This year we will win! But first we will conquer our internal bureaucracy and corruption, once we conquer our internal bureaucracy and corruption, then we will conquer the Ukrainians and NATO, and then the whole world. The problem now is that the bureaucrats and those engaging in corruption won’t listen to us now because for New Year’s they are all drinking champagne.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (Russian: Евгений Викторович Пригожин; born 1 June 1961) is a Russian oligarch and close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was called "Putin's chef" because his restaurants and catering businesses hosted dinners which Putin attended with foreign dignitaries.Prigozhin controls a network of companies including Wagner Group, a Russian state-backed mercenary group operating in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine; and three companies accused of interference in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections. Prigozhin had long denied any connection to Wagner, however, a video in September 2022 showed Prigozhin in a Mari El prison recruiting inmates, promising them freedom if they served six months with the Wagner Group. On 26 September 2022, Prigozhin further admitted that he had founded the Wagner Group specifically to support Russian forces in the War in Donbas, in May 2014. Prigozhin has also long denied his role in Russian interference in U.S. elections, but in November 2022, he admitted his role in such operations, saying they would continue.Prigozhin himself spent nine years as a convict in prisons in the Soviet Union. According to an investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, and Der Spiegel, Prigozhin's operations "are tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU". Prigozhin, his companies and associates face economic sanctions and criminal charges in the United States.

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