Journalist Ruslan Shaveddinov recalled that earlier the Russian authorities denied their connection with the Wagner PMC, but after the rebellion arranged by Prigozhin, the President of the aggressor country of Russia, Vladimir Putin, admitted that the state financed the mercenaries.
According to Putin, over the past year, Russia has spent 276 billion rubles on PMCs and contracts with Prigozhin. (about $3 billion). Of these, 86 billion rubles were allocated for payments to mercenaries. (about $960 million), 110 billion rubles. (about $ 1.2 billion) was spent on insurance payments, another 80 billion rubles. ($893 million) – the amount of contracts between the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and Prigozhin’s company Concord. We are talking about the period from May 2022 to May 2023.
Over the entire existence of the PMC, 858 billion rubles were allocated for it from the budget of the Russian Federation. (more than $ 9.5 billion), the journalist said, citing information from Russian state channels.
Shaveddinov noted that over the past year, Russia spent an amount comparable to the budget of the Kirov region on PMC Wagner, and the amount of Prigozhin’s contracts with the Ministry of Defense is equal to the budget of the Penza region.
The investigation says that over the years of working for the state, Prigozhin became an oligarch: he owns a 37-meter St Vitamin yacht worth €6 million, several aircraft, as well as several elite estates and a fleet of cars.
In particular, one of the estates of the Prigozhin family is located near St. Petersburg on an area of 1.3 hectares.
According to journalists, all of Prigozhin’s schemes involve members of his family: his wife, son and two daughters.
Context:
Prigozhin was born in 1961 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). According to the Rosblat agency, Prigozhin was sentenced in his youth to 13 years in a penal colony for theft, fraud, involvement of a minor in criminal activity and robbery. Prigozhin spent nine years in the colony ( Forbes specifies that he was pardoned). After his release, Prigozhin went into business. In the mid-1990s, he opened several restaurants in St. Petersburg. In the media, Prigozhin was called “Putin’s chef” because his companies served the receptions of senior officials of the Russian Federation.
Prigozhin has been under US sanctions since 2016 due to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine (in Washington, it is believed that he provides material support and technological assistance to the Russian authorities). Sanctions have also been imposed against Wagner PMCs belonging to him and the Internet Research Agency, known as the “troll factory”. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is ready to pay $250,000 “for information leading to Prigozhin’s arrest.”
In addition, sanctions against Prigozhin were imposed by the European Union, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Ukraine.
After the outbreak of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, Prigozhin personally engaged in the recruitment of prisoners serving sentences in Russian prisons to participate in hostilities on the side of the Russian army. At the same time, he repeatedly publicly criticized the Russian army and generals.
Against the backdrop of a conflict with the Russian Ministry of Defense on June 23-24, 2023, Prigozhin staged a rebellion in Russia. He accused the Russian military of attacking the rear camp of mercenaries, and blamed Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for this. The Russian Defense Ministry called Prigozhin’s statement about strikes on PMCs an “information provocation”.
On the morning of June 24, Prigozhin announced the seizure of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and his intention to go to Moscow, but in the evening of the same day he said that he had changed his mind and was turning the PMC columns “in the opposite direction.” Putin’s speaker Dmitry Peskov said that following the results of the negotiations, Prigozhin “will leave for Belarus”, and the case on the fact of the rebellion opened against him in the Russian Federation will be stopped. Putin called the participants in the rebellion “traitors” who made a mistake.
Prigogine’s exact whereabouts are unknown. The self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko claims that the creator of the PMC is already in Belarus.
2023-07-05 00:33:56
#Prigozhin #owns #planes #yacht #estates #Navalny #LIVE
.JPG "Secretary of Health in Guanajuato Announces Covid-19 Vaccine Plan for October, Caution Regarding Cuban and Mexican Vaccines")
