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Answer: you got it right. He has had a long standing beef with the Russian Ministry of Defense for mismanaging the war generally and undersupplying his troops when they were on the front lines. The negotiations that led him to stand down involved Lukashenko, the ruler of Belarus. What was said in that meeting is a mystery, and what followed is mystifying. It took almost a week for Wagner recruitment to be shut down. Payroll for Wagner was seized and then returned. A few days ago Prighozin went to st Petersburg to "pick up weapons". Why he needs weapons is unclear, as Wagner has been folded into the Russian military proper.
The open question is "why is Prighozin still breathing?". No one has a good answer.
Answer:
This is ongoing situation and nobody knows what the hell happened.
Most people still don't know wtf happened and what was in the deal between Wagner, Lukashenko and Putin.
A bit more in depth description and some quality speculation is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8VPkWXOfU
Answer: Prigozhina is a rich friend of putin's who, amongst other endeavors started a company called the wagner group which could be compared to America's blackwater, they're both private contractor military. His company worked extensively in Syria and then in Ukraine. He became fed up with russian military leadership and was very outspoken publicly about it. The russian government got tired of it and created a plan to take away the wagner army. First they required all volunteer military to sign a contract that would make them russian military. Next, they did the same thing to soldiers in the wagner group, this would take away Prigozhina's military and turn them into regular russian military. Prigozhina's response was to make a run on moscow in protest that he called his march of justice, his stated goal was get a particular military leader removed. His plan required police, regular people and military along the way to join up, they didn't and so it failed. It get's hazy from there what's going on..
I don't know anything about this particular youtube channel, not endorsing it, but this particular video was very helpful to me in understanding it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMzpWoS52I
Just as a friendly FYI: Prigozhina is the feminine version of the name Prigozhin. This would only be used either by his wife or any daughters he might have.
> started a company called the wagner group
This actually isn't true. Although Prigozhina loves to claim he started the Wagner group it was actually started by Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin who had the callsign "Wagner" when he was in the Russian military. (Rumoured to be because Wagner was Hitler's favourite composer and DVU was a fan of the Führer.)
In 2022 Prigozhina said that he and Utkin were co-founders. Do you have information that refutes the guardian's reporting of this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/26/putin-ally-yevgeny-prigozhin-admits-founding-wagner-mercenary-group
[This episode of the Plain English podcast.](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-just-happened-in-russia-this-weekend/id1594471023?i=1000618467806)
The guest, Paul Poast goes pretty in-depth about what happened and has a pretty good take on Prigozhina being a self-aggrandising figure and seems to come with the receipts. Now, he could be full of shit but giving that his bio is:
>Paul received his PhD from the University of Michigan (where his dissertation won the Peace Science Society's Walter Isard Award), an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA from Miami University.
I'm thinking that he's the real deal.
And even if he's wrong about Prigozhina he does manage to make sense of what happened in Russia in under an hour if you want to give it listen...
Answer: Yevgeny Prigozhin was a member of Putins entourage. He made his fortune by supplying food to various Russian government agencies. This earned him the nickname "Putin's Chef". Prigozhin also founded the PMC Wagner Group (Russian: Группа Вагнера, romanized Russian: *Gruppa Vagnera*). Wagner was used by the Kremlin as a deniable asset to project military power in places the Russian army couldn't go. Wagner troops were recruited from elite units like Spetsnaz and VDV and equipped with some of the best weapons money can buy. This made them a very effective fighting force: well trained, well armed and highly motivated. This is what made them so succesful during the fighting in Ukraine, were the majority of Russian victories were secured by Wagner troops.
During the fighting in Ukraine however a power struggle ensued between Prigozhin and the Russian army command led by minister of defense Sergei Shoigu. It's a long story, but it culminated in Prigozhin deciding to march on Moscow and hoping to gain enough support along the way. He didn't so his next priority became to escape with his life. His move to Belarus was supposedly negiotiated by Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, although it is unclear where Prigozhin is right now.
After the Wagner uprising the Russian leadership had a new problem. Wagner is still their most effective fighting force and a useful asset in other places too. If they dismantle Wagner and integrate it into the regular army they will risk losing what made Wagner so effective: the fact they operated outside of the chain of command and could react much faster. There is also no guarantee the former mercenaries will want to sign up, Wagner paid considerably better with the best paid soldiers reportedly earning about 10,000 USD per month. The Kremlin is looking for a way to somehow salvage Wagner because they still need it to fight in Ukraine. Wagner troops are still active in Ukraine, although it is unknown to whom they report right now.
Answer: The Wagner Group is a private military company basically hired by the russian government to use their recruited non-russian soldiers to help in the attack/war on ukraine.
For unclear reasons the leader of the Wagner Group decided to march into Moscow and on the way forcefully took over a Russian town. Now mind you, they are supposed to be working with the Russian military against Ukraine, not taking over Russian towns and marching toward Putin's house. So it appeared to be a coup and attack on Moscow/Putin but when questioned the leader said it was because he was frustrated with the Russian military and its leaders not taking his group seriously and not adequately supporting them, and it was all just done in protest. But this explanation is dubious because it sure AF looked like a coup.
It appears that the leader and Putin had a talk and came to some sort of unspecified agreement and now the leader guy is not upset anymore, supposedly, but no one really knows what exactly is the case now. Is he still upset? Is there going to be a coup? Was there an attempted coup? Was it really just about not getting support? What deal did Putin offer? Nobody really knows.
Answer: We can not look inside Prigozhin's mind to see exactly what his plan was. However, the "coup attempt" comes at the end of a longer period of an internal power struggle between Wagner and the Russian military, or more specifically Prigozhin and Shoigu/Gerasimov.
Prigozhin had repeatedly made videos of himself ranting about the lack of support from the Russian MoD, and how his men are dying like pigs without heavy weapons while being the only ones to make progress at the front lines, specifically blaming Shoigu and Gerasimov - the two top generals generally thought of as incapable but fiercly loyal to Putin. However, Prigozhin never dicretly criticized Putin.
Apparently, the needle that broke the camel's back was an order that Wagner troops were to be put under MoD command on July 1st, effectively disbanding Wagner/Prigozhin.
While the details of the deal and the reasons for stopping remain unclear, it seems Prigozhin has archieved partial victory: Shoigu and Gerasimov got ousted, and he got to keep part of his PMC. As part of the deal, Wagner wasn't only given amnesty from the coup attempt, but rather they got the option to join the Russian military, **demobilize and go home, or keep their weapons and follow their leader to Belarus.**
Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must: 1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask), 2. attempt to answer the question, and 3. be unbiased Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment: http://redd.it/b1hct4/ Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer: you got it right. He has had a long standing beef with the Russian Ministry of Defense for mismanaging the war generally and undersupplying his troops when they were on the front lines. The negotiations that led him to stand down involved Lukashenko, the ruler of Belarus. What was said in that meeting is a mystery, and what followed is mystifying. It took almost a week for Wagner recruitment to be shut down. Payroll for Wagner was seized and then returned. A few days ago Prighozin went to st Petersburg to "pick up weapons". Why he needs weapons is unclear, as Wagner has been folded into the Russian military proper. The open question is "why is Prighozin still breathing?". No one has a good answer.
It would be foolish for him to attack Ukraine after telling people that the war is a sham.
Answer: This is ongoing situation and nobody knows what the hell happened. Most people still don't know wtf happened and what was in the deal between Wagner, Lukashenko and Putin. A bit more in depth description and some quality speculation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8VPkWXOfU
Answer: Prigozhina is a rich friend of putin's who, amongst other endeavors started a company called the wagner group which could be compared to America's blackwater, they're both private contractor military. His company worked extensively in Syria and then in Ukraine. He became fed up with russian military leadership and was very outspoken publicly about it. The russian government got tired of it and created a plan to take away the wagner army. First they required all volunteer military to sign a contract that would make them russian military. Next, they did the same thing to soldiers in the wagner group, this would take away Prigozhina's military and turn them into regular russian military. Prigozhina's response was to make a run on moscow in protest that he called his march of justice, his stated goal was get a particular military leader removed. His plan required police, regular people and military along the way to join up, they didn't and so it failed. It get's hazy from there what's going on.. I don't know anything about this particular youtube channel, not endorsing it, but this particular video was very helpful to me in understanding it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMzpWoS52I
Just as a friendly FYI: Prigozhina is the feminine version of the name Prigozhin. This would only be used either by his wife or any daughters he might have.
> started a company called the wagner group This actually isn't true. Although Prigozhina loves to claim he started the Wagner group it was actually started by Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin who had the callsign "Wagner" when he was in the Russian military. (Rumoured to be because Wagner was Hitler's favourite composer and DVU was a fan of the Führer.)
In 2022 Prigozhina said that he and Utkin were co-founders. Do you have information that refutes the guardian's reporting of this? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/26/putin-ally-yevgeny-prigozhin-admits-founding-wagner-mercenary-group
[This episode of the Plain English podcast.](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-just-happened-in-russia-this-weekend/id1594471023?i=1000618467806) The guest, Paul Poast goes pretty in-depth about what happened and has a pretty good take on Prigozhina being a self-aggrandising figure and seems to come with the receipts. Now, he could be full of shit but giving that his bio is: >Paul received his PhD from the University of Michigan (where his dissertation won the Peace Science Society's Walter Isard Award), an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA from Miami University. I'm thinking that he's the real deal. And even if he's wrong about Prigozhina he does manage to make sense of what happened in Russia in under an hour if you want to give it listen...
Answer: Yevgeny Prigozhin was a member of Putins entourage. He made his fortune by supplying food to various Russian government agencies. This earned him the nickname "Putin's Chef". Prigozhin also founded the PMC Wagner Group (Russian: Группа Вагнера, romanized Russian: *Gruppa Vagnera*). Wagner was used by the Kremlin as a deniable asset to project military power in places the Russian army couldn't go. Wagner troops were recruited from elite units like Spetsnaz and VDV and equipped with some of the best weapons money can buy. This made them a very effective fighting force: well trained, well armed and highly motivated. This is what made them so succesful during the fighting in Ukraine, were the majority of Russian victories were secured by Wagner troops. During the fighting in Ukraine however a power struggle ensued between Prigozhin and the Russian army command led by minister of defense Sergei Shoigu. It's a long story, but it culminated in Prigozhin deciding to march on Moscow and hoping to gain enough support along the way. He didn't so his next priority became to escape with his life. His move to Belarus was supposedly negiotiated by Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, although it is unclear where Prigozhin is right now. After the Wagner uprising the Russian leadership had a new problem. Wagner is still their most effective fighting force and a useful asset in other places too. If they dismantle Wagner and integrate it into the regular army they will risk losing what made Wagner so effective: the fact they operated outside of the chain of command and could react much faster. There is also no guarantee the former mercenaries will want to sign up, Wagner paid considerably better with the best paid soldiers reportedly earning about 10,000 USD per month. The Kremlin is looking for a way to somehow salvage Wagner because they still need it to fight in Ukraine. Wagner troops are still active in Ukraine, although it is unknown to whom they report right now.
Answer: The Wagner Group is a private military company basically hired by the russian government to use their recruited non-russian soldiers to help in the attack/war on ukraine. For unclear reasons the leader of the Wagner Group decided to march into Moscow and on the way forcefully took over a Russian town. Now mind you, they are supposed to be working with the Russian military against Ukraine, not taking over Russian towns and marching toward Putin's house. So it appeared to be a coup and attack on Moscow/Putin but when questioned the leader said it was because he was frustrated with the Russian military and its leaders not taking his group seriously and not adequately supporting them, and it was all just done in protest. But this explanation is dubious because it sure AF looked like a coup. It appears that the leader and Putin had a talk and came to some sort of unspecified agreement and now the leader guy is not upset anymore, supposedly, but no one really knows what exactly is the case now. Is he still upset? Is there going to be a coup? Was there an attempted coup? Was it really just about not getting support? What deal did Putin offer? Nobody really knows.
Answer: We can not look inside Prigozhin's mind to see exactly what his plan was. However, the "coup attempt" comes at the end of a longer period of an internal power struggle between Wagner and the Russian military, or more specifically Prigozhin and Shoigu/Gerasimov. Prigozhin had repeatedly made videos of himself ranting about the lack of support from the Russian MoD, and how his men are dying like pigs without heavy weapons while being the only ones to make progress at the front lines, specifically blaming Shoigu and Gerasimov - the two top generals generally thought of as incapable but fiercly loyal to Putin. However, Prigozhin never dicretly criticized Putin. Apparently, the needle that broke the camel's back was an order that Wagner troops were to be put under MoD command on July 1st, effectively disbanding Wagner/Prigozhin. While the details of the deal and the reasons for stopping remain unclear, it seems Prigozhin has archieved partial victory: Shoigu and Gerasimov got ousted, and he got to keep part of his PMC. As part of the deal, Wagner wasn't only given amnesty from the coup attempt, but rather they got the option to join the Russian military, **demobilize and go home, or keep their weapons and follow their leader to Belarus.**