As the Russian military roared onto the battlefield in Ukraine last fall, a foul-mouthed, ex-convict with personal connections to President Vladimir V. Putin stepped out of the shadows to help.
Yevgeny V. Prigozhin for many years denied any connection with the Wagner mercenary group and operated carefully on the fringes of Russian power, trading in political skulduggery, cafeteria meals and lethal force.
Now, he’s front and center, flaunting the Wagner brand known for its ferocity and personally recruiting an army of prisoners to aid in a flaming manpower-starved Russian war operation.
The efforts to be made by Mr. Prigozhin and a top Russian general close to him, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, will do in the coming months will change the course of the war.
Both men have been removed from action.
It is assumed that Mr. Prigozhin in a plane crash on Wednesday, an incident that occurred two months after he launched a failed coup, and which US and Western officials believe was the result of an explosion on the ship. Many said they thought Mr. Putin had ordered the plane to be destroyed, suggestions the Kremlin dismissed on Friday as a “complete lie.”
General Surovikin, who US officials say had advance knowledge of the uprising, has not been seen in public since the day of the uprising, and according to Russian state news media has been formally removed from his commanding post to Russia’s aerospace forces this week.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are still grappling with their impact.
Led by Mr. Prigozhin fought brutally in Bakhmut during the winter and into the spring, relying on the unorthodox recruitment of prison inmates to quickly bolster Russia’s severely depleted frontline forces. The battle, one of the bloodiest of the war, has left Kyiv with trained soldiers ahead of the counter-offensive, while Russia has lost personnel that Moscow considers more costly.
“When the Russian military was at its weakest, he provided an important reserve force to buy time for them,” Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, said of Mr. Prigozhin.
And Wagner, he added, “is taking the most casualties and losses at a time when the Russian military is still in disarray and trying to cope with mobilization.”
He effectively helped turn Bakhmut into a symbol beyond its strategic importance, to which Kyiv continues to devote vast resources. And Russia is now building its own army with prisoners, adopting his strategy.
The protracted battle for Bakhmut also gave the Russian military, initially under the command of General Surovikin, an opportunity to pour in newly mobilized personnel and establish what became known as the “Surovikin line” of defense. The wall of mines, trenches and other fortifications proved difficult for Ukrainian forces to penetrate in the counter-offensive.
Mr. Prigozhin’s forces eventually captured a ruined Bakhmut. And his contribution to the Russian war effort at a crucial moment, along with a newfound public stature thanks to numerous comments and videos on social media, fed his ego.
“Prigozhin would have you believe that they are the only ones saving the Russian military. In reality they are at the front, but they could not have done what they did without the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Ms. Massicot said.
The gruesome battle fueled his hatred of the Russian military to such a degree that he eventually staged a shocking coup to oust its leadership, defying the unspoken rules of Mr. Putin in the process.
“Prigozhin over time developed a kind of main character syndrome,” said Ms. Massicot. “And in Russia, there is only one main character. He sits in the Kremlin.”
The revolt came after Mr. Prigozhin’s usefulness on the battlefield had faded.
Russia’s move to the defensive stabilized the lines. The personnel crisis has become less acute. In late May, Wagner left the battlefield.
“Wagner’s strategic utility is likely to peak during the winter and spring,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “After that, it’s hard to see how Wagner proved decisive in this war. Their greatest use is not in defense but in fighting for cities.”
The presumed death of Mr. Prigozhin at age 62 ended the life of a man who rose from a Soviet prison to the most elite power circles of Moscow, eventually building a private empire that fed Mr. Putin for confrontation and desire to reassert Russia on the world stage.
While amassing a personal fortune from government catering contracts, Mr. Prigozhin carved out a role for himself at the tip of Russia’s geopolitical spear, his stature growing with Mr. Prigozhin’s willingness. Putin to take risks.
He thrives in the secret space between Russia’s formal power and its targets. Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 popularized the concept of “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone tactics,” which Mr. Prigozhin adopted as the specialties of his freewheeling outfit.
“With Wagner’s creation in 2014 and all the deployments we’ve seen since then, he built a way to really revolutionize how a private military company can be used in this targeted, coordinated way to advance geopolitical interests of Russia,” said Catrina Doxsee, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Wagner attack teams helped Moscow carry out the final land grab in eastern Ukraine in 2015. For years, the mercenary group has carried out selective missions in Syria, relieving the Russia’s military needs to deploy large numbers of ground troops to achieve its air power goals and a limited footprint.
Mr. Prigozhin gained worldwide fame when his St. Petersburg troll factory meddled in the 2016 US presidential election and helped fuel right-wing populism in Europe. He later expanded his security services to Africa, while looking for business opportunities, from mining to oil, that came easily to someone running a private army with the Kremlin’s imprimatur.
“The opportunity grew out of a more interventionist Russian policy,” Mr. Kofman said. “If Russia and Putin are not interested in a revived Russian role in the Middle East, if they are not interested in looking to Africa for influence and resources, those opportunities will not be there.”
“The Kremlin is interested in those who can deliver on that expanded vision,” Mr. Kofman added. “And Prigozhin, who was an opportunist, sensed those prospects.”
Mr. Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be as existential for the Kremlin as it was for Mr. Prigozhin, taking risks to the extreme that would test the system and the individuals within it.
At first, Mr. Prigozhin seemed to thrive. But as his ego grew, his usefulness to the Russian military waned, an unstable mix that erupted in the June uprising, which severed a relationship with Mr. Putin that went back to the 1990s. town, St. Petersburg.
The tycoon spent nearly a decade behind bars in the 1980s, having been found guilty by a Soviet court of theft and other crimes, including an incident in which prosecutors say he strangled a woman in absentia. malay before making her gold earrings.
While he reached out to Mr. Putin after the fall of the Soviet Union, he did not come from the world of former KGB colleagues who would rise with the Russian leader to dominate the country’s levers of power. Mr. Putin seemed to emphasize that on Thursday when he noted that Mr. Prigozhin was a “talented man” who in life had made many mistakes.
“I think some of this miscalculation comes from believing he’s part of the system,” Ms. Doxsee. “But I don’t think Putin stopped believing he was anything other than a useful outsider.”