Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘had nothing to lose’ after cancer
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s treatment for stomach cancer may have been a factor in his decision to launch an armed rebellion against Moscow.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has been treated for stomach cancer and his illness may have been a factor in his decision to launch an armed rebellion against Moscow, a Russian website has claimed.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group underwent years of intensive therapy and his cancer is now in remission, according to former employees cited by Proekt, an investigative group that has been banned by the Kremlin. He now follows a strict diet and has not been seen with anything stronger than a glass of lemonade in recent years.
Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander who left the group in 2019, said that despite a tradition of heavy drinking among Russian mercenaries, Prigozhin was a teetotaller. “I never saw him drunk or even tipsy,” he said.
Documents show that Prigozhin underwent unspecified treatment at a clinic in St Petersburg that is linked to President Putin. The Sogaz clinic is owned by AO Sogaz, a Russian insurance company whose deputy chief executive is Mikhail Putin, a businessman who is thought to be the president’s second cousin.
A Reuters investigation claimed that the clinic’s general director also had a business relationship with Putin’s elder daughter, Maria Vorontsova.
Prigozhin’s treatment at the clinic was revealed last month when a number of his fake passports were uncovered during a police raid on his mansion in St Petersburg. One of the passports was in the name of Dmitry Geiler, who was listed as a “super-VIP” patient at the clinic in documents obtained by Radio Liberty in 2021. Medical equipment was among the items discovered in the raid, including ventilators.
A photograph of the severed heads of four unidentified men was also found. It is believed to have been taken in Africa, where Wagner mercenaries have been accused of numerous human rights abuses.
Prigozhin’s unprecedented mutiny may have been the action of a man with little to lose, one of the former Wagner employees said. “This is a man with a cut-out stomach and intestines!”
Little is known about Prigozhin’s private life. However, Gabidullin said that his behaviour behind closed doors was not very different from his public image. “He has the same manner in real life,” he said. “This is someone who is unable to hide his true nature.”
Gabidullin described Prigozhin as “smart” and “well read” but laughed when asked who the mercenary chief’s favourite authors were. “I never discussed his literary passions with him, you know?” he said.
Gabidullin’s memoir about his experiences with Wagner, In the Same River Twice, has been published in Europe.
Prigozhin and all of Wagner’s top commanders met Putin in the Kremlin five days after their aborted rebellion, Dmitry Peskov, the presidential spokesman, said on Monday.
The group had explained their actions, with Putin offering them conditions for further employment, Peskov said, without providing details. He did not comment on whether Prigozhin and Wagner would stick to the terms of the last-minute deal to end their mutiny and move to Belarus.
Russians withdrew the rouble equivalent of $1.1 billion in cash from banks during the Wagner uprising as fears grew that the country would be plunged into civil war, according to the nation’s Central Bank.
Andrey Belousov, a deputy prime minister, said the majority of the withdrawals took place in southern Russia, where Wagner fighters launched their rebellion.
Separately, a senior Russian MP said that a senior general who has not been seen since the Wagner revolt was “resting”. General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, is said to have been arrested last month amid reports that he had advance knowledge of the Wagner uprising. When asked about Surovikin’s whereabouts, Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee said: “He’s resting. He’s not available at the moment.”
He gave no further details.
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