“Project”: the cause of Prigozhin’s rebellion is his mental state

The close circle of the founder of the private military company “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin explains his rebellion against the leadership of the Ministry of Defense by the mental state of the businessman, according to the material of the publication “Project”, whose journalists interviewed dozens of former and current employees of Prigozhin’s companies, as well as his acquaintances.

According to a source from the close circle of the head of the PMC “Wagner”, he explained to his subordinates the motive that prompted him to revolt with one word: “Psychic”.

The “Project” material also states that many of Prigozhin’s employees talk about his personal propensity for violence. According to those who worked with the businessman, in his companies he kept a staff of special people who severely beat employees for mistakes and even put some of them in the basement for several days.

Most of the “Project” material is devoted to Prigozhin’s acquaintance with Vladimir Putin, thanks to which the then budding businessman became one of the closest people to the President of Russia. According to Prigozhin’s acquaintances, the meeting took place in the “Staraya Tamozhnya” restaurant, which the future founder of PMC “Wagner” opened in 1995 in St. Petersburg. Putin began to visit there together with the mayor of the city, Anatoly Sobchak, for whom he worked as an assistant.

When Putin became the president of Russia, he started holding important meetings precisely in one of Prigozhin’s restaurants – New Island. In 2000, he met there with Japanese Prime Minister Eshiro Mori, in 2001 – with French President Jacques Chirac, and in 2002 – with US President George Bush. Later, Putin personally visited a ready-made food factory owned by Prigozhin and instructed Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and then-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to order products for schools, universities and the army precisely from the St. Petersburg businessman.

“The Project” also notes that as Prigozhin moved up the career ladder and became acquainted with the highest officials of Russia, the businessman and his associates became unreachable for justice. Financial and violent crimes committed by Prigozhin and his subordinates were not actually investigated. “Proekta” journalists claim that at least one and a half dozen cases are known when Prigozhin’s employees were suspected of beating people that ended in death or serious harm to the health of the victims, but no one was held responsible for this.

• Since 2011, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman close to Vladimir Putin, has been supplying food to educational, medical and state institutions throughout Russia. In ten years, business structures associated with Prigozhin concluded state contracts worth hundreds of billions of rubles. The businessman is also associated with the organization of a group of pro-government bloggers in St. Petersburg – the so-called “troll factory”. In addition, Prigozhin is one of the founders and sponsors of PMC “Wagner”, which takes part in military operations in Ukraine, Syria and Africa, and whose fighters are suspected of numerous war crimes. In June last year, court documents were published in the media, which prove that Yevgeny Prigozhin was convicted of robbery, robbery and fraud in the 1980s. In the USA, the businessman is accused of trying to interfere in the presidential election, he is included in the sanctions list.
• On June 23, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his subordinate private military company “Wagner” launched an armed rebellion against the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. A column of several thousand armed Wagnerians entered Rostov-on-Don, the second column moved to Moscow. In a day, the fighters managed to walk 780 kilometers, and in fact did not meet any resistance. At the same time, several helicopters and one plane of the Ministry of Defense, which, according to Prigozhin, were trying to bomb the convoy were shot down. The crews of the ships died. Vladimir Putin accused the PMC of treason, and a criminal case of armed rebellion was initiated against the head of the company. However, later it became known about the negotiations between Prigozhin and the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. As a result, the advance of the “Wagner” columns towards Moscow was stopped, Prigozhin himself had to go to Belarus by agreement, and Vladimir Putin promised in return to stop the persecution of the rebels. Even later it became known that Prigozhin was quietly moving around Russia, and at the end of June he and his subordinates met with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.