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Putin and Prigozhin Evgeni Viktorovich, 2023.

Image by The Sydney Morning Gerald ^[1]

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/the-hot-dog-selling-warlord-who-turned-russia-s-secret-army-on-vladimir-putin-20230625-p5dj88.html

The hot-dog selling warlord who turned Russia’s ‘secret army’ on Vladimir Putin

This article was first published on June 25, 2023, but has been republished following reports of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death in a plane crash.

By Sherryn Groch

August 24, 2023

Vladimir Putin, and the man who stared him down. Credit: Marija Ercegovac

For one week in 2022, the world thought Yevgeny Prigozhin was dead. The oligarch known as “Putin’s chef” had finally admitted he owned the fearsome mercenary group Wagner and was photographed at its base in Ukraine, head to toe in tactical gear, shaking the hands of troops.

But the photo op also unwittingly gave away the position of that Wagner base to Ukrainian bombers. After the site was reduced to rubble, rumours swirled that Prigozhin’s rise from a hot dog seller ex-con to one of the most influential tycoons in Russia might be at an end.

Until he popped up at a high-profile funeral in Moscow.

Now, for one day in 2023, the world thought Prigozhin was something else altogether: rebel. If he’d succeeded in his extraordinary June 23 coup attempt against Russia’s army chiefs, he might have also done what has been thought next to impossible for two decades: unseat Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Footage of a bombed Wagner base was again in play, only this time Prigozhin was accusing Russia itself of firing on his mercenaries, not Ukraine. He vowed revenge. As Wagner forces seized a city and military headquarters and advanced on Moscow, Putin took to state television to denounce for treason the man once known as his loyal “fixer”.

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