"Putting his food into somebody's hands is an enormous vote of trust." "The fact that Vladimir Putin asked Prigozhin to become the Kremlin's chef is something very important to understand because Putin has been very paranoid for a very long time," Ms de Bendern points out. He was also catering for a lot of Vladimir Putin's state visits and met presidents and heads of state. "And this is where things become very mysterious because he transformed himself from hot dog seller to restaurateur to the grand and great of the new post-Soviet Russian elite."Įventually, he became the caterer to a number of Russian state concerns including the Russian army. Ms de Bendern adds: "He very quickly got onto the private property/private enterprise bandwagon and ended up being a hot dog seller. He left prison during perestroika and glasnost - the period in the 1990s when Russia was opening up to the world. He spent quite a number of years in the Soviet Union's penitentiary system." "He was put in prison in the 1980s for basically assaulting a woman in the street. "Prigozhin is a former conman - he was a thug," says Samantha de Bendern, associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Prigozhin has a colourful back story, beginning with the time he spent in prison in the 1980s. Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, has become an increasingly important figure during the war, his company playing a key role in Russia's attempt to take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.Ī new Sky News Daily podcast uncovers some fascinating detail about the mercenary boss.
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