection with the Russian army, but could be used to fight in the wars that Russia is waging.

Many in the ministry did not like this attitude of Prigozhin, but he made it clear that this was not an ordinary request. “Orders come from the Pope,” he told defense officials briefly, using Vladimir Putin’s nickname to emphasize his closeness to the president.

This account of the meeting was provided by a former senior Russian Defense Ministry official who was there. “I didn’t have a very good opinion of the project at the time,” the former official told The Guardian.

In fact, the decisions made that day would have a huge impact on Russia’s foreign policy and military adventures for years to come. Prigozhin’s private army of militants would become known as the Wagner group and would operate in Ukraine, Syria and many African countries.

After last year’s decision by Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Wagner reoriented her activities on this front. According to Western intelligence estimates, its ranks have grown to approximately 50,000 people, including tens of thousands of ex-prisoners personally recruited by Prigozhin from Russian prisons.

What is Prigozhin?

Prigozhin earned a reputation as the most brutal commander of those who led the infamous invasion of Russia. He appeared to tacitly approve of a video showing the sledgehammer to death of a defector from Wagner who was apparently returned by the Ukrainians in a prisoner exchange. “Death to a dog,” Prigozhin commented at the time.

After years of working in the shadows, it is clear that he has now stepped into the spotlight as one of the most influential – and, if anything, the most talked about – members of Putin’s inner circle. It was an extraordinary rise for someone who once spent nearly 10 years in prison and became a hot dog vendor after his release.

In an effort to piece together his story, The Guardian spoke to a number of people who knew Prigozhin over the years, many of whom wished to remain anonymous. From these conversations, the image of a merciless schemer emerges, who, slaving over his superiors and tyrannizing his subordinates, rose to the top of the social hierarchy.

“He is motivated and talented and will stop at nothing to get what he wants,” said a businessman who met Prigozhin in the 1990s.

Sources: Kyiv Independent, The Guardian, Meduza, Reuters, HotNews.ro