Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin and what does he want? The former hot dog seller who became Wagner mercenary chief

The Wagner Group has been accused of “treason” after an uprising against Russian military leaders.

Its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin blamed the Kremlin for a deadly missile attack on one of his training camps in Bakhmut, Ukraine – and vowed to “punish” officials for its alleged actions.

The mercenaries, who had been fighting in Ukraine, crossed the border into Russia on Saturday and claimed control of two cities, including Rostov-on-Don near the Ukraine border – before Prigozhin agreed to halt the advance.

But who is Prigozhin and how did he become leader of the group? Here’s everything you need to know about the military commander.

Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Prigozhin was born in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, in 1961. His mother worked in a hospital, while his father died when he was young.

As a child he was a keen sportsman and attended a sporting academy, in which he did various activities including cross-country skiing, The Guardian reports.

But Prigozhin did not make the grade as an athlete and after finishing school, he became a petty criminal.

In 1981 when he was aged 20 Prigozhin was jailed for 12 years for robbery after he mugged a woman with three others in St Petersburg.

During the incident, he squeezed the woman’s neck until she lost consciousness before he stole her jewellery.

After serving nine years in jail he became a hot dog seller in the Russian city of Leningrad.

In an interview in 2011 with the Russian website Gorod 812, he told how the business started off modestly and he even mixed the mustard – but he soon started making a substantial amount of money from his business venture.

He said: “We made $1,000 a month, which in rouble notes was a mountain; my mum could hardly count it all.”

After his success in the fast food world, he went on to buy stakes a in string of supermarkets and ran several restaurants and other businesses.

In 1995 he opened a swanky restaurant called Old Customs House and hired Tony Gear, a British hotel administrator to manage them.

Mr Gear has previously told how he admired Prigozhin but said he was a “very strict” boss, and claimed he used special light projector to hunt for dust under tables to make sure cleaners had done their jobs properly.

How he became a close ally of Putin and leader of Wagner

During the early years of his rule in the early 2000s, Vladmir Putin often met foreign dignitaries in his home town St Petersburg.

The Russian leader often took his guests to Old Customs House or one of Mr Prigozhin’s other restaurants, including New Island, a boat he transformed into a floating eatery.

Mr Prigozhin has been pictured at many of Mr Putin’s official engagements, including when he was entertaining then-US President George Bush in 2002 and Britain’s King Charles in 2003.

After becoming a close friend of Putin he set up a catering business which was handed numerous Russian government contracts – leading to him being dubbed ”Putin’s chef”.

It was around the time that Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 that Prigozhin pivoted to setting up the shadowy Wagner Group, and benefiting substantially from Russian military contracts – though for years, he would deny being in charge of it.

The group gained a reputation of doing the military’s dirty work when unleashed in Ukraine and as an arm of the Russian state in Africa – and is renowned for brutal violence, rapes and war crimes.

For years, Mr Prigozhin denied association with Wagner and had threatened to sue journalists who reported on his involvement with the group.

The Russian government also previously refused to acknowledge the existence of the group.

Wagner was first deployed to fight in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and they helped Russian-backed separatist groups fighting the country’s government

They have also fought on behalf of Russian ally warlord Khalifa Haftar in Syria against the Western-backed Government of National Accord – and in the Central African Republic.

Prigozhin finally acknowledged that he was the head of Wagner last year, after Russia began its full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.

Under his command, the group has been instrumental in several of Russia’s victories, securing victor in the battle for Bakhmut and the capture of the salt mine town of Soledar.

Initially helming a force numbering in the hundreds, its ranks swelled due to a tactic of recruitment from Russian prisons as well as from ultra-nationalists. The toxic combination has seen Wagner caught up in some of the most gruesome war crimes.

But tensions flared up repeatedly between Prigozhin and the Kremlin officials in charge of the war – defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces General Valery Gerasimov – who the Wagner chief accused of deliberately starving his group of supplies and using his men as cannon fodder.

A number of apparent “friendly fire” incidents stoked tensions further, with Prigozhin claiming that he was being deliberately targeted by Russian generals – while he inflamed tensions further by refusing Kremlin orders to sign a contract that would bring Wagner into the military chain of command.

What does Yevgeny Prigozhin want?

On Saturday, Prigozhin claimed he wanted justice for 2,000 Wagner troops he claimed had been killed in attacks by the traditional Russian military.

But his emergence as one of the only power centres in Russia able to challenge Vladimir Putin has led many to question whether he was after the top job himself.

Certainly, there was no question among Wagner supporters on Saturday, who spoke openly about the country getting a “new president” as his convoy made its way towards Moscow.

But experts say Prigozhin may have smaller aspirations for now – namely, his desire to get rid of Shoigu.

James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, said that Prigozhin was “not Russia’s next president”.

“Prigozhin may find some support in the Russian military, especially considering the ease with which he took Rostov, but he has none in Moscow, among the elite,” he said.

“Putin’s speech clearly showed he was rattled. He did not look confident and he did not reassure. After 24 years, this is the first direct challenge to his authority – even if both protagonists are not calling each other by name. That said, Putin still has more in the tank: he’s spent 14-odd years protecting Russia from a colour revolution. But he was probably right about one thing: ‘Russia’s future is at stake’.”

Dr Marina Miron, a researcher at King’s College London, suggested Prigozhin might have his sights set on the position of Russian Defence Minister, rather than President.

“Many are saying this is a military coup against Putin. But in reality, it’s against the Ministry of Defence,” she told i. “I think what Prigozhin might be aiming for is to be the next Defence Minister.

“I had that hunch for a while that he’s not going to go for Putin, and he’s not going to try to backstab Putin because Putin has the FSB (Federal Security Service) on his side, so Putin has enough power to crush Prigozhin I think.

“I don’t think that he would try to go after the king, so to speak. In his videos, all his criticism is directed towards the Ministry of Defence. He’s much more into kind of the military side of things. He’s not a politician.”

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme, also said that Prigozhin and his forces “are in no position to challenge Putin’s grip on power directly, even if they wanted to”, but warned they were successfully exposing “the weakness of that group”.

“An armed force is roaming southern Russia and demanding recognition from the state authorities. That’s a long way from the unity of power that Putin has worked so long to enforce,” he said. “Wagner has a long-standing close relationship with Russia’s military intelligence special forces, including shared bases and facilities.

“It’s hard to know which way those forces will jump – or any of the other units that have been deployed to block a possible move by Wagner’s main force further into Russia and towards Moscow. Units or groups from any of Russia’s military, paramilitary or intelligence organisations adjusting their allegiance to side with Prigozhin – or simply refusing to obstruct him – could shift the power balance swiftly.”