Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was a Soviet convict who built a catering empire that served the Kremlin, earning him the nickname "Putin's chef" and the confidence of the Russian president. By 2014 he had reportedly founded the Wagner Group, a private military company funded by the Russian state and tightly integrated with the Defence Ministry and the GRU, which deployed to support separatists in Ukraine, Russian interests in Syria, and operations across Africa. In 2023 he publicly confirmed he had founded the Internet Research Agency and acknowledged his companies' interference in U.S. elections. As the invasion of Ukraine dragged on, Prigozhin openly accused the Defense Ministry of corruption and called the war's justifications lies, then on 23 June 2023 launched a rebellion: Wagner forces seized Rostov-on-Don and drove toward Moscow before he called it off the next day and agreed to relocate to Belarus. On 23 August, exactly two months later, he died when his business jet crashed north of Moscow; U.S. government sources and analysts concluded a bomb or sabotage likely brought the plane down.