Evgeny Prigozhin was born in Leningrad. His mother, Violetta Kirovna Prigozhina, was a doctor and worked in a hospital. Father Viktor Evgenievich Prigogine died early, and the child was raised by his stepfather Samuil Zharkoy. As a ski instructor, Zharkoy introduced him to cross-country skiing. In 1977, Prigogine graduated from Leningrad Sports Boarding School No. 62 (now Olympic Reserve College No. 1), where he studied with swimmer Vladimir Salnikov and gymnast Alexander Dityatin, who later became three-time champions of the Moscow Olympics. After school, he entered the Leningrad Chemical-Pharmaceutical Institute, received the specialty “pharmacist-pharmacist”. In 2018, in an interview, he reported that he had not graduated from the institute.
Why was Prigozhin imprisoned
The Rosbalt agency (the Ministry of Justice included him in the register of media-foreign agents) reported that in November 1979, the Kuibyshev District People’s Court of Leningrad sentenced Prigozhin to two and a half years of suspended imprisonment on charges of theft. According to Forbes, in 1981, the Zhdanovsky People’s District Court of Leningrad sentenced Prigozhin on new charges of theft, fraud, involvement of a minor in criminal activity and robbery to 13 years in prison. In 1988, Prigozhin was pardoned.
Restaurateur, business, career
In 1990, he went into business, starting out selling hot dogs. According to Forbes, he opened this business with his stepfather, and part of the production was in Prigozhin’s apartment. “The mustard for hot dogs was kneaded right in my apartment. <...> I had to pay the bandits $ 100 from each stall, ”the publication quotes him as saying.
In 1991-1997, Prigozhin managed the Contrast chain of private food stores, and in 1995 he opened the Wine Club bar-shop on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. In 1996, after meeting with restaurateur Tony Gere, he opened the city’s first “elite” restaurant – “Old Customs”, after which “Russian kitsch”, “Seven Forty” and “Stroganov Palace” appeared. In the same 1996, Prigozhin founded the Concord Catering company.
In 1997, Prigozhin opened a restaurant on the ship, which was called New Island and became at that time the most expensive restaurant in St. Petersburg. In 1999, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus dined at New Island.
Prigozhin continued to engage in retail fast food and from 2002 to 2012 he developed a network of pancake cafes in St. Petersburg under the name he invented, “Damn! Donald’s”. The establishments of the chain were positioned as socially significant, with cheap food for local residents, dishes on the menu received unusual names – in particular, there was a sandwich “quadrososison”. The businessman planned to open up to 20 cafes, but by 2008 only ten had opened, and since 2009, Prigozhin’s company began to close restaurants, the last of which stopped working in 2012. The network actually served as the basis for the creation by Prigogine in the future of the format of power plants. In 2016, as RBC wrote then, Prigozhin actually became a monopolist in the school food market in Moscow.
Prigozhin began his construction business in the 2000s in St. Petersburg. In particular, as Fontanka wrote, Concord built the Northern Versailles residential complex in the Lakhta region of 45 three-story houses in the style of St. Petersburg architecture of the 18th-19th centuries.
In 2008, Prigozhin’s company LLC Concord Management and Consulting (part of the Concord Group) received a plot near the park of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg for the construction of a water tourism center. In 2011, the company went to court, stating that the city authorities were delaying the allocation of the site. In 2012, the courts of three instances confirmed the rights of the investor. By March 2016, the company had erected the Lakhta Plaza complex on the site, consisting of six residential buildings with a total area of 41.9 thousand square meters. m.
In 2010, a company owned by Prigozhin’s wife rented the House of the Eliseev Brothers trading partnership in the center of St. Petersburg, in which, after reconstruction, the Eliseev Merchants’ Shop was opened. In the summer of 2016, the company won the right to privatize the building for 740 million rubles.
Prigozhin’s company also cooperated with the Ministry of Defense: for the period from the end of 2014 to the middle of 2015, Concord structures won tenders worth 10.3 billion rubles. for cleaning in the barracks and educational institutions of the defense department, then calculated RBC. The Megaline company associated with Prigozhin received a contract for 3.3 billion rubles in 2015. for the construction of a military base in Valuyki in the Belgorod region, she also won a contract for 161.6 million rubles at the competition. for the construction of a military camp in the Omsk region. In the same year, several companies associated with Prigozhin won tenders for housing and communal services for military camps in several regions of the country.
Troll factory Prigozhin
Prigozhin’s name is associated with the Internet Research Agency, created in the summer of 2013, which was called the “troll factory” in the press. In the United States, this structure was accused of interfering in elections. Prigogine himself denied this for a long time. In February 2023, the businessman claimed to have come up with the Internet Research Agency. “I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was created to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian theses by the West,” Prigozhin said.
In 2017, it became known about the creation by Prigozhin’s structures of a “media factory”, which included the Federal News Agency, as well as other publications related to it, in particular Politika Segodnya, Ekonomika Segodnya and Narodnye Novosti. According to an investigation by RBC magazine, by February 2017, the monthly audience of media factory publications reached 36 million people, exceeding the audience of RIA Novosti and Komsomolskaya Pravda. Soon these publications were included in the Patriot media group.
In the United States, Prigozhin was accused of interfering in the 2016 elections and in the political process. In February 2021, the FBI named Prigozhin among 13 Russians who were put on the wanted list for interference in the US presidential election. The agency has offered a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to the arrest of the businessman. Prigozhin called the agency’s actions “a show with a wanted list, like in the old cowboy days,” and demanded that the announcement of a reward for information about him be removed from the FBI website.
PMC Wagner Evgenia Prigozhina
Prigozhin is the founder of the private military company (PMC) Wagner. The RBC magazine wrote about the training ground near the village of Molkino in the Krasnodar Territory, which began to be used, presumably, for the training of PMC fighters in mid-2015. In October 2015, Fontanka reported on the recruitment of volunteers for the PMC and the participation of its fighters in ground operations in Syria, as well as in the conflict on the territory of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. The PMC was named “Wagner” in 2014 after the callsign of the unit’s first commander, reserve officer Dmitry Utkin.
The United States and the European Union also announced the actions of Wagner PMCs in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique and Mali. The State Department has said that Wagner’s activities in Africa interfere with the work of UN peacekeepers on the continent.
In July 2018, journalist Orkhan Dzhemal, cameraman Kirill Radchenko and director Alexander Rastorguev went to the Central African Republic to shoot a film about the activities of PMCs. On the way to the filming location, their car was attacked by unknown armed men. Journalists died, money, equipment and documents disappeared from the place of the murder of Russians.
The United States and the European Union accused PMC Wagner of violating human rights in the Middle East and Africa and imposed sanctions against the company, which were tightened after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Sanctions were also introduced in 2016 against Prigozhin, who was accused of having links with PMCs.
Prigogine for a long time rejected the connection with the PMC, stating that he was “extremely surprised by the very fact of the existence of this company and has nothing to do with its activities.” However, in September 2022, he admitted that he was its creator. At the end of October 2022, the businessman announced the creation of the PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg, in which “specialists in the field of defense and information technologies will be able to work in order to increase the defense capability of Russia.”
PMC Wagner in Ukraine
PMC units actively participated in the hostilities in Ukraine, in particular near Artemivsk (the Ukrainian name is Bakhmut) and in Soledar.
In the summer of 2022, reports began to appear about Prigozhin visiting prisons in order to recruit prisoners into the ranks of Wagner.
“Those who do not want PMCs to fight, prisoners, who talk about this topic, who do not want to do anything and, in principle, who do not like this topic, send your children to the front. Either PMCs and prisoners, or your children – decide for yourself ”(Prigozhin in September 2022 – on the recruitment of prisoners to participate in a special operation in Ukraine).
In November 2022, the GRAY ZONE telegram channel, which was linked by the Human Rights Council with the Wagner PMC, published a video of the murder of a man who was identified as a former PMC fighter Yevgeny Nuzhin, who participated in a special operation. In the video, the man gives his name and gives an interview to Ukrainian journalists, stating that he voluntarily went over to the side of Kyiv. Then Nuzhin is shown in a dark room, his head taped to the bricks with adhesive tape. The man says that on November 11, 2022, he was on the streets of Kyiv, where he received a blow to the head, as a result of which he lost consciousness. “I woke up in this basement, where they told me that they would judge me,” the man on the recording says, after which he gets hit on the head with a sledgehammer.
After the capture, Nuzhin, in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov, said that he himself was from the city of Perevoz in the Nizhny Novgorod region and in 1999 was sentenced to 24 years in prison for killing a man, and then, due to an unsuccessful escape, he was added another four years.
Prigogine, commenting on the video, called it “an excellent director’s work.” “As for the sledgehammer, in this show it is clear that he did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met with unkind, but fair people,” he said.
Later, Prigozhin turned to the Prosecutor General with a request to conduct a pre-investigation check into the murder of Nuzhin. On November 15, Human Rights Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova told RBC that the investigating authorities had begun an investigation.
On November 23, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling Russia a sponsor of terrorism in connection with military operations in Ukraine. The document also called on the EU countries to recognize PMC Wagner and the 141st Regiment named after Akhmat Kadyrov, which is part of the Russian Guard, as terrorist organizations. After that, Prigozhin’s press service reported that he sent to the European Parliament in a violin case “a branded sledgehammer <...> with, most likely, sham traces of blood.”
In January 2023, the United States declared Wagner PMC a transnational criminal organization. In response, Prigozhin wrote a letter to the White House asking him to clarify what crimes this organization had committed.
Prigozhin has repeatedly criticized the authorities of St. Petersburg and the governor Alexander Beglov. In July 2022, he accused the governor of interfering with business, after the structures associated with the entrepreneur did not receive a contract for the development of the Gorskaya territory and the development was entrusted to another company, despite the investment agreement. In the administration of St. Petersburg, this point of view was called the private opinion of a businessman who defends his interests. Beglov stated that the actions of the government of St. Petersburg are criticized by some “rich people, influential people who can pay for certain things in cash,” without specifying whom he specifically had in mind. In the Kremlin, commenting on such statements by Prigozhin, they said that he, as an entrepreneur, “sick with his soul for what is happening.”
Call to sedition and criminal case
On the evening of June 23, Prigozhin said that the Russian military had attacked the Wagner PMC camp, resulting in the death of “a huge number of fighters.” He blamed the “military leadership” for this and promised a response. Later, the press service of the founder of the PMC circulated a statement by Prigozhin, in which he clarified that his intention to “respond” was “not a military coup, but a march of justice.”
The Defense Ministry denied Prigozhin’s allegations, calling them an “information provocation.” The department stressed that the armed forces “continue to carry out combat missions on the line of contact with the armed forces of Ukraine.”
Soon the FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on the initiation of a criminal case against Prigozhin under Article 279 of the Criminal Code on the fact of organizing an armed rebellion. The FSB said that Prigozhin’s statements and actions were in fact calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on the territory and called on PMC fighters to detain their leader. “We call on PMC fighters not to make an irreparable mistake, to stop any forceful actions against the Russian people, not to carry out the criminal and treacherous orders of Prigozhin, and to take measures to detain him,” the statement said.
General Sergei Surovikin also turned to the PMC fighters. “I appeal to the fighters and commanders of Wagner PMC. Together with you we have passed a difficult difficult path. We fought together, took risks, suffered losses, won together. We are of the same blood. We are warriors… Until it’s too late, it is necessary and necessary to obey the will and order of the popularly elected president. Stop the columns, return them to the points of permanent deployment,” he said in a video published by military commander Andrey Rudenko.
On the evening of June 24, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko announced that he had held talks with Yevgeny Prigozhin, they had reached an agreement to stop the movement of PMC fighters across Russia. The head of Belarus said that Prigozhin’s fighters would be given security guarantees. The founder of Wagner said that he was turning his columns and leaving for field camps “according to the plan.”
Personal life, wife, children
Prigogine is married and has three children. Members of Prigozhin’s family, including his children Polina and Pavel, were sanctioned by a number of Western countries in 2022. Violetta Prigozhina (b. 1939) also fell under EU and Canadian sanctions. But in March 2023, she was able to achieve the annulment of the restrictions imposed on her by the European Union. The EU Court found that she does not own Concord Management and Consulting, as Brussels believed, and family ties are not enough to be included in the sanctions list.
In 2003, Prigozhin, together with his children Polina and Pavel, wrote a book of fairy tales “Indraguzik”, which describes the fairy-tale country of Indraguzia.
In September 2022, Prigozhin, on the page of his press service on the VKontakte social network, said that his son, at the age of 18, served in the armed forces and a month after the army “went to war in Syria.” “Since then, he has constantly been and is in hot spots as part of the Wagner PMC, where he received his first Black Cross (PMC award. – RBC),” the message said.
Prigozhin was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 4th class, “for labor achievements, significant contribution to the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation, merits in space exploration, the humanitarian sphere, strengthening the rule of law, active legislative and social activities, many years of conscientious work”, and medals of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” I and II degrees. Also in public sources there are photos of Prigozhin with the stars of the Hero of Russia, the Hero of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. In the Kremlin, when asked about awarding the title of hero to Prigozhin by a closed presidential decree, they only said that all open decrees are published.