Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
Signs a man ‘worse than Putin’ could take over as Russia’s next leader
As Russia’s ruling elite fall down stairs or out of windows one-by-one, a star is rising. And he’s becoming increasingly bold.
As Russia’s ruling elite one-by-one fall down stairs or out windows, another star is rising. Now speculation is mounting that “Putin’s Chef” is preparing to step out of the kitchen.
He started out with a catering business.
He quickly became part of President Vladimir Putin’s inner sanctum.
He’s now behind Russia’s cyber warriors and a host of online trolls
And he has his own mercenary army.
Yevgeny Prigozhin ( yev geny , prig o zin) is becoming increasingly bold. He’ promoting his Wagner Group mercenaries as Russia’s most effective fighting force. He’s waging a verbal war against key Putin appointees. He’s winning public support among extremists who believe their ageing president is failing them.
That’s why some warn he may end up being “worse than Putin”.
But among Putin’s government of thieves’ circle of power, he’s rapidly emerging as the 70-year-old’s most likely successor. Or usurper.
And now he’s openly attacking the Kremlin’s military leaders for their failing war efforts.
Prigozhin is passing the buck for the failure of his guns-for-hire to take the strategically insignificant Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. And that’s despite Putin gifting his private army with Russia’s most modern tanks, missiles and attack aircraft.
An expletive-laden video from frustrated Wagner mercenaries has exploded through Russian social media. It shows troops cursing – by name – Putin’s appointed Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, Valery Gerasimov.
They blame him for poor tactical decisions, a lack of ammunition, and inadequate equipment.
That’s despite not being part of his chain of command.
But Gerasimov would likely be among the contenders if Putin was no longer to be president. That makes him a target.
And that may be why Prigozhin was so keen to go on the public record to confirm the controversial video was authentic and to amplify their complaints.
“The guys asked me to pass along that when you’re sitting in a warm office, it’s hard to hear about the problems on the front line, but when you’re dragging the dead bodies of your friends every day and seeing them for the last time – then supplies are very much needed,” Prigozhin told Russian state-controlled media.
But he didn’t stop with such an embarrassing admission of the Kremlin’s frontline failures.
He issued a threat.
“As for the problems that are unfortunately surfacing at every step … we will force them to be solved.”
“(Putin’s) circle of advisers has narrowed,” CIA chief Bill Burns said in April.
“And in that small circle, it has never been career-enhancing to question his judgment or his almost mystical belief that his destiny is to restore Russia’s influence.”
But as more and more of Putin’s old cronies fall by the wayside, Prigozhin appears to be consolidating his influence.
“He is looking for his place in this new reality that has come into existence after (the war began) and that has brought him into conflict with many powerful people,” Exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Ko dor kovsky) told Radio Free Europe.
He’s ideally placed to find it.
“The people around Putin protect themselves,” sacked Russian human-rights council member Ekaterina Vinokurova told the Wall Street Journal.
“They have this deep belief that they shouldn’t upset the president.”
But Prigozhin appears above this.
Putin’s old guard and Prigozhin’s ultranationalists are increasingly at odds. And they’re not afraid to make it public.
Putin, if anything, is rewarding Prigozhin for this boldness.
In the meantime, the president is “likely concerned” at the ongoing muted support he has received from the oligarchs he put in power during his 22-year reign, notes US-based think-tank the Institute for the Study of War.
It cites a Christmas Day interview where Putin criticised “people who act solely in their self-interest”. He insisted that 99.9 per cent of his Russians “are ready to sacrifice everything for the Motherland”. But the remaining one percenters “didn’t act like true patriots”.
This suggests Putin “is focused on those who do not fully support the war rather than on those who do.”
And that puts Prigozhin in an ideal position.
Besides his catering business, Prigozhin is also behind the Internet Research Agency – an internet troll farm that became infamous for its attempts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election. That gives him a powerful propaganda tool at home and abroad.
But his control of the Wagner Mercenary Group may give him the edge in any future power struggle.
This force is loyal to him. Not Putin. Nor Russia’s halls of parliament.
According to the official Kremlin line, Wagner does not exist.
It’s illegal for Russian citizens to run private military groups.
But it appears some are more equal under the law than others.
Wagner’s boldly signed head office occupies a prominent piece of Moscow real estate. And its ownership, nature and existence are a matter of daily public and political discourse.
Its mercenaries have long given President Putin an air of “plausible deniability” in international conflicts.
It fought in eastern Ukraine after the 2014 invasion of Crimea under the guise of local insurrectionists.
It has been supporting Kremlin interests in Syria and Libya. It’s been accused of diamond smuggling out of Africa. And it’s implicated in the disappearance of three Russian journalists investigating its behaviour in the Central African Republic.
But the mercenaries have now largely been recalled to support Putin’s failing efforts in Ukraine. And they’re not doing all that well, either.
Prigozhin is already positioning himself to use defeat as a weapon against his political enemies.
The rise and rise of Putin’s Chef
By John Dobson
So we now have to ask the question:Who will replace Vladimir Putin? After 23 years as President and reported to be in ill health, Kremlin watchers are beginning ask the question: “who” and “when”.
Like most dictators, Putin has been careful not to have an appointed successor, always surrounding himself with weak minions. Strong minions can be dangerous.
As a result, the question of succession weighs heavily these days in the minds of the Russian elite, especially as most now realize that in attacking Ukraine more than ten months ago, Putin made a catastrophic blunder.
With the invasion failing all along the 800-mile front and the Russian leader searching for culprits, a battle for the leadership among the various factions is quietly underway, with few heads appearing above the parapet for fear of being blown away.
So who’s in the running? Setting aside Russia’s total defeat in Ukraine and the subsequent chaos and collapse of the regime, there are those elite around Putin who have always trusted him and who would have the most to gain in a smooth transition.
Nikolai Patrushev, the current head of the Security Council and one of the chief ideologues of the regime, is often mentioned as a potential successor.
But he is the same age as Vladimir Putin, his close friend since the time they were KGB colleagues in Leningrad in the mid-1970s, so he is an unlikely candidate.
More likely would be Patrushev’s son, 46-year-old Dmitry, currently serving as Russia’s Minister of Agriculture, who would be seen as a fresh face.
Others mentioned are Dmitry Medvedev, the former Prime Minister and President, now known as the “Clown Prince” on account of his absurd statements on Ukraine.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was long considered a likely successor to Vladimir Putin, but his star quickly waned when Russia began to lose the war in Ukraine.
For as long as his health holds, Vladimir Putin still sits atop the Russian system unchallenged because of the strong loyalty of those around him.
But as the war drags on, Russian power dynamics are shifting in subtle and unexpected ways and new faces are appearing.
A new generation of hard-liners is emerging, surpassing even Putin’s old guard in their aggression.
Of these, the most prominent is Yevgeny Prigozhin.
So who is this guy?
He is a Russian tycoon whose vast wealth comes from Kremlin catering contracts (hence the nickname “Putin’s Chef”) and whose notoriety comes from ownership of Russia’s most famous private mercenary company, Wagner, as well as St Petersburg’s best known “troll factory”, the Internet Research Agency.
There are few details about Prigozhin’s early life. Records show that in his 20s he spent 9 years in prison for robbery, fraud and involving teenagers in prostitution.
After release in 1990 he set up a fast-food business which later evolved into a restaurant and catering empire.
Taking advantage of the new opportunities after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he expanded into fashionable eateries which attracted the attention of the criminal and political elite.
A regular patron of his New Island floating restaurant at the time was the deputy mayor of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin.
Following Putin to Moscow, Prigozhin was awarded catering contracts for hospitals, public schools and the Russian army.
In 2012, his companies obtained over 90% of catering contracts in military units.
In 2014, Prigozhin founded the Wagner Group, a company which evolved out of a network of private security companies run by former Russian Special Forces.
Soldiers from the Wagner Group were used to reinforce Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, as well as in Ukraine’s Donbass after the Russian-fuelled war broke out there later that year.
After President Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 24th of last year, Wagner mercenaries fought alongside regular Russian forces, playing a central role in the capture of the port of Mariupol and the city of Severodonetsk.
Russia’s military collapse in Ukraine has only magnified the role of Prigozhin’s private army. In only 10 months of war, the Russian military has lost more generals and high-ranking officers than it did in seven years in Syria or the Soviets did in the entire 10-year-war in Afghanistan.
Worse, many of the hundred thousand or so casualties hail from the best-trained, most elite units: airborne troops, naval infantry and combined arms.
Grasping the opportunity, Prigozhin is now transforming the Wagner Group into an actual shadow military force, with access to advanced weapons and platforms, such as Su-25 attack aircraft and T-90 tanks.
In Belgorod and Kursk, two regions in Russia close to the border with Ukraine, Prigozhin has established parallel military structures, including training facilities and recruitment centres. According to the US national security spokesman, John Kirby, Prigozhin’s Wagner group is emerging as a rival power center to the Russian military itself.
A further sign of Prigozhin’s increasing power and influence is that he now has the authority to commute prison sentences and turn them into death sentences.
He has taken tens of thousands of Russian convicts out of their cells and placed them in assault sections on the Ukrainian front. They have little chance of escape.
This all started in July when Prigozhin toured prison colonies to attract recruits. Footage appeared on social media showing him addressing a large group of prisoners all wearing navy-colored uniforms assembled in a concrete yard.
He tells them that their sentences would be commuted if they served in Ukraine for six months – but that anyone who changes their mind would be shot as a deserter. ‘I’m taking you out alive’, he is heard saying, ‘but don’t always return you alive’.
Jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, confirmed last week that Prigozhin had visited his prison to recruit convicts. He had offered them a pardon if they survived six months with Wagner and that between 80 and 90 of them accepted, after being given just five minutes to consider the offer.
Losses are believed to be appalling. Altogether some 40,000 of Wagner Group’s estimated 50,000 members are convicts, and of the first batch of 500 prisoners sent to the front line in July, only two are believed to be still alive.
“It seems as though Prigozhin is willing to throw Russian bodies into the meat grinder”, said Kirby last week. “About 1,000 Wagner fighters have been killed in recent weeks, and we believe that 90 percent of those were convicts.”
This, of course, is of no concern to Prigozhin, who is simply providing cannon fodder for his friend Vladimir Putin.
Following years of denial, Prigozhin final stepped out of the shadows only in September, following the release of that video on social media showing him personally recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
He revealed for the first time that he owned Wagner Group, which in early November opened its official headquarters in St Petersburg.
He also publicly bragged about the influence of his IRA ‘troll factory’ which had interfered in the US midterm elections. As a result, last year the FBI put Prigozhin on its most-wanted list.
Whether Prigozhin can turn his rising star into a political career is an open question. His criticism of the way the war on Ukraine is being waged has struck a chord in Russian nationalist and military-security circles, and there is little doubt that he expects to be rewarded.
He is establishing himself as a political force, using the popular status of Wagner and the IRA to critique his opponents within elite circles and institutionalize his authority.
Like most aspiring politicians he plays down any ambition. “I do not strive for popularity”, he was quoted as saying recently. “My task is to fulfil my duty to the motherland, and today I do not plan to found any political parties, let alone go into politics.” A sure sign he intends to.
The final word can be given to Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian politics and senior fellow at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “In terms of his influence, at least in the public space, Prigozhin is beginning to resemble Rasputin at the court of Nicholas II.
Unless Prigozhin suffers the fate of Rasputin, which would please many of his enemies, the rise of Putin’s Chef looks unstoppable.