The head of the Russian mercenaries breaks the Kremlin's law of silence

Yevgeny Prigozhin, in St. Petersburg, in November 2020.Mikhail Metzel (TASS via Getty Images)

There was a time when the Russian elite washed their dirty laundry at home.

Those who were outspoken critics of their rivals saw their political careers end with a bang on orders from above.

Vladimir Putin was the guarantor of stability, and the tensions between the different factions that fluttered around the president were a matter that was resolved behind closed doors.

In addition, the Kremlin was concerned with keeping up appearances by giving a legal wrapper to all its actions, even the most repressive ones.

At least that's how it was until the war.

Inflamed by his role in the offensive against Ukraine, one of Putin's businessmen, the owner of the Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny Prigozhin (Leningrad, 61), has dared to test the

with threats and public accusations of treason against other senior officials.

The real power of Prigozhin, also founder of the troll and

factory that carried out propaganda and destabilization against the West through social networks, is often exaggerated.

Known as Putin's

for his

he has two armies, one military and the other media, but he has not managed in four years to bring down a politician of relatively little weight like the governor of St. Petersburg, his archrival Alexander Beglov.

Despite supporting him in his election in 2019, the businessman has seen how the politician rejected the construction of several of his projects, and the confrontation ended when Prigozhin had his hands free thanks to the dependence on the Russian armed forces. of his mercenaries.

“Beglov does not bring any benefit to the city, he has created a system to divide the money, buildings and territories of the city among a group of interested people.

This web of corruption can only be destroyed with a sledgehammer,” Prigozhin said on December 30 through a public chat that he maintains through one of his companies.

That reference to the mallet was not fortuitous.

The death penalty is suspended in Russia under a 1996 moratorium, but Wagner applied it without trial against a Russian citizen in November.

The execution of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former Russian prisoner who had been recruited in prison by that same company and who had later been exchanged after turning himself in to the Ukrainian army, was broadcast on social networks close to Wagner.

The paramilitaries hit him on the head with a mallet and accused him of treason.

“A dog receives a dog's death,” Prigozhin remarked.

"This is not our issue," Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, then settled when asked if an investigation would be opened into the event.

That was forgotten, just as it was ignored that Russian legislation punishes businessmen who recruit and train mercenaries in Russia with up to 15 years in prison.

“Prigozhin is not a friend of Putin, he is just a useful tool.

He knows it very well by doing precisely what the Kremlin needs of him, ”Mark Galeotti tells this newspaper by phone.

The expert on Russia points out that the businessman "hates" Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, which explains his criticism of the high command.

“When Shoigu fired the person in charge of army logistics, he cut his ties to him because that soldier gave Prigozhin's companies a lot of business.

From his point of view, Shoigu costs him money, ”he underlines.

Unlike Putin and Shoigu, Prigozhin constantly visits the front and has no shame in displaying himself alongside war mutilated people or walking through a sinister makeshift morgue in a basement.

"Their contracts have ended, they return home," he commented among numerous black plastic bags where the remains of his recruits rested.

For Prigozhin, this is publicity, he has found a populist niche in front of a high command that hides the drama: “Some do not like that ordinary Russians, those who do not participate in parades or have an irreproachable past, can defeat the enemy.

All the wars in Russia have not been won by special forces with acrobatic acts, but by those men with iron balls."

Yevgeny Prigozhin, in front, in an image from Twitter.

Prigozhin's verbiage knows no bounds.

A few days ago he called former president Dmitry Medvedev's forecasts for 2023 “erotic fantasies”, and in early December he made another veiled threat against the former head of the Russian space agency Dmitri Rogozin, who had previously been criticized for wearing NATO gear.

"If someone approaches Wagner's positions in these clothes, we will return them in a plastic bag," said the businessman.

Weeks later, Rogozin was seriously injured when the Donetsk restaurant where he was staying was shelled.

According to Russian militarist channels, his location could have been leaked.

Prigozhin's attitude is very striking if one takes into account how the last politicians who dared to criticize in public ended up.

The former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov questioned the leadership of then-president Dmitri Medvedev in 2010 and was dismissed "for loss of trust".

Two years earlier, in 2008, Viktor Cherkésov was abruptly removed as head of the Anti-Drug Agency.

The senior official had written an article in the

newspaper in which he criticized the internal struggles of the security services after the arrest of several of his collaborators.

He never returned to politics, and Putin publicly chided him: "Anyone who makes claims about a secret service war must first be innocent."

A rising value

However, others see Prigozhin as an upside value to approach.

Kursk Governor Roman Starovoit posted a video on Telegram this Sunday where he announced that he had trained the first week of the year with a Wagner unit.

“Surrounded by real men, patriots of Russia,” said the politician.

Prigozhin recruits a large part of his forces among the prisoners with the promise of releasing them, although the pardon is not the power of the businessman.

According to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, of Wagner's 50,000 troops, only 10,000 are professional mercenaries, while the rest come from prisons.

US intelligence estimates that this private army costs the Russian Defense Ministry about 1.2 billion euros a year, the equivalent of the budget of regions such as Briansk or Karelia.

"Don't drink too much, don't take drugs or rape women," Prigozhin asked in a relaxed tone several mutilated prisoners in a hospital who have recently been pardoned.

In that video he also claimed the understanding of the Russians towards them.

In parallel, some independent newspapers such as

and

identified several criminals: from a man who murdered his grandmother to collect the sale of an apartment from various thieves and drug dealers.

Prigozhin's private army is now locked in a bloody battle for the conquest of Soledar and Bakhmut.

According to American espionage, behind that massacre is the attempt to gain control of some mines rich in salt and gypsum, as Wagner had done before in Africa in exchange for his services.

Another of the loose verses of Russian ultranationalism, the military man Igor Girkin

, one of the most critical of the Kremlin since the beginning of the war, has charged Prigozhin for spending his forces in favor of his business.

“Even if our troops win a tactical victory, strategically we have lost because you have once again thrown our best forces at a futile target.

And in this case, the Russian armed forces will only have reached the limits of the third fortified line of Ukraine, no worse equipped than the first two," Strelkov, one of the Russian soldiers who started the Donbass war, wrote on his personal channel. of 2014. “The fault of this is not Prigozhin's nor Wagner's, but the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, but the responsibility of these

should not be completely eliminated”, warned the military.

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