Russian mercenary group Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was reported dead on Wednesday in a plane crash in Russia. He was among the ten members, all killed, on board a jet which was flying from Moscow to St Petersburg including seven passengers and three crew. Earlier, Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported the Embraer aircraft was shot down by air defences in the Tver region, north of Moscow, as per a BBC report. Prigozhin recently converged attention after he turned rebel against Russia, whom it was supporting in its invasion in Ukraine.
He had vowed to “go to the end” to topple the Russian military leadership. President Putin called the armed rebellion a ‘stab in the back’ and threatened punishment for the ‘traitors’. Responding to this, Prigozhin said that Putin was “deeply mistaken” in calling rebelling Wagner fighters “traitors” and ruled out surrender.
Here are ten facts about Prigozhin, a close aide of Putin against whom he rebelled.
- He was a hotdog seller from a modest background and a native of Putin’s hometown, Saint Petersburg. During the Soviet-era, he was jailed for nearly a decade after being convicted of fraud and theft.
- In 1990s, he started a moderately successful fast-food company and opened a luxury location in Saint Petersburg, whose customers included Putin.
- Prigozhin was known as “Putin’s chef” because his catering business hosted dinners for the Russian preisdent and fed the Kremlin’s armed forces.
- The 61-year-old ex-convict was believed to be behind the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a troll farm that was accused of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, as per a Times of India report.
- He is said to have hired fighters for Wagner from Russian prisons promising them pardons If they survive half-year tour of front-line duty with Wagner.
- After denying for years about his relationship with Wagner, he said that he founded Wagner to support Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas conflict.
- Prigozhin had a history of suing Russian and Western news outlets that alleged his ties to the group. He earlier claimed that his secretive stance was to protect the Wagner soldiers.
- Since founding the Wagner mercenary group in 2014, Prigozhin had become a key instrument in Putin’s ambition to restore Russian influence globally, as per a BBC report.
- The United States and the European Union had sanctioned Prigozhin for his activities and he was under investigation by the US Department of Justice for possible criminal charges, the TOI report said.
- “I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this,” Prigozhin said, as quoted by Independent “From that moment, on 1 May 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion.”