Putin’s mercenaries stop working in the shadows and open a headquarters

On the occasion of the Popular Unity Day holiday, celebrated on Friday in Russia, the influential ‘Putin’s cook’, tycoon Evgueni Prigozhin, inaugurated in Saint Petersburg the first open headquarters of the group of mercenaries called the Wagner Private Military Company , created by him in 2014. It is a splendid glass building located at the intersection of Dalnevostochni Avenue and Zólnaya Street with the W as its logo. “The mission is to provide a comfortable environment to generate new ideas that improve Russia’s defense capabilities,” Prigozhin said in a statement the day before.

The opening ceremony was attended by numerous men dressed in camouflage uniforms, probably mercenaries in the pay of “Putin’s cook”, so called because his first steps in the business world were organized by organizing the Kremlin catering. Now, this controversial businessman owns the Concord company, whose activity ranges from offering services for carrying out military operations to espionage, interference in political processes in foreign countries, misleading propaganda and disinformation. It constitutes an essential piece of the underground action of the Kremlin, of what is known as Putin’s ‘hybrid war’.

Regarding the current elections in the United States, Prigozhin launched on Monday that they had “practiced interference.” “We are doing it and we will continue to do it. Cautiously, precisely, surgically, in our own way.”

This oligarch, closely linked to Putin, was also the founder of the so-called ‘Farm’ or ‘Troll Factory’ and ‘hackers’, which has been operating until now from the Ólguino neighborhood, on the northwestern outskirts of Saint Petersburg, and which will now surely occupy the premises of the new glass building.

Prigozhin is the main of the thirteen accused by the US special prosecutor Robert Mueller for his interference in the 2016 elections to sink the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and enable the victory of his opponent, Donald Trump. They spread negative information against Clinton and Trump’s Republican rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, while generating positive news for Hillary Clinton’s adversary, Bernie Sanders.

The ‘Troll Factory’ was founded by Prigozhin in 2013 with the task of spreading a positive image of Putin’s Russia in the world. The following year, after the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, the ‘cook of the Kremlin’ set up a volunteer base near the border with Ukraine to carry out armed actions against the kyiv Army. For this reason, Prigozhin was included, in 2016, in the sanctions lists of the United States and in 2020 of the European Union.

The experience of using paramilitaries in Crimea and the Ukrainian separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk led to the appearance of the Wagner group whose presence has also been confirmed in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and other African countries. Currently, the men of the Wagner group are fighting in Donbas against the Ukrainian forces. Many of his fighters are prisoners personally recruited by Prigozhin from Russian prisons.

Prigozhin was born on June 1, 1961 in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg. He spent nine years in prison for theft and other crimes before rising to business stardom at the hands of his mentor, the country’s top leader.

Prigozhin has gained influence in Putin’s entourage after the failure of the so-called Special Military Operation in Ukraine, which should have lasted no more than a week and has now lasted almost nine months, and the supposed effectiveness with which his mercenaries are fighting.

The Russian oligarch and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadirov, are in favor of the hard line against the Ukrainian troops, even speaking out in favor of the use of nuclear weapons and “massive” bombings against the “center of power” in kyiv.

According to the Russian political scientist, collaborator of the Carnegie Foundation and former journalist of ‘Novaya Gazeta’, Andréi Kolésnikov, «Putin needs Prigozhin (…) He recruits suicide bombers, cannon fodder, and that is exactly what the Kremlin needs now at this stage of the conflict.

In his words, “Prigozhin is satisfied with the influence he currently has, but he has a huge expanding will to power. Like Putin, he needs the whole world ». It is estimated that Prigozhin could soon jump into politics by creating his own party.