Instead, a marketing campaign is underway to painting the founding father of the Wagner Group navy contractor as pushed by greed, with solely hints of an investigation into whether or not he mishandled any of the billions of {dollars} in state funds.
Until final week, the Kremlin has by no means admitted to funding the corporate, with personal mercenary teams technically unlawful in Russia.
Putin questioned aloud whether or not any of it was stolen.
The developments round Prigozhin, who stays unpunished regardless of Putin’s labelling of his revolt as treason, underscored what St. Petersburg municipal council member Nikita Yuferev known as the “gradual erosion of the legal system” in Russia.
Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow on the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, writing concerning the mutiny in a column, concluded: “The fabric of the state is disintegrating.”
After Putin indicated the federal government would probe monetary irregularities by Prigozhin’s firms, state TV picked up that cue.
Commentator Dmitry Kiselyov mentioned Wagner and one other firm owned by Prigozhin earned over 1.7 trillion rubles ($27.96 billion) by means of authorities contracts.
Russian business every day Vedomosti cited a supply near the Defense Ministry as saying the earnings occurred between 2014 and 2023, years when each Prigozhin and Russian officers denied any ties to Wagner and even its existence.
“Big money made Prigozhin’s head spin,” Kiselyov mentioned Sunday, saying the personal military’s battlefield successes gave the mercenary boss “a feeling of impunity.”
One potential motive for Prigozhin’s mutiny, he mentioned, was the Defense Ministry’s refusal to increase a multibillion-dollar contract together with his authorized catering firm, Concord, to provide meals to the military.
According to Kiselyov, Wagner earned 858 billion rubles from authorities contracts, whereas Concord earned one other 845 billion.
Those numbers had been 10 occasions greater than what Putin gave final week.
Also unclear is whether or not Prigozhin will transfer to Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally, beneath a cope with the Kremlin to finish the insurrection.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko mentioned Thursday that Prigozhin was in Russia. The Kremlin refused remark.
Russian media on Wednesday — together with fashionable state TV channel Russia 1 — confirmed video of searches of Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg workplaces and an opulent mansion he purportedly owned, full with helipad and indoor swimming pool. They additionally confirmed a van with containers of money, in addition to gold bars, wigs and weapons within the property.
Russia 1 packages additionally alleged Prigozhin’s grownup youngsters amassed vital wealth by means of him and mentioned the searches had been part of an ongoing investigation, contrasting his life-style to his anti-elite picture.
“So it turns out, Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t have enough and wanted more?” an anchor mused.
The objective of those revelations is “to smear the person, show he is an oligarch,” mentioned Ilya Shumanov, Russia director for Transparency International, noting Prigozhin usually made crude and plain-spoken assaults on the navy management.
“And here they say that he’s a billionaire, and all this (money) isn’t his, it’s from the (state) budget, and he was sitting on it, and there would have been no private military company without the Defense Ministry,” Shumanov instructed The Associated Press.
The revelations raised questions of how the federal government may fund Wagner in any respect, on condition that legal guidelines prohibit mercenary actions, together with funding and coaching personal troops, that put the corporate in a authorized gray space.
Until the insurrection, Putin all the time denied any hyperlink between the state and Prigozhin’s mercenaries. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned as lately as 2020 that “there is no such thing as a private military company in Russian law,” and that he wasn’t conscious of 1.
By then, nevertheless, Wagner had despatched its soldiers-for-hire to Syria and African international locations as Russia expanded its world affect. By Prigozhin’s personal admission, his forces additionally operated in japanese Ukraine to help a separatist rebellion and later fought there after the 2022 invasion.
Asked Monday concerning the legality of state funding for Wagner, Peskov refused remark.
Shumanov instructed AP that Wagner was seemingly funded both with money by means of shell firms, or by means of authorities contracts by way of Prigozhin’s different entities. How a lot is unattainable to know, he famous, however added it was clear Putin’s remarks “gave a green light” to analyze the Wagner chief’s funds.
“I’d wait several weeks, and I think there will definitely be a reaction from the security forces in terms of Prigozhin and his economic activities,” he mentioned.
The Kremlin’s message is that “we are dealing with a thief, a corrupt person, a thief and an oligarch, who went too far and stole money from the budget,” Shumanov mentioned: “This is a very clear explanation, and no one needs to be sacrificed except for Prigozhin.”
Besides the funds, there may be the matter of whether or not anybody will face prosecution for the deaths of the Russian troops who died by the hands of Prigozhin’s fighters.
Russian media reported about 15 navy troops had been killed throughout the insurrection as hundreds of his troopers seized a navy headquarters within the southern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don, then headed for Moscow, capturing down navy helicopters and different plane on what Prigozhin known as his “march of justice.”
At a June 27 Kremlin ceremony, Putin held a minute of silence to honour the lifeless, though he didn’t say what number of had been killed.
A deal struck with Prigozhin to finish the rebellion stipulated that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, would drop expenses towards him and his fighters of mounting a insurrection. That settlement went towards Putin’s vow in a nationally televised deal with throughout the rebellion to punish these behind it.
Instead, the Kremlin mentioned Prigozhin agreed to finish the mutiny and go to Belarus — a settlement that did not sit effectively with some.
Yuferev, the St. Petersburg municipal council member, filed a request with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB, asking who can be punished for the insurrection.
Thousands of individuals “rolling toward Moscow on tanks shoot down aircraft, kill 15 troops. … The president speaks, says: ‘I will punish all of you, you are mutineers,’ the FSB launches a case -– and then nothing,” he added.
He mentioned authorities should reply in 30 days, and whereas he doesn’t count on a substantive reply, he no less than hopes to attract consideration to this “erosion of the legal system of a state.”
“It is very interesting what they will write there, how they will justify people committing an armed rebellion,” Yuferev mentioned.
Whether different expenses might be filed is unclear. Prominent lawyer Ivan Pavlov instructed AP that mounting an armed insurrection is just one cost, and that Prigozhin could face others -– particularly since deaths occurred — however thus far, “no one is talking about it.”
Another subject drawing official silence is how the FSB — the successor company to the dreaded KGB — failed to stop the rebellion, although it routinely boasts of averting terrorist assaults, sabotage plots and different main crimes.
Russian safety specialists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan mentioned the FSB’s Rostov division “barricaded itself in its city headquarters,” whereas its navy counterintelligence operatives assigned to Wagner ”did nothing.”
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After Prigozhin introduced his intentions June 23 to behave towards Russia’s defence minister, the FSB issued a press release urging Wagner fighters to not comply with the rogue commander and for the troops “to detain him.”
Soldatov and Borogan wrote in a current article that such a name for the mercenaries to take that motion was odd, since solely legislation enforcement companies and safety providers just like the FSB have the ability to detain individuals.
Mark Galeotti of University College, London, an analyst on Russian safety affairs, mentioned the insurrection examined earlier assumptions that Putin may depend on his safety forces.
“Now, the first time there’s a real challenge we actually see, security forces are willing to hang back and wait and see what happens,” he told AP.
So far, there has been no negative impact on the FSB, which Galeotti called “Putin’s favoured institution,” having been a former member.
Asked by AP during a conference call with reporters Monday why the FSB failed to stop the mutiny, Kremlin spokesman Peskov refused to comment, except to say that such services “perform their functions, they do it properly.”
He also noted Putin last week had praised soldiers, law enforcement and security officers and “expressed his gratitude” to them.
Source: www.9news.com.au
