Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Now his previously secret appointment calendar has surfaced. It shows that Putin has work ahead of him.
Although he was rarely seen in public before the Ukraine war, Yevgeny Prigozhin was one of the most influential people in Putin’s inner circle of power over the past decade. The head of the Wagner mercenary group often met people who are now politically close to Putin. This becomes particularly clear with the entries from his personal appointment calendar, which hackers were able to capture at the beginning of the year.
The hacker group with the Russian name “Bogatyri”, in German “knight”, handed over the calendar to the editors of “Welt”, “Politico”, “Dossier Center” and “Business Insider” at the beginning of the year. The dates contained therein show how well the Wagner boss was networked in Putin’s inner circle.
75 appointments with the Deputy Secretary of Defense
Prigozhin had 75 appointments with Ruslan Zalikov in the past ten years. Zalikov has been deputy defense minister since 2012 – after all, number four in the Russian military apparatus.
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According to an article in Business Insider, Prigozhin held almost as many meetings – namely 73 – with the chief of staff in Putin’s executive office, Anton Waino.
Beyond that, Prigozhin often met with the Russian military leadership. The calendar is said to have 36 appointments with the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. The post is held by Valeri Gerasimov, whom Prigozhin repeatedly accused before the Wagner uprising of making tactical mistakes in the war against Ukraine. In addition, the Wagner boss threatened Gerasimov’s public execution if the Wagner troupe took over power in Russia.
Prigoschin traf “General Armageddon”
33 entries in the calendar refer to appointments with Alexei Dyumin. He used to be one of Putin’s bodyguards before he became governor of the Russian Republic of Tula. Until the Wagner uprising, he was considered a close ally of the Kremlin boss – but since then he has become the focus of investigations in Russia due to his close connections to Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Further entries can be found on Sergei Surovikin, who was nicknamed “General Armageddon” by his own fighters because of his brutality in the Syrian war. Surovikin is currently under house arrest because of his connections to the Wagner group. His Wagner VIP identification number, which he is said to have been assigned according to “Business Insider”, shows that he was a big shot in the mercenary force. In Prigozchin’s calendar, however, he is said to have been entered under his real name.
What is interesting about the report on Prigozhin’s calendar is that there is almost no information about meetings between the Wagner boss and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The “Business Insider” explains this with code names that Wagner people like to use. So there could have been meetings between Putin and Prigozhin – but according to the article it is unlikely that these would have been clearly marked as such in the calendar.
Calendar ends just before the beginning of the Ukraine war
Shortly before the start of the war against Ukraine, the calendar ends. There is apparently no information about what Prigozhin did shortly before the Russian army invaded Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in February 2022, Yevgeny Prigozhin has increasingly come into the public eye. Previously, his Wagner mercenaries were unofficially used in the Syrian civil war and conflicts on the African continent – in many places they are said to have committed horrific war crimes. In the war against Ukraine, Wagner recruited fighters from Russian prisons and was able to contribute to the invasion.
However, Wagner has fallen out of favor since the uprising of the mercenaries on June 24, when military vehicles marched towards Moscow. Wagner fighters received an offer to sign official contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Yevgeny Prigozhin himself had to go into exile in Belarus.
