2023-05-12 14:53:34
Time.news – Seen by some as a possible rival of Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, Evgheny Prigozhin – the former Leningrad convict turned successful businessman and then warlord, with his now infamous ‘Private Military Company’ Wagner’ – is actually a figure “at the moment not very influential in the political and military fields and whose criminal past could, if necessary, be used by the power to get rid of him”.
In an interview with Time.news, Ilya Barabanov, of BBC Russia, one of the first journalists to deal with Wagner’s activities in conflict zones and author of investigations which, among other things, documented the presence of Russian contractor in Libya.
The contrast with the Russian military leaders
Operating in the shadows until 2022, Prigozhin, 61, only confessed last September that he had founded the mini-army of contractors in 2014, during the Crimean crisis. Since then, with various moves, he has in fact also admitted his political ambitions: he insults foreign ministers (as happened with the Italian defense minister, Guido Crosetto, guilty of having hypothesized Wagner’s hand behind the exodus of migrants from North Africa ); he enters prisons undisturbed to recruit prisoners to be sent to the front, effectively annulling sentences and promising amnesties; for weeks he has been in open conflict with the Russian military leaders for the lack of ammunition supply on Bakhmut’s front and most recently he also accused the Russian military of abandoning their positions at the front, pressed by the Ukrainians.
A kind of “unofficial minister“, some media have defined him, a man “above the law”, whose influence seems limited to the media field and does not suggest a top role in post-war Russia. The fight that Prigozhin has waged against the top Russian servicemen – by the minister Sergei Shoigu to the Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov – hasn’t led to a weakening of rivals who, on the contrary, keep their power firm. Even the months-long feud with the governor of St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Beglov, demonstrates that “the one who is portrayed as one of the most dangerous and powerful figures in Russia fails even to solve some trivial everyday problems in his hometown”, wrote the Carnegie think tank.
Also known as ‘Putin’s chef’ for the million-dollar contracts with the state to supply school and army canteens, Prigozhin until last year was known only for the photos in which, behind Putin’s back, he participates in official banquets with illustrious guests: from the US president George Bush, to the then prince and now king of England, Charles III. In 2018, however, he was immortalized in the images of the meeting in Moscow between Shoigu and the Libyan marshal Khalifa Haftar.
A real anomaly for a character who has no official public office. Previously, the media had already reported the presence in Libya of its contractors now active not only in Mali, the Central African Republic and Syria but also with branches in Burkina Faso. “Wagner operated under the umbrella of GRU (military intelligence) during these years”, Barabanov is convinced, “such a structure could not exist in Russia autonomously”.
With the war in Ukraine, the mercenaries changed roles
After the war in Ukraine the role of mercenaries of Prigozhin is a lot changed: “If before they were a regiment of a few hundred or at most two thousand people, with local and commercial tasks in various countries, at the end of 2022 they rose to the rank of an independent army, with almost 50,000 fighters, including thousands of prisoners recruited directly from prisons Russian; this could not have happened without a mandate and direct authorization from the President of the Russian Federation, despite the fact that the Kremlin continues to deny connections”.
After the failed blitzkrieg in Kiev, it became clear that there would be no quick capture of Ukraine, and last spring the Wagners joined the Russian military campaign, diverting a maximum of mercenaries there. “90-95% of their resources are employed in Eastern Ukraine,” Barabanov points out, but other activities abroad continue: Prigozhin’s central business is in Syria and Libya, where it controls two, three aerodromes and which is considered a parade ground for further expansion in Africa; here you, among other things, have important commercial contracts in the Central African Republic where you are in charge of the president’s security.
The international media have estimated that only from African contracts, the entrepreneur-commander would earn up to a billion dollars a year which he uses to strengthen his group in Ukraine. As in the political sphere, Prigozhin’s influence in the conflict also needs to be scaled down, according to Barabanov. “In 2014, when Prigozhin’s mercenaries appear in Donbass, the latter are not distinguished by who knows what assault actions, as they are now trying to advertise themselves in Ukraine: the Wagners are linked to countless murders of pro-Russian commanders in the East of the Ukraine, which did not fall within the vertical of Putin’s power, which was then sought to impose in the self-proclaimed Republics of Donbass”.
Prigozhin used to dirty work
Also sanctioned by the UK, the EU and the US on charges of interfering in foreign elections through his ‘troll factory’ in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin may simply be playing the role of what is called in Russian ‘polevoy komandyr’, according to Barabanov’s thesis: a ‘camp commander, the person who in a specific territory of a state with a weak central government has full military and civilian power.
“The Kremlin could use it for the dirty work in the fieldto blackmail the civilized world with the specter that after Putin in power even more dangerous and difficult to manage characters may arrive or use him as a scapegoat for any military defeats, only to then get rid of them if necessary”. It seems that the presidential administration has already ready a smear campaign against the Wagner boss that draws on his criminal past.
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