When troops in military garb turned up in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, on the evening of Friday, June 23, doubts arose. Who were these men, wearing silver tape on their right arms, taking control of a Russian town of over a million residents? Uncertainty was quickly dispelled with the appearance on the scene at dawn the following day of Wagner militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, posing between two trapped Russian army generals. In February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin used the same subterfuge, dispatching special forces without any insignia – the "little green men," as they came to be known – to seize the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
The proximity between the businessman-turned-warlord and the Russian leader is not just a matter of tactics. For over 20 years, the two men have maintained close relations based on a mutual understanding: Enrichment for one, and use of hybrid force for the other. Before becoming a threat, Prigozhin, 62, constantly operated in obscure areas of power that Putin is so fond of.
Resorting to force in Ukraine, Syria, the African continent, and South America, and on the back of his internet troll factories in Europe and the United States, Prigozhin has zealously served the interests of the Russian president. "Putin has agreed to outsource certain state functions but has not legitimized Prigozhin himself. (...) for that would be completely at odds with Putin’s concept of complete and coordinated power," wrote political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace website in February. "In Putin's worldview, resources like private military companies should work to strengthen the position of the state, not weaken it."
Putin has said on multiple occasions Prigozhin was not a "friend." "I know him, yes (...), but he has no official status," he told the American channel NBC in 2018. The warlord had nevertheless managed to make himself indispensable to the Kremlin, developing his contacts at the highest level over the years: In the presidential administration with his chef, Anton Vaino; among oligarchs with the powerful Kovalchuk brothers; in the Russian regions with the governor of Tula, Aleksey Dyumin, a former general and Putin's ex-chief bodyguard; and right up to the ranks of the army with, in particular, general Sergey Surovikin, who was involved in the 1991 putsch attempt in Russia. While some have recently distanced themselves from Prigozhin, many have acted as intermediaries with the Kremlin leader.
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