In an extraordinary 24 hours, Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin ordered his troops to march towards Moscow to seek “revenge” after accusing Russia’s military leadership of killing his forces. On Saturday night, the country’s first armed coup in decades appeared to come to an abrupt end, with Prigozhin announcing that his troops would return to base to avoid “Russian bloodshed”.
Here’s what you need to know.
Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?
The man who raised a force against Moscow is a former convict and hotdog seller, notorious for his ruthlessness, violence and cruelty.
Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he went to a sporting academy but fell in with petty criminals. Convicted of several violent robberies in 1980, he spent most of his 20s in jail.
Released in 1990 as the Soviet Union was in its death throes, he made his first modest fortune with a fast food stand, but soon had a stake in a supermarket chain, one of the best restaurants in his home city, and the ear and trust of powerful figures, including one Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin spent more than a decade doing the catering for high-profile official events – photos show him serving Prince Charles and George Bush among others – and building up oligarch levels of wealth through government catering contracts and other deals.
The seeds of the current insurrection were sown nearly a decade ago when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula and sent proxy forces into eastern Ukraine. Prigozhin then founded the Wagner mercenary group, which gave Putin a tool for more active military intervention and some degree of plausible deniability.
Prigozhin also set up an army of keyboard trolls, and was indicted in the US for interfering – through his digital warriors – in the 2016 election that brought Trump to power.
Until last year, Prigozhin sued journalists who linked him to these activities, and insisted he only worked in catering and hospitality.
How did he create a private army?
Prigozhin built Wagner into a powerful force over years of interventions across Africa, the Middle East and more recently Ukraine. Syria was the first place Prigozhin’s men established themselves as a formidable fighting force, playing a prominent, if often unacknowledged, role in Moscow’s support of Bashar al-Assad.
They set a pattern which would play out again in Ukraine, operating with impunity, accused of numerous war crimes and taking heavy losses, under commanders not afraid to sacrifice their men.
Wagner troops later fought across Africa, on missions that favoured Russian interests, including in Mali, the Central African Republic and Sudan. He was allowed to recruit in prisons last year, swelling the ranks of his soldiers to about 50,000 men, according to western intelligence analysts.
What resources and support does he have now?
Prigozhin’s character and way of operating stoked tensions with Russia’s conventional military for years, but the feud deepened in recent months.
He launched public broadsides accusing top generals of starving his troops of ammunition and other supplies, and leaving them to die. One video was recorded against a gruesome backdrop of dozens of corpses of Wagner fighters.
His fighters’ crucial combat role in Ukraine, especially in the grinding battle for Bakhmut, means they have supplies of weapons and armoured vehicles.
It is unlikely Wagner’s fighters, for all their experience and discipline, could hold out indefinitely against the full might of the Russian military.
Prigozhin, who does have better ties with some generals, may have been hoping for defections, or perhaps for those worn down by corruption and other failings to stay on the sidelines as he fought it out with his enemies.
What does this mean for Ukraine?
It is impossible to know the wider fallout, but the rebellion – though short-lived – is likely to benefit Ukraine.
Focus, weapons and troops were shifted away from the frontlines, as Kyiv intensifies its counter-offensive. Prigozhin had said he didn’t want the war effort to suffer, but Russia’s generals were forced – at least temporarily – to concentrate on events at home, even if fighting was limited.
What does it mean beyond Ukraine?
Wagner has been a useful tool of Russian foreign policy and power projection, its troops supporting allies, and providing a warning to those not heeding messages from Moscow.
It is unlikely that Putin can immediately replace this arm’s-length mercenary force, even if he chooses to ignore messages from this uprising. The leaders who relied on Wagner support are likely to be reassessing their security.
