Yevgeny Prigozhin: ‘Putin’s butcher’ who vowed to ‘destroy anyone’ who stood in way of Wagner rebellion
From flea market hot dog seller to the head of a mercenary group behind a mutiny against the Russian military, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rise was far from ordinary.
A former convict who spent much of his young life behind bars, he made a stunning ascent and eventually became close to Vladimir Putin.
He even earned himself the nickname “Putin’s chef” on account of his Kremlin-linked catering business.
But it was his creation of the Wagner mercenary group that made him a key player for the Kremlin – and a wanted man across the globe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
His short-lived revolt against Russia’s leadership was the biggest domestic threat to Putin since he took power. The fallout precipitated a dizzying fall from power for Prigozhin – and now his possible death.
But who is Prigozhin?
Crime and hot dogs
Born in 1961 in the city of Leningrad – now Saint Petersburg, Prigozhin had a difficult start in life, losing his father at a young age.
He turned to crime in his teenage years, initially theft, but quickly escalating into more serious crimes. He was jailed for 12 years, aged 20, in 1981 after being convicted of robbery and fraud.
“Prigozhin is a former conman – he was a thug”, according to Samantha de Bendern, from the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
She told Sky News: “He was put in prison in the 1980s for basically assaulting a woman in the street. He spent quite a number of years in the Soviet Union’s penitentiary system.”
Prigozhin was pardoned in 1988 and released in 1990, when he began selling hot dogs at a flea market in Leningrad with his mother and stepfather.
He left prison during perestroika and glasnost – the period in the 1990s when Russia was opening up to the world after years of isolation under communism.
‘Putin’s butcher’ and joining the elite
Prigozhin later founded, or became involved in, many new businesses and in the 2000s, he grew closer to Putin.
“He very quickly got onto the private property/private enterprise bandwagon and ended up being a hot dog seller,” Ms de Bendern told Sky News.
“And this is where things become very mysterious because he transformed himself from hot dog seller to restaurateur to the grand and great of the new post-Soviet Russian elite.”
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Putin and Prigozhin’s relationship explained
According to a New York Times article in 2018, Prigozhin said the “rubles were piling up faster than his mother could count them”.
His companies won lucrative government contracts, including providing school lunches, and in Moscow alone his company Concord won millions of dollars in deals.
Prigozhin eventually became the caterer to a number of Russian state concerns, including the army – a deal which jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny claimed broke competition bidding rules.
He also catered for a lot of state visits and met presidents and heads of state – including then-French president Jacques Chirac, who dined with Putin at one of his restaurants.
Prigozhin in May as he prepared to hand over Bakhmut to the regular Russian army
His catering background and his work for the Kremlin earned Prigozhin the nickname “Putin’s chef” – or sometimes “Putin’s butcher”.
Prigozhin addressed the nickname earlier this year and denied he was ever a chef, saying “butcher” was more accurate.
“They could have just given me a nickname right away – Putin’s butcher, and everything would have been fine,” he said.
Going public as Wagner leader
A once shadowy private military contractor (PMC), little was known about the Wagner Group’s formation and Prigozhin’s role was kept a closely guarded secret.
Experts believe it was likely set up to allow plausible deniability about Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine and Syria.
It is privately owned but its management and operations are “deeply intertwined” with the Russian military and intelligence community, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American thinktank.
Putin and Prigozhin in September 2010. Pic: AP
The Russian government has previously denied involvement with the group and has insisted private military contractors are not legal in Russia.
However, Putin recently praised Wagner’s capture of Bakhmut in what was believed to be his first acknowledgment of the group.
The group came to the world’s attention in 2014 during the Donbas conflict, where it supported pro-Russian separatists in a coup, and for sneak attacks, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering during the annexation of Crimea.
Read more:
Prigozhin was a disaster waiting to happen – analysis
Putin accuses mercenary boss of treason
Wagner has also operated in countries in Africa – including Mali, Mozambique and Sudan – where it has been accused of human rights abuses by the EU.
Prigozhin previously denied any links to Wagner and even launched legal action against Western journalists who attempted to draw such a connection.
However, after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin went public and claimed he had founded the mercenary force in 2014.
Recruiting thousands of prisoners
Prigozhin’s influence grew after the invasion and his forces stepped out of the shadows to be used openly in combat.
In late March 2022, UK defence intelligence and US officials said Wagner Group had about 1,000 personnel in Donbas and eastern Ukraine.
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Then, in August, posters calling for recruits to join Wagner began to appear in Russian cities; while a month later, a video appeared which showed Prigozhin attempting to recruit prisoners.
By December, Wagner forces had swelled to 50,000, according to John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the White House’s National Security Council.
Around 40,000 were believed to be convicts and the rest contractors, he added.
“Wagner almost certainly now commands 50,000 fighters in Ukraine,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in January this year.
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June 2023: How Prigozhin’s rebellion could impact Putin
Despite huge casualty rates, it proved effective at delivering battlefield success – something the Russian army has struggled with.
Prigozhin’s forces were heavily involved in the capture of Bakhmut, one of the war’s bloodiest battles.
According to US figures, around 20,000 Russian troops were killed in the fighting, with around half thought to be from the Wagner Group.
While Prigozin has appeared to show compassion for the life of his mercenaries at times, he infamously appeared to revel in the brutal execution of a Wagner deserter with a sledgehammer.
“A dog receives a dog’s death,” said Prigozhin in response to the video, published in November last year.
‘Eat their guts in hell’ – Clashes with the Kremlin
While Wagner forces made advances, the war also gave Prigozhin a chance to further his own political ambitions.
He has, on several occasions, made public his displeasure with the Russian military leadership, often in strongly-worded videos on social media.
Earlier this year, he accused the defence ministry of failing to provide enough ammunition to Wagner forces in Bakhmut and not providing cover for their flanks.
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Wagner leader claims Bakhmut victory
He even threatened to pull troops out if they were not resupplied.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said at the time, as he shared a video of himself standing by the bodies of dead troops.
“The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”
In June, Prigozhin arrived in Moscow with a contract which, in effect, attempted to formalise Wagner as an equivalent but separate military force to the Russian army.
Hours before his rebellion, he took aim at defence minister Sergei Shoigu – often the main target of his vitriol – as well as chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov.
He also claimed Kremlin officials and oligarchs wanted the invasion of Ukraine to make money and advance their own careers.
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Russian mercenary hands over US and Turkish bodies
The rebellion – and the fallout
As tensions hit boiling point, Prigozhin launched a rebellion on 23 June, calling for Russia’s top military brass to step down over their handling of the war.
He led his fighters on a march towards Moscow, vowing to “destroy anyone who stands in our way”.
But after making it to just 120 miles from Moscow, Prigozhin stood down his troops, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal between Prigozhin and Putin, which resulted in the Wagner boss being exiled to Belarus.
Prigozhin appeared in footage released on Tuesday
Since then, he has only been seen a handful of times.
His first video address since the rebellion was released on Tuesday, with footage appearing to show Prigozhin in Africa.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting Donald Trump next Monday, according to US officials.
The visit on 7 July comes after Mr Trump suggested it was possible a ceasefire in Gaza could be reached within a week.
On Sunday, he wrote on social media: “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!”
At least 60 people killed across Gaza on Monday, in what turned out to be some of the heaviest attacks in weeks.
Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Donald Trump during a previous meeting. Pic: Reuters
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, 56,500 people have been killed in the 20-month war.
The visit by Mr Netanyahu to Washington has not been formally announced and the officials who said it would be going ahead spoke on condition of anonymity.
An Israeli official in Washington also confirmed the meeting next Monday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration was in constant communication with the Israeli government.
She said Mr Trump viewed ending the war in Gaza and returning remaining hostages held by Hamas as a top priority.
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The war in Gaza broke out in retaliation for Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw a further 250 taken hostage.
An eight-week ceasefire was reached in the final days of Joe Biden’s US presidency, but Israel resumed the war in March after trying to get Hamas to accept new terms on next steps.
Talks between Israel and Hamas have stalled over whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire.
World
Brutal murder on ‘date’ exposes robbery gang suspected of targeting dozens of women in South Africa
Thirty-year-old Olorato Mongale made sure to take all the measures necessary for a safe first date in South Africa’s biggest city, Johannesburg.
She had agreed to meet ‘John’ in the daytime. She sent her friends her phone location after leaving her house and promptly texted them “on the road” at 2.47pm.
They replied “enjoy!”, hoping she would find love.
An hour later, their friend had gone silent and her phone location was showing up in dangerous areas of the city.
A search party of seven friends set off to trace Olorato’s digital footsteps.
It’s believed Olorato’s killers were part of a gang robbing young women at gunpoint
“It didn’t make sense. Where is she? Why is she missing?” says Karabo Mokoena, as we drove to the locations involved in their search.
“Every place we went to looked dodgier and dodgier. It made me panic – I was very scared.”
After finding her bag on a pile of bricks off the side of a main road, they filed a missing person report at a police station.
“I thought there was no way we were not going to find her. We did end up finding her but not in the way we would have hoped,” says Karabo.
Olorato’s body had been dumped at the dirt entrance of a random house less than 100m from where her friends were searching into the night.
Her face was swollen and her eyes black-blue from violent impact. Her top was ripped open to expose her breasts.
Police told Sky News that her post-mortem showed signs of blunt force trauma. She was likely beaten to death.
Olorato’s body was dumped outside this gate – she was likely beaten to death
“It was like I was dreaming, seeing her body like that with those bruises and blood everywhere,” says Olorato’s mother, Keabetswe Poppy Mongale, describing the moment she had to identify her only child at the morgue.
“I don’t think what I saw will ever go away,” she adds.
“It was very painful. I don’t wish that on any parent because my beautiful little girl looked different because someone chose to do that to her.”
Olorato’s mother says the image of her daughter in the morgue will never go away
CCTV from the driveway of Olorato’s building shows the last time she was seen alive, leaving her home to meet ‘John’.
In the video, she walks towards a white Volkswagen Polo and hesitates as she reaches the left back door. John had come with a friend.
Four days after Olorato was killed, police found the car in a different province with traces of her blood splattered across the back seat.
CCTV showed Olorato walking to a car for what she thought was a date
One suspect was shot dead but the second man is still on the run
Philangenkosi Sibongokuhle Makanya – ‘John’ – was shot dead by police in KwaZulu-Natal shortly after they found the vehicle.
The second man in the car, Bongani Mthimkhulu, is still on the run.
The two men have since been identified as part of a dangerous criminal syndicate that lure young women out on dates and rob them at gunpoint.
“Within the four days, the investigating officers received 94 calls from women who were raising concerns and identifying the suspects as those they once met,” South African Police Service deputy national commissioner Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili told Sky News.
“It was unfortunate about Olorato, but others were released after being robbed.”
Olorato’s friends say she ‘ticked all the boxes when it came to being careful’
A 24-year-old student who survived an armed robbery at the hands of Olorato’s suspected killers says she was happy to see Philangenkosi killed but she’s still scared for her life.
“As women, we are not even safe anymore – we can’t even walk freely,” she says.
“The moment you leave your house you wonder if you will make it back alive. I don’t feel comfortable walking around the street. I leave the house and then turn back.
“Even when I’m home, I still don’t feel safe and always want to keep myself locked indoors,” she says with a shaky voice – choosing to remain anonymous.
After meeting other victims of the syndicate, she was shocked to hear details of almost identical abductions.
“This other girl was surprised because we went through the exact same situation. They also approached her with the same tactic – let me take you out to lunch to get to know you – only for her to be robbed.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
South Africa has one of the highest femicide rates in the world – an average 15 women are killed a day, many by their intimate partners.
According to police statistics, more than 5,500 women were murdered in South Africa last year. An increase of 33.8% compared with the previous year.
“South Africa has six times the average rate of femicide – hundreds of women have already been killed since Olorato’s murder,” says Cameron Kasambala from Women for Change.
The advocacy group raises awareness of rising cases of femicide and gender-based violence across South Africa.
Campaigner Cameron Kasambala says many femicide cases take a long time to be resolved
In the hours after her murder, Olorato’s friends contacted Women for Change to share her missing poster after receiving little immediate help from the local police station.
“I think her friends were the real heroes in that moment,” says Cameron.
“Two police stations that were 10 minutes apart, one finds a body and one has a missing case, don’t make a connection for hours. It’s not the most reassuring police work. And if the friends had not come forward, how long would it have taken?
“Unfortunately, Olorato’s case is an exception. Most cases are not handled that quickly.”
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Olorato’s friends say she would be ‘proud to know that her name has not gone in vain’
Olorato’s friends are still contending with the violence of her death – what it means for their daily lives and how they navigate their safety as women in South Africa.
“It is difficult to process and difficult to believe. This is somebody who ticked all the boxes when it came to being careful – being meticulous, checking her surroundings and leaving clues,” says Olorato’s friend, Koketso Sejosengoe.
“It shows it can happen to anybody no matter how safe you are. It is happening to the average girl. They are being targeted. These men know what they are doing and who they are looking for.”
“In the purest sense, Olorato wanted women to be safe and wanted women to be protected,” adds Koketso.
“I think she would be very proud to know that her name has not gone in vain and that her death is standing for something – that there will be change that comes with this.”
Major heatwaves across southern Europe have left Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece in sweltering conditions of more than 40C (104F).
Two-thirds of Portugal was on high alert for extreme heat and risk of wildfires on Sunday, with temperatures in Lisbon expected to exceed 42C (107F).
In parts of southern Spain, temperatures are well above average, with 42C also expected in Seville and other cities.
The country’s meteorological service says June is likely to be the hottest Spain has experienced since records began.
In several Italian regions, including Lazio, Tuscany, Calabria, Puglia, and Umbria, outdoor work was banned during peak hours of sun on Sunday, with trade unions pushing for the measures to be extended and rolled out nationwide.
Twenty-one out of 27 cities were under the highest possible heat alert, including Rome, Milan, and Naples.
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Greece has already been plagued by wildfires this summer, with one breaking out south of Athens on Thursday, and several on the island of Chios last Sunday.
Near Athens, authorities deployed 130 firefighters, 12 helicopters, and 12 planes, with 40 people evacuated from the highest-risk areas.
A woman was arrested on suspicion of unintentional arson after wildfires spread across brush and pastureland for three days on Chios.
Flames rise above Thymari, near Athens, after wildfires broke out on Friday. Pic: Reuters
Tourists battle scorching temperatures at the Parthenon in Greece on Friday. Pic: Reuters
Scientists link increasing frequencies of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, and storms to climate change.
In France and Germany, at least three people died amid stormy conditions.
A ridge of high pressure above central and western Europe is driving the scorching conditions, says Sky News meteorologist Chris England.
Hotter-than-normal sea temperatures, dry land, and surface winds are also partly to blame, he added.
Tourists in Retiro Park in Madrid on Saturday. Pic: AP
Locals fan themselves in Lisbon on Saturday. Pic: AP
UK heatwave also likely
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UK heatwaves explained
The UK is halfway through a four-day amber heat health alert, with temperatures expected to peak in the mid-30s (86F) on Tuesday.
Heat health alerts are not public weather warnings – but are instead designed to prepare health and social care bodies for the potential impact on their infrastructure and vulnerable groups.
Heatwave thresholds are likely to be met on Monday and Tuesday, which vary between 28C (82F) in the south of England and 25C (77F) across the rest of the country.
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