Law, Power, and Justice

Friday News Notes: 7/7/23

Friday 7 July 2023

Friday News Notes: 4 PM

Prigozhin Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com/yevgeny-prigozhin-calendar-wagner-chief-putin-kremlin-ties-2023-7

• A copy of Prigozhin’s calendar obtained by Die Welt was shared with Insider.
• Prigozhin had access to Putin’s inner circle for nearly a decade.
• Entries note meeting or calls with Aleksey Dyumin, Putin’s former bodyguard (now governor of the Tula region).
• The concern for Putin is Progozhin’s allies “embedded across Russia’s…state security an military bureaucracy.”
• The Russian general Sergei Surovikin, who has close ties to Wagner, has already disappeared from public view and is thought by some to have been detained.
• “Prigozhin regularly scheduled meetings or calls with Russia’s ranking general and numerous top Putin deputies.”
• Earlier in 2023, Insider (along with Die Welt, the Dossier Center, and Politico) obtained files from a hacking group (named knights).  One of the files was Prigozhin’s personal calendar that recorded events over a 10 year period. 
• There are gaps in the calendar, some of them during periods of “Wagner’s most notorious operations” (2014 invasion of Ukraine, 2020 US election). 
• The Insider calls him “a de facto cabinet member” and Wagner “an indispensable tool of the Kremlin’s efforts to extend Russian influence into Africa and the Middle East.”
• 75 entries for Ruslan Tsalikov, deputy minister of defense since 2012. 
• 73 for Anton Vaino, chief of staff for Putin’s executive office since 2016, and 73 scheduled appointments with Prigozhin.
• 33 entries denote meetings or calls with Aleksey Dyumin, former bodyguard for Putin.  He has been suspected since th attempted coup.  While Prigozhin was marching towards Moscow, speculation in the Russian media was that Dyumin might replace Shoigu as minister of defense.  Dyumin reportedly helped negotiate the deal that led to Prigozhin going to Belarus.
• Calendar entries end in November 2021.