Russian news channel Izvestia broadcast video of what it said was Yevgeny Prigozhin in disguise as well as extensive footage from inside his home. Photo / Izvestia
Russian news channel Izvestia broadcast video of what it said was Yevgeny Prigozhin in disguise as well as extensive footage from inside his home. Photo / Izvestia
Yevgeny Prigozhin has carefully constructed a public image of a fearsome warlord who refuses to toe the line of the Kremlin elite.
But selfies taken by the Wagner chief and published by Russia’s security services do little to bolster his strongman image.
The photographs show Prigozhin wearing wigs, fake beards and foreign military uniforms, and appear to have been released in an apparent campaign to discredit the mutinous mercenary.
It came as Russian state television aired footage of a police raid of his St Petersburg home in which large quantities of cash, fake documents, gold and weapons - as well as wigs - were discovered.
The photographs, apparently taken from Prigozhin’s personal photo albums, appear to have been taken during trips to various African and Middle Eastern countries where Wagner has fought over the past eight years.
In several, he is wearing a beard without a moustache, in the style favoured by some devout Muslim men. He is also seen sporting a variety of thick-rimmed spectacles.
Wagner was founded in 2014 as an irregular force for deniable operations during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine. In the years since it has fought in Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic, and been involved in training programmes in Sudan.
A screengrab from video, broadcast by Russian news channel Izvestia, reportedly of Yevgeny Prigozhin in disguise. Photo / Izvestia
Vesti Rossii, the state news channel, showed what it said was “exclusive footage” of a police raid on Prigozhin’s home on its flagship 60 minutes news show on Wednesday.
It showed men in tactical gear picking their way through a sumptuous mansion and unpacking what the channel said was an estimated 600 million rubles (£5.1 million) in Russian and US banknotes and gold bars.
The report showed a cupboard full of wigs, high-powered firearms in a bedroom, and several passports bearing Prigozhin’s photograph, some in his own name and others for “Oleg Simonov” and “Vladimir Bobrov”.
Russian news channel Izvestia showed images of passports, said to be from the home of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Photo / Izvestia
It also showed a sledgehammer, a weapon used in the Wagner Group for executions of prisoners and its own men, a framed photograph of a prisoner beheaded in Syria, and a Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest honour. A certificate said the medal was awarded in June 2020.
Prigozhin, 62, has not been seen since he and his fighters seized control of the Russian city of Rostov and launched an abortive march on Moscow on June 24, though he reportedly collected some of the confiscated weapons in person from investigators in St Petersburg.
The mutiny, which claimed the lives of several Russian servicemen, petered out after Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, brokered a deal for Prigozhin and his fighters to go into exile in that country.
Russian news channel Izvestia broadcast images of what it said was the home of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Photo / Izvestia
He said he and Putin were planning to meet to discuss Wagner, the Belarusian news agency Belta reported.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, confirmed such a meeting was planned but said no date had been set. He said the Kremlin has “neither the means nor the desire” to follow Prigozhin’s movement.
Russian news channel Izvestia showed images of what it said was the interior of the home of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Photo / Izvestia
The raid on Prigozhin’s house was first reported on June 25, the day after the mutiny.
Some details, including the fake passports, were originally published by Fontanka, a St Petersburg news outlet with close ties to law enforcement agencies, but later deleted.
Lithuania said last week that one of the passports photographed, which was in Prigozhin’s real name, had been used by a body double to enter the country in 2020.
A cache of weapons said by Russian news channel Izvestia to be at the home of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Photo / Izvestia
The goal of the operation was to suggest that Lithuania was not enforcing EU sanctions including a travel ban on Prigozhin, thereby driving a wedge between Vilnius and its allies.
Prigozhin’s apparent return to St Petersburg will prompt speculation that Prigozhin retains powerful allies in Russia, despite hostile reporting on state television.
Fontanka reported on Tuesday that police had returned a “couple of tons” of cash and gold to Prigozhin.
The paper said Prigozhin’s driver picked up the money in St Petersburg while he himself was at a meeting in Moscow.
It later reported that he had arrived to retrieve confiscated weapons in person.
Sergey Surovikin, the Russian general in charge of liaison with Wagner and who was known to be a close associate of Prigozhin, has also vanished.
Surovikin last appeared on the morning of the 24th in a video appeal to Prigozhin and his fighters to stand down.
He was wearing no rank insignia on his uniform, was unshaven, and spoke slowly as if drugged, prompting speculation that the video was filmed under duress.
The Vesti report elicited a backlash on pro-war Telegram channels sympathetic to Prigozhin, who said it was unfair to use the luxury of his home to suggest he was corrupt and that the items confiscated by police included a Hero of Russia medal, which proved he had served the country well.
Some claimed that Prigozhin planned to release security camera footage that showed officers involved in the raid, stealing money and valuables instead of bagging them for evidence.
