On June 24, Petersburg detectives discovered a pickup truck full of boxes with 5000-ruble notes in the backyard of the Dvorets Tressini hotel, totaling four billion rubles. A little later, a minibus worth six billion rubles was secured. Notes worth the equivalent of 100 million euros. The owner got in touch the same day: Yevgeny Prigozhin, mercenary leader, he started an attempted coup that day. And he explained on Telegram that he used the money to pay his warriors, but also bonuses for the bereaved of those who died.
Hours later, Prigozhin called off the coup, and on the same day gold bullion and hundreds of thousands of dollars were confiscated from his St. Petersburg offices. A day that seemed to mean the beginning of the end for Prigozhin, also economically. According to the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the Kremlin has decided to take control of the empire of the official emigrant to Belarus. “Prigozhin made the most expensive trip to Moscow in Russian history,” scoffs the opposition Telegram channel SerpomPo.
Prigozhin’s business model rested on the pillars of propaganda, provisions and a private army. They consisted of the media group Patriot and the catering company Konkord, which, in addition to the authorities, supplied the army with food. And from the Private War Society (TschWK) Wagner.
The first Prigozhin websites shut down on the day of the coup, followed by his journalistic flagship, the RIA FAN agency. Prigozhin owned hundreds of portals and editorial offices, including the “Troll Factory”, which processed the West with online propaganda. According to the agency RBK, the media squadron had an audience of 36 million in 2018.
According to the business portal The Bell, Prigozhin has now decided not to sell his media squadron, but rather to disband it. What is unknown is how much these assets are worth. The fate of the catering company Konkord is unclear. According to the “Ostoroschno, Novosti” telegram channel, the Ministry of Defense has terminated cooperation and the employees have been laid off.
The TschWK Wagner also has to be buried first. Some of their fighters are said to serve in the regular army. It is unclear whether this also applies to the mercenaries who guard gold or diamond mines in Africa. State TV star host Yevgeny Kiselyov claims the Wagner group received 858 billion rubles ($9.6 billion), Konkord 845 billion rubles ($9.5 billion). Their disappearance really spelled a downfall for Prigozhin.
It’s not official yet. Prigozhin announced in a video that his mercenaries would soon be celebrating “the next victories at the front”. Again and again there are reports that he is conducting negotiations. “I think there’s a lot of haggling going on between Prigozhin and the Kremlin,” says exile political scientist Igor Ejdman. “And the authorities seem to be making concessions.”
Prigozhin stay
According to the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is in Russia and not in Belarus. “As for Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg. He is not in Belarus,” Lukashenko told foreign journalists in Minsk on Thursday. Lukashenko added that he could say “with certainty” that Prigozhin was at large. “I spoke to him on the phone yesterday.” The fighters of the Wagner mercenary group have not been in Belarus either. However, he agreed to take on “a certain number” of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus. Their “experience” could be very useful for his country.
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Author
Stefan Scholl
Russia correspondent
Stefan Scholl
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