On Friday, a threat by the owner of private Russian military company Wagner to withdraw his fighters from the battle to seize an eastern Ukrainian city is another flareup in his dispute with Russia's regular military over credit and tactics in the war.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy entrepreneur with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has led the push to jump-start Russia’s stalemated offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province. He threatened to pull out his soldiers from the city of Bakhmut next week, citing high casualties and ammunition shortages.
Russia's nine-month campaign to take Bakhmut has made the city the focus of the war's longest battle. Ferocious house-to-house fighting there has produced some of the bloodiest encounters since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Prigozhin, who received a 12-year prison term in 1981 on charges of robbery and assault, started a restaurant business in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s following his release from prison. In this capacity, he got to know Putin, the city’s deputy mayor at the time.
Prigozhin used his connection with Putin to develop a catering business and won lucrative Russian government contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.” He later expanded into other areas, including media outlets and an infamous “troll factory” that led to his indictment in the US for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In January, Prigozhin, 61, acknowledged founding, leading and financing the shadowy Wagner company.
Wagner was first spotted in action in eastern Ukraine soon after a separatist conflict erupted there in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
While backing the separatist insurgency in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Russia denied sending its own weapons and troops there despite ample evidence to the contrary. Engaging private contractors in the fighting allowed Moscow to maintain a degree of deniability.
Prigozhin’s company was called Wagner after the nickname of its first commander, Dmitry Utkin, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Russian military’s special forces. It soon established a reputation for its extreme brutality and ruthlessness.
Wagner personnel also deployed to Syria, where Russia supported President Bashar Assad’s government in a civil war. In Libya, they fought alongside the forces of commander Khalifa Hifter. The group has also operated in the Central African Republic and Mali.
Prigozhin reportedly used Wagner’s deployment to Syria and Africa to secure lucrative mining contracts. US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January that the company was using its access to gold and other resources in Africa to fund its operations in Ukraine.
Some Russian media have alleged that Wagner was involved in the July 2018 killings of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic who were investigating the group’s activities. The slayings remain unsolved.
Western countries and UN experts have accused Wagner mercenaries of committing human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.
In December 2021, the European Union accused the group of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
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