Ukraine war: ‘Putin’s chef’ sent to Donbas to get results from his hired army

The head of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries is believed to have arrived in Donbas to oversee their campaign of terror.

The head of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries is believed to have arrived in Donbas to oversee their campaign of terror.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef”, is thought to have gone to the eastern Ukrainian region following orders from the Kremlin. He was photographed with a member of the Russian parliament who is known to have travelled to the front line.

The Wagner Group is a 5,000-strong band of mercenaries which has been used by the Kremlin as a proxy in central Africa, the Middle East and Donbas and stands accused of human rights abuses. Its insignia is a skull on a black background and its motto is “Death is our business and business is good”.

Members of the Wagner Group in Syria.

Western intelligence suggests about 1,000 Wagner operatives have been deployed to the east of Ukraine but officials have cast doubt on their effectiveness in the field. One said their deployment showed a ” degree of desperation”.

Prigozhin, a former convict with extensive ties to the Kremlin, was photographed in military fatigues alongside Vitaly Milonov, a Kremlin loyalist who has shared images of himself in eastern Ukraine in recent days.

Sources from inside the group told Meduza, an independent Russian media outlet, that Prigozhin had been ordered to the front line by the Kremlin and that he was under instructions to capture a prominent Ukrainian politician or commander.

Prigozhin is a former hotdog seller who rose through society after serving nine years in a Soviet jail on charges of fraud, theft and prostitution. Like President Putin, he comes from St Petersburg, and after the Russian leader began going to his restaurants in the early 2000s he was awarded state catering contracts worth billions of pounds. He is on the FBI’s most wanted list for allegedly overseeing the “troll farms” that interfered in the 2016 US elections.

The Institute for War Studies, a US think tank, said it was unlikely that he was overseeing military matters in Ukraine. “Prigozhin, who has no military experience and is the financier and organiser of Wagner Group rather than its military commander, is likely in Donbas to co-ordinate recruitment and financing of Wagner Group operations rather than to command combat operations,” it said.

The Times