Wagner mercenary leader, Russian mutineer, ‘Putin’s chef’: The many sides of Yevgeny Prigozhin
By The Associated Press
His name was on the manifest of a passenger plane that crashed in Russia. Just two months ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin was leading a column of his Wagner mercenaries toward Moscow in what the Kremlin called an insurrection. In between, he supposedly cut a deal with Vladimir Putin and the leader of Belarus for a safe haven for those involved in the uprising. The deal fell apart. Recently, the White House said the man once called “Putin’s chef” risked being poisoned after crossing the Russian president. Prigozhin’s fate has been tangled with the Kremlin and its power structures for decades.