The prisons where Lucy Letby will probably spend the rest of her life

 

After his rebellion, Prigozhin appeared ecstatic, but his plan had failed.

A sensation that a man who had lived so close to the edge for so long had overplayed his hand persisted from the time Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellion in Russia crumbled in June.

It would be a terrible and violent end to a very stormy life if he was aboard his own private plane when it went down while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Vladimir Putin had access to Prigozhin's services for a very long time.

But the failed uprising that employed thousands of Wagner mercenaries was outrageous. The insurrection was denounced as "treason" by President Putin, and it became immediately obvious that Prigozhin's productive career in Russia was gone.

This man's formative years as an adult weretime in a prison in St. Petersburg, but he prospered in the 1990s thanks to catering businesses that made him wealthy and attracted Mr. Putin's favor.

The military took notice of Prigozhin because of his mercenary activities in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine, but things changed when Russia started a war in Ukraine, giving the president's former chef access to both cash and power.

Unconfirmed reports state that the military air defenses fired two bursts of fire at his Embraer Legacy 135 aircraft.

Few will be shocked if it was purposefully taken out because Prigozhin had no shortage of adversaries. On the passenger list was Dmitry Utkin, the first Wagner commander under Prigozhin.

The 62-year-old Prigozhin seemed to have avoided punishment for his little rebellion against the Kremlin.

Many of his rebel mercenaries were permitted to fly to a camp in Belarus as part of an agreement to put an end to the uprising, but the Wagner head was allowed to travel within Russia and appeared in St. Petersburg in casual clothing for a Russian conference of African leaders in late July.

His humorous but vicious video rants criticize the shortcomings of theHis opulent residence outside of St. Petersburg was raided, and footage of the operations was shown on state-run television in Russia.

But Prigozhin was never going to disappear in silence to a hideout in Belarus, and his first video message since the botched mutiny was only made public this week.

It was obvious that it had been filmed in Africa due to the desert backdrop and the fact that Prigozhin was dressed for battle and announced that his Wagner force was recruiting to make Russia "even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free" while the temperature was 50 degrees.

When Prigozhin founded the Wagner private military organization, which supported Russian friends in the Central African Republic and Syria and opposed French dominance in Mali, he appeared to be returning to his mercenary roots from earlier in his career.

Although he maintained his denial for years, Prigozhin also established apro-Kremlin bloggers' troll farm in a plain St. Petersburg office. The US accused His Internet Research Agency of employing information warfare to influence the 2016 presidential election.

This year, Prigozhin acknowledged that he was the one who had come up with the concept: "It was created to protect the Russian information space from the West's boorish and aggressive anti-Russian propaganda."

In the last years of the Soviet Union, he had spent nearly ten years in prison for robbery and fraud. However, as the new Russia let go of its Soviet history, Prigozhin entered the catering industry, first as a hotdog vendor before transitioning to more upscale dining and opening some of St. Petersburg's swankiest restaurants.

The city's vice mayor at the time, Mr. Putin, took note. Vladimir Putin observedYears later, he recalled "how I used a kiosk to start a business."

After becoming office, Mr. Putin hosted world leaders in Prigozhin's restaurants, including Jacques Chirac of France. The young caterer acquired the moniker "Putin's chef".

If Prigozhin's mercenary company later gave him military influence and cash, his catering company would give him a steady stream of wealth up to this year.

President Putin announced immediately after the failed Wagner uprising that Prigozhin's private army had received full state funding of $1 billion over a 12-month period, and an additional $1 billion had gone to Prigozhin's Concord catering company to feed the military.

But that was only a little over a year ago, and sources indicate he had earned almost $18 billion in government funding.

Dmitry Kiselyov, a Kremlin propagandist, said that Prigozhin's "off the rails" behavior was caused by large money, but it was actually his men's military prowess that gave him a feeling of impunity.

He believed that he could take on the president, the state, and the defense ministry.

All of this culminated last year when Russia's military operation in Ukraine failed, and Prigozhin's Wagner fighters led a brutal invasion attempt to take the eastern city of Bakhmut.

Inmates were given the opportunity to have their sentences reduced in exchange for serving time with Wagner when Prigozhin visited jails all throughout Russia in September of last year.

Many of the thousands who lost their lives in the battle for Bakhmut were untrained, poorly equipped former prisoners.

In videos posted on social media as the battle heated up, Prigozhin could be seen standing among the bodies of dead mercenaries and pleading for ammo.

He saved his hatred for Valery Gerasimov, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Sergei Shoigu, the devoted defense minister of President Putin.

"Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the armament?They came here willingly and gave their lives so that you may fill up in your mahogany offices.

Prigozhin never explicitly criticized the president; instead, he always placed the blame on his generals.

However, when the military leaders revealed their intentions to deploy the Wagner troops and other "volunteerPrigozhin seemed to snap, "detachments" under the main command structure.

He questioned the invasion of Ukraine on a large scale as he got ready to start his "march for justice" and charged the defense minister of being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Suggestions that Vladimir Putin's hold on power had been compromised by Prigozhin's uprising were branded "hysteria" by the Kremlin.

The great and enduring Russian influence of Prigozhin on the Putin administration at the very least began to fade.