Russia's leader pledged to take "decisive actions" to halt what he says is a treasonous, armed rebellion by the head of Wagner, a rival fighting force in Ukraine.
Prigozhin was born in the former Soviet Union and served ten years in prison when he was younger. After he was freed from jail, he ran a hot dog stand before becoming the owner of several fancy restaurants in Saint Petersburg. His restaurants brought Prigozhin into close contact with Putin.
I feel like we missed a few steps on the way there, but it’s still an interesting origin story.
Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in the town of Gori [...], Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party [...] and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets.
Local thugs/mafia-leaders raising to power in Russia/USSR is not a new thing.
The Wagner group is a private military army that's been fighting alongside Russia's regular army in Ukraine, but tensions over how the war has been fought have been building for months. Putin has appeared to acknowledge that Russia's military has lost control of Rostov-on-Don and there are indications Wagner fighters have moved north to Voronezh, about 320 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian officials declined to comment directly on whether Prigozhin was leading an insurrection against Putin. U.S. officials observing the chaos unfolding in Russia Saturday have reached few conclusions about the rupture between Putin and Prigozhin. Prigozhin, 61, is the head of the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary organization that was supporting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine before Prigozhin apparently turned against Russia's military.