The Western secret services have their confirmation. Yevgeny Prigojine, a businessman close to the Kremlin, admitted on Monday that he founded the paramilitary group Wagner in 2014, present in many conflicts around the world, calling it a “pillar” of the defense of Russian interests.
The man who is nicknamed “Putin’s cook”, because his catering company supplied the Kremlin, thus admits what Western powers and the media have been asserting for a long time.
Putin’s Shadow Army
Wagner, whose presence has been documented for eight years in Ukraine, Syria, Libya or even in the Central African Republic and Mali, is perceived by his detractors as Vladimir Putin’s shadow army, promoting Russian interests by providing combatants, but also military instructors and advisers. The Russian president had denied, a year ago, that the group carried out its base works and served the interests of the Russian state.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s admission comes after a video emerged this month on social media that appears to show him recruiting prisoners from a Russian penitentiary to join Wagner’s ranks on the Ukrainian front. The Russian army is in trouble there, and Vladimir Putin last week ordered a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to try to regain control.
In a post Monday on the social networks of his company Concord, Yevgeny Prigojine therefore acknowledges having founded the group in order to send competent fighters to the Ukrainian Donbass in 2014, where Moscow orchestrated the emergence of an armed separatist movement. “It was then, on May 1, 2014, that a group of patriots was born which took the name of the Wagner Battalion Tactical Group”. “And now a confession (…) these guys, heroes, defended the Syrian people, other peoples of Arab countries, the deprived Africans and Latin Americans, they became a pillar of our homeland,” he said. he still asserted.
The unknown Dmitry Utkin
Piercing gaze and shaved head, Evguéni Prigojine is at 61 one of the most troubled figures of the Putinian system, sanctioned in particular by the European Union for his role in the Wagner group. In Russia, he prosecuted the Kremlin’s number one opponent, Alexei Navalny, who is now imprisoned. He is also accused of being behind at least one “troll factory” which participated in interference in the 2016 US presidential election which saw the victory of Donald Trump. It has also been sanctioned by the United States.
If he is in Wagner’s finances, the operational controls are, according to Russian media, in the hands of Dmitri Outkin. However, little is known about this man in his fifties who would have passed through Russian military intelligence.