Straight from the realm of the shadows, an obscure businessman from St. Petersburg, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has burst onto the front lines of Russian news and politics. For eight years he had tried to blend in under the nickname the press had given him, the Kremlin cook, and behind his catering company. But the Ukraine conflict made it impossible to continue denying the evidence of his darkest project.
A video posted online in September showed the oligarch in a prison in Russia's Mari El republic, where he had personally gone to recruit inmates to join the Wagner Group and fight in Ukraine for freedom. Then, Prigozhin openly acknowledged what had already been published and had always been denied: that he is actually his boss and that it was he who in 2014 created the Wagner Private Military Company, the official name of the mercenary group.
With the conflict in Ukraine, Prigozhin has increased his public activity. He is part of the most radical voices loyal to the Kremlin, those who demand a strong hand against the Ukrainian government of Volodimir Zelensky. Along with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, he has distinguished himself by his angry criticism of military commanders when Russian forces have been pushed back on the battlefield.
Now it seems that Yevgeni Prigozhin, 61, wants to go one step further. The head of the best-known mercenary army of the 21st century is reflecting on the creation of a "conservative political movement" to incite the Russian elite and which in the future could become a political party, according to the electronic media Meduza.
These plans would be part of the reason why Prigozhin has acknowledged being behind Wagner and, also recently, interfering in the United States electoral processes with his so-called "troll factories." In Meduza they suggest that Prigozhin could appeal to the audience of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the well-known ultranationalist politician who died last April.
Days after the publication, through the press service of his company Concord Managemente, Prigozhin denied having plans to start "any type of party or movement."
Along with him, but in the role of sponsors, Meduza places two other oligarchs close to Putin, the Kovalchuk brothers, Mikhail and Yuri, also from Saint Petersburg. His objective, according to Meduza, would be to intimidate that part of the elite that at any given moment might be tempted to withdraw their support for the president.
Like all politicians, Prigozhin would have to overcome some handicap. The main one is his prison past. Before becoming a businessman who owns exclusive St. Petersburg restaurants where Putin brought international leaders, Prigozhin knew prison.
In the 1970s he was a promising young cross-country skier. "Sometimes we did 50 kilometers a day," Prigozhin told Gorod 812 media in the only interview she has given in her entire life. That career was cut short by justice. A court in what was then Leningrad found him guilty of robbery in 1979, the Russian edition of Forbes magazine reported in 2013. Another 1981 sentence, for felonies, landed him in prison.
If the plans that Meduza publishes are fulfilled, the future politician will be able to argue that, having fulfilled his debt to the law, he knew how to reconvert and start from scratch. He got out of prison in 1990 and, with his stepfather, started a hot dog kiosk business. He then opened several food stores, Kontrast, very popular in the 90s. And then came his restaurants and the consolidation of his little empire.
Meduza's sources say the multifaceted oligarch has been in constant contact with President Putin since the Ukraine conflict began. But they do not know if they have discussed this project, although they believe that he could receive the "go-ahead" from him.
