Yevgeny Prigozhin was a Russian mercenary boss and founder of the Wagner Group. Once described as "Putin's chef", he built the world's most notorious private army before falling out with the Kremlin.
Prigozhin began as a street thug and served nine years in prison. He later became a restaurateur; his eatery in St Petersburg was frequented by Putin, which brought him government contracts.
In 2014 Prigozhin moved into the private-military business. The Wagner Group became particularly well-funded by the state: in the year from May 2022, it received 86bn roubles (roughly $1bn) for fighters' salaries. Putin used Wagner to wage shadow wars with plausible deniability, first in eastern Ukraine, then in Africa beginning with Sudan in 2017. Prigozhin was a master marketer, sharing battlefield videos on Telegram and producing action movies set in Africa.
By early 2023 Prigozhin publicly blamed Russia's regular-army generals for the war's failures. On June 23rd 2023 he staged an abortive mutiny, marching his troops towards Moscow, before backing down and going into exile in Belarus. On August 23rd 2023 he was killed in a plane crash north-west of Moscow alongside other senior Wagner figures. The Kremlin denied involvement, but Putin remarked that Prigozhin had "made serious mistakes in life".
Since his death, Wagner's assets have ostensibly been under the control of his son, Pavel Prigozhin, who was 26 at the time.
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