Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder and leader of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company that has played a prominent role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including the prolonged battle for Bakhmut. A former catering contractor who earned the nickname Putin's chef, he recruited thousands of convicts from Russian prisons to fight for Wagner and became known for his outspoken public criticism of Russia's military leadership. In June 2023, he led a brief armed mutiny in which Wagner fighters seized military sites in Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow before halting under a deal brokered by Belarus. He was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed north of Moscow in August 2023.