How the feud with ‘Putin’s chef’ Yevgeny Prigozhin has its roots in Bakhmut

Yevgeny Prigozhin, top, serves food to then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at Prigozhin’s restaurant outside Moscow, Russia on Nov. 11, 2011. (AP Photo, File)

Prigozhin is a businessman who amassed his wealth partly through securing catering contracts from the Kremlin, resulting in the “chef” moniker. His Wagner mercenary force has exerted influence on behalf of Moscow in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, and it is now a crucial force fighting on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine — though Prigozhin publicly acknowledged his connection to Wagner only in September.

Since then, he has built an aggressive social media presence, portraying himself and his forces as more ruthless and effective fighters than the Russian military, and denouncing Moscow’s defense bureaucracy — all while maintaining a close alliance with President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin’s pointed accusations about the competency of the Russian defense ministry, paired with his fighters’ advances in the grinding battle for Bakhmut, transformed him from a once-secretive figure into a political power player on the public stage.

The discord between Prigozhin and Russian defense officials became more exposed as the anniversary of the war approached in February.

At that time, Prigozhin’s mercenary group was losing its ability to replenish its ranks. His troops’ sheer numbers — bolstered by prison inmates personally recruited by Prigozhin — had enabled Wagner’s repeated, costly offensives in Bakhmut. But news of Wagner’s astronomical casualty rate was spreading to Russian penal colonies, and Prigozhin said in early February that he would stop recruiting inmates, without giving a reason.

Not long afterwards, he took aim at figures near the top of Russia’s command structure, accusing the defense minister and the country’s most senior general of treason in vitriolic, profanity-laden audio messages on social media.

Prigozhin claimed that military officials were deliberately withholding ammunition and supplies from Wagner fighters in Bakhmut to undermine him, while, he said, Russian forces elsewhere faced failure after failure.

According to a classified U.S. intelligence document that was leaked online in April, the dispute grew so bad that Putin became personally involved, calling Prigozhin and Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, into a meeting believed to have taken place Feb. 22. “The meeting almost certainly concerned, at least in part, Prigozhin’s public accusations and resulting tension with Shoygu,” the document says, using an alternative transliteration of the minister’s name.

The public intensity of the dispute fluctuated over time. Prigozhin eventually said his fighters in Bakhmut had received the ammunition they needed, and in April, Russia’s defense ministry made a rare acknowledgment of their cooperation, saying that Russian paratrooper units were covering Wagner’s flanks in the western part of the city.

But over the course of three weeks in May, Prigozhin issued a series of inflammatory statements. He again accused Russia’s military bureaucracy of starving Wagner forces of the ammunition they needed to fully capture Bakhmut, this time threatening to withdraw them from the city on May 10. He appeared to backtrack two days later, as he had done before, this time saying he had received satisfactory promises of more arms.

He undermined the Russian army’s claims of a partial “regrouping” of its forces in the city by declaring it a “rout,” and denied a report that he had offered to betray the Russian army’s locations around Bakhmut if Ukraine agreed to withdraw from the area. In late May, he declared that Bakhmut was fully under Wagner control.

Ukraine swiftly denied the claim. Several hours later, Russia’s defense ministry released a statement saying that the city’s capture “has been completed” as a result of Wagner’s actions with the support of traditional Russian forces.

Despite the recognition, Prigozhin soon went back to lambasting Russia’s military leadership — culminating in his extraordinary mobilization against targets inside Russia this weekend.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.