Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man behind the Wagner Group?

THIS WEEK Yevgeny Prigozhin stepped out of the shadows. The close ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, admitted for the first time that he is the founder of Wagner, a group of mercenaries that do Russia’s dirty work. “I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself,” said Mr Prigozhin, referring to the early days of the Wagner Group. He called his private soldiers “heroes”. His admission came after a video, circulated on September 13th, appeared to show him recruiting convicts to boost Russia’s manpower in Ukraine. He promised them freedom in exchange for six months of combat (if they survive that long). Who is Mr Prigozhin, and why does his growing prominence matter?

Little is known about Mr Prigozhin’s childhood. He spent most of his 20s in prison, serving nine years for robbery, fraud and involving teenagers in crime. After his release, he set up a hot-dog stand in St Petersburg in the 1990s. He soon expanded into chic eateries—his New Island floating restaurant was a favourite of Mr Putin, a former deputy mayor of the city. His good relations with Russia’s elite brought in lucrative catering contracts for schools, hospitals and the army. But it was his operations outside the kitchen that cemented his nickname, “Putin’s Chef”. These included the Internet Research Agency, which a grand jury in America termed a “troll farm” used to meddle in the 2016 presidential elections. In 2014 he founded Wagner, the first and largest state-linked business of private military contractors operating in Ukraine, where they bolstered the ranks of Russia’s unmarked soldiers who annexed Crimea and stayed to support pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region.