"Putin's cook" Prigozhin visits the cellar with Wagner corpses - sledgehammer as a gift
Created: 01/02/2023 12:31 p.m
By: Bedrettin Bölükbasi
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin visits a training center in Russia's Krasnodar region.
© Twitter/Screenshot/@Gerashchenko_en
Wagner boss Prigozhin, known as “Putin's cook”, visited a training facility of his fighters and presented a bizarre “gift” with a history.
Munich – Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner.
His relationship with the Kremlin is not always smooth and without problems.
Nevertheless, Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin is heavily dependent on his fighters in the Ukraine war.
The mercenary boss currently enjoys great influence and popularity in Russia.
In a new public appearance, he now visited his fighters at a training center in Russia's Krasnodar region.
He gave them a bizarre "New Year's present" that certainly has a history.
"Putin's cook" visits the Wagner Center - and gives away a sledgehammer
Footage by the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti in the short message service Telegram showed Prigozhin on a bumpy ride towards the training center in southern Russia.
However, one scene during the visit of the Wagner boss attracted particular attention.
At the training ground of his mercenaries, he suddenly unpacked a package, as shown in a video by the Ria Fan
portal linked to Prigozhin
.
The contents of the box: A sledgehammer, apparently intended as a "New Year's gift".
You can also see how the silhouette of a Wagner fighter and the name of the mercenary troop are depicted on the hammer.
According to Prigozchin's portal, the hammer also wishes a "happy new year".
The Wagner boss apparently presented the hammer to a superior of his fighters.
"I brought a new development, exactly, and you should train with it so that all the staff know how to use it,"
Ria Fan
quoted him as saying .
He asked the Wagner fighter to learn "how to use it with all the little things".
Above all, the hammer is reminiscent of an incident in mid-November last year when ex-Wagner mercenary Yevgeny Nushin was brutally executed with a similar sledgehammer.
Prigozhin had celebrated this execution at the time.
So could the gift be a warning to your squad not to step out of line?
Eventually he even sent a gavel to the European Parliament as a warning.
Perhaps Prigozhin simply wanted to emphasize the brutality of his mercenary squad.
In any case, a symbolic connection between the "New Year's gift" and the execution of Nushin is difficult to dispute.
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Wagner in the Ukraine war: Prigozhin visits the corpses of his fighters and wishes "Happy New Year"
However, the handing over of the sledgehammer was not the only bizarre scene of Prigozhin's visit to Krasnodar.
According to the Ukrainian news portal
Obozrevatel
, Prigozhin also stopped by the bodies of Wagner fighters who died in Ukraine.
The portal also published a video of the bodies being taken down by trucks and carried to a basement.
"Here are Wagner's fighters who died at the front, their contract is now over," Prigozhin commented coolly on the scene, adding: "They're going home next week."
Looking at the mercenaries who were carrying the bodies, he is said to have said: "Everyone works in the New Year." new year."
(bb)
