REVEALED: Inside Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Lavish St Petersburg Mansion
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Photos from inside Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s decked-out mansion were released on Wednesday by Russian media.
Vladimir Putin has humiliated Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin after his failed uprising in Russia by sending security services to raid his St Petersburg palace.
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During the search, police found a closet full of wigs, stashes of gold bars, a gun cache, a stuffed alligator and a framed photo which is purported to be of the severed heads of the exiled private military leader’s enemies.
Pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia yesterday published photos and video of armed officers searching Prigozhin’s mansion while he was exiled in Belarus on June 24.
It comes after the warlord launched what appeared to be an armed insurrection against Putin less than two weeks ago – which was soon halted after Minsk helped broker a deal to end the conflict.
Huge caches of weapons, including assault rifles and cartridges for them were found by security services inside the Wagner founder’s home.
These pictures were obtained by outlet the Russian outlet IZ.RU and shared on Telegram:
This sledgehammer is inscribed, “For use in important negotiations.”
Prigozhin had piles of cash, gold bars and wigs he could perhaps use for a disguise if he ever needed to make a quiet escape.
Prigozhin allegedly had a framed image on his wall showing the severed heads of his enemies:
He also had a sauna, jacuzzi and indoor pool to relax.
Prigozhin started his adult life as petty criminal who was imprisoned for ten years for a violent robbery and became a hotdog salesman upon his release. As the story goes, Prigozhin wheeled and dealed his way to success in the food industry before securing lucrative government contracts and earning the moniker “Putin’s chef.”
Prigozhin secretly founded the Wagner group in 2014 to support Russia’s troops in the Donbass.
“Although private military companies were illegal in Russia, several groups appeared that seemed to coordinate their actions with the defence ministry but could operate at arm’s length,” The Guardian reported. “Prigozhin’s Wagner would become by far the most prominent of them.”
“I think Prigozhin pitched it to Putin and he agreed, that’s how it works,” said the former defence ministry official, dismissing speculation that Wagner was a project of Russia’s GRU military intelligence from the start. “There might have been some GRU people advising, but in the end this was Prigozhin’s project.”
RT reported last week that Prigozhin’s Wagner group was paid $11.4 billion (nearly 1 trillion rubles) by the state:
Evgeny Prigozhin’s holding, which includes the Wagner Group, has enjoyed substantial benefits from working for the Russian government, securing contracts worth hundreds of billions of rubles, Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, said on Sunday.
Speaking on air during his weekly news program, Kiselyov said that Prigozhin’s Wagner private military company “has received a little more than 858 billion rubles ($9.8 billion) under the contracts it signed with the state.”
He added that under other contracts, Prigozhin’s holding Concord, which is also engaged in the catering and media business, had provided services to the tune of 845 billion rubles.
“This does not mean that they have earned so much, but it is still indicative of the scale of the business and the scale of ambitions,” Kiselyov noted.
The Telegraph reported on Wednesday that Prigozhin was spotted in Russia on Tuesday after returning temporarily on his private jet “to collect an arsenal of weapons including a personalised handgun.”
A 4×4 belonging to Mr Prigozhin was seen pulling up to an investigator’s office in central St Petersburg on Tuesday evening, with the Wagner boss and his aides seen carrying weapons to the car.
Among the weapons given back to Mr Prigozhin, according to Fontanka, were two hunting rifles and a customised Glock pistol he was given by defence minister Sergei Shoigu as a gift, before they fell out in the bitter feud that led to the mutiny.
The Austrian-made handgun features an engraving of Mr Prigozhin’s name.
Fontanka earlier this week reported that local authorities also gave back 10 billion rubles ($110 million) in cash last weekend.
“Mr Prigozhin never confirmed he was going into exile in Belarus, while [Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko] said only that the mercenary chief was free to stay or go,” The Telegraph reported.
