Moscow (EFE) and whose occupants died in the accident according to these same sources.
So far, Russian emergency services have rescued eight bodies at the crash site, although the bodies have not been identified.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, staged a mutiny against Putin at the end of June and even threatened to move on to occupy Moscow, although the riot was unsuccessful. Wagner’s leader ordered his men to abandon the operation after mediation by Belarusian President Alexandr Lukhashenko.
The last thing that was heard from him came through his Telegram channel on Monday, August 21, when he uploaded a first video since the rebellion in which he suggested that he was in Africa with his group of mercenaries.
Known as “Putin’s chef”
Prigozhin had many facets such as businesses that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef” and illegal activities that brought him international sanctions. He was a businessman, ex-criminal, founder of a troll factory, mercenary, and was also the rebel who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With more than 25,000 men from his private army, considered illegal in Russia but fighting on the side of Russian troops in the Ukraine, he launched an uprising against the military command because of the “chaos” into which, according to him, the war had become and the “100,000 Russian soldiers” who have died because of the Ministry of Defence.
Prigozhin harshly criticized the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, Valeri Gerasimov, whom he constantly challenged with audios and videos riddled with insults, shouting and accusations of incompetence and disorganization in the war strategy in the neighboring country.
His experience as head of the feared Russian mercenaries, known for their brutality and the use of hammers and methods of torture against their own and enemies, according to the complaints of ex-combatants and videos of the skull group, was carried out in countries such as Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic or Libya.
But he was not always the leader of thousands of Wagner fighters, a group that he only finally acknowledged in September 2022 having created in 2014 when “the genocide began in Donbas,” he said, in line with the argument used by Putin in February 2022 to launch its war against Ukraine.
Prigozhin, from criminal to hot dog seller
Born 62 years ago in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin was formerly a criminal businessman, having spent 10 years in prison in the 1990s, although he never revealed the reason.
When he got out of prison, he sold hot dogs by mixing the mustard in his relative’s kitchen and earning $1,000 a month, he told a portal in his hometown in 2011 in one of the rare interviews he gave then.
But he aspired to more, much more, and he knew how to make good contacts within the business community and later among the Russian political elite.
The ultra-nationalist soon managed to open his first restaurant and enter the world of catering for gala dinners or distinguished guests from Russia.
Deals with Putin and creator of ‘trolls’
By then Putin was already president and he sometimes took his guests, including foreign leaders such as George Bush, to restaurants in Prigozhin in St. Petersburg, according to photographs from this time.
He soon won government catering and school contracts in Moscow through his company Concord.
He had already earned the nickname “Putin’s chef.”
According to a 2017 investigation of the now-imprisoned Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalni, Prigozhin would have obtained state contracts worth at least 2.5 billion euros, including one to distribute food to the Russian Army.
His aspirations did not stop there. Although he never publicly implicated Putin in his illegal initiatives, he decided to serve the Russian state in another facet when he created the notorious St. Petersburg troll factory that the US accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Interference in the US elections won by Trump
He only acknowledged in February 2023 having been the founder of this structure, which launched a campaign on social networks in 2016 to manipulate public opinion in the US before the presidential elections won by Donald Trump.
“I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I drove it for a long time. It was created to protect the Russian information space from the rude and aggressive propaganda of the West’s anti-Russian theses, ”Prigozhin then noted through his press service.
In November 2022, he responded for the first time to accusations of alleged meddling in the US elections, saying that Russia “has done it and will do it.”
“Gentlemen, we have done it, we continue to do it and we will do it in the future,” Prigozhin said when asked about alleged interference in last year’s US legislative elections.
The US sanctioned Prigozhin and three of his companies, including Concord Management and Concord Catering, for influencing political processes in the United States.
Go back to being a mercenary
In February 2022, the businessman decided to refocus on his mercenary company and send his fighters to Ukraine, where problems began with the Russian military command, which initially did not give credit to the Wagnerites when they had taken a town, which which already angered Prigozhin.
The conflict erupted this year over the fight for Bakhmut, finally taken over by the mercenaries in May in what has been Ukraine’s longest battle to date, when he accused Shoigu and Gerasimov of letting his men die without enough ammunition. .
Since then, the businessman’s attacks on Defense have only increased, including attacks with allegedly Ukrainian drones against the Kremlin and southern Moscow or Russia’s inability to defend border regions with Ukraine such as Belgorod from enemy incursions and bombings.
He accused the military command of lying and misleading the Russians and Putin about the real situation at the front. For some Russians and military blockers he was the only one who told the truth, for others, however, he was dangerous and impertinent who even dared to star in another facet: that of a rebel who rose up against the highest structures of power.
The Kremlin announced an agreement for Prigozhin to go to Belarus after a challenge that lasted 24 hours – between the nights of June 23 and 24 – and put Russian power in check.
