A man casually plunges a knife through a woman’s hand, pinning her to the table in a prelude to rape. Another attacker murders her baby. These atrocities belong to a war in Ukraine but not to the one playing out now.
Rather they are sadistic, horror-filled fantasies from President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine. Solntsepyok — which roughly translates as “sun-baked”, named after a multiple rocket launcher system —is a film depicting the fictional Ukrainian massacre of Russians in 2014 and the subsequent vengeance taken by a band of Russian mercenaries depicted as heroes.
Starring well-known actors, Solntsepyok premiered on Russian television in August, one of several propaganda films bankrolled by a billionaire known as “Putin’s chef”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, known as Putin’s chef, bankrolls propaganda films that burnish his regime
Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, known as Putin’s chef, bankrolls propaganda films that burnish his regime
MISHA JAPARIDZE/AP
Yevgeny Prigozhin is a former convict who made his fortune in catering and now runs Wagner Group, a private military contractor whose mercenaries have wrought havoc around the world for years.
In Ukraine, as reported in The Times last week, they were tasked with assassinating President Zelensky. But their attempts to kill him and other officials, including the mayor of Kyiv, have been thwarted – and like many in the mainstream Russian assault force, the mercenaries are getting uneasy.
“They thought this assassination job would be a walk in the park, but they’ve taken casualties and are worried now about getting stuck in Kyiv,” said a source in communication with associates of the group.
Wagner mercenaries have been operating in Ukraine since 2014, when thousands were sent into the east of the country to help foment war against “westerners” and set up Russian separatist “people’s republics” after Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
Besides his mercenary operations, Prigozhin, 60, is also the Kremlin’s master of disinformation whose gory action-packed feature films portray the Russian “dogs of war” as amiable rogues and selfless heroes, as in Solntsepyok.
One Russian online reviewer called the film a travesty and “xenophobic filth”, noting that, in reality, it is Russian soldiers of fortune who are often accused of murder and rape.
“No doubt they’re good company in a bar, with lots of stories to tell, but generally, they’re a bunch of murdering bastards,” said General Sir Richard Barrons, who led Britain’s joint forces command until last year. “The idea is that by doing terribly violent things and terrorising people, they can crush resistance. They are not accountable, they can act with impunity.”
While his soldiers operate in the shadows, Prigozhin, to his dismay, has been thrust under the spotlight.
He was indicted in the US for sponsoring “information warfare” from a “troll factory” in St Petersburg and disrupting America’s 2016 presidential election – an example of Putin’s penchant for outsourcing some of his dirtiest and most delicate projects to cronies.
“Prigozhin has fingers in many pies,” said Valeriy Akimenko of the Conflict Studies Research Centre — “and it’s dangerous to look into them,” he added, noting that three Russian journalists had been murdered as they investigated Wagner’s activities in the Central African Republic in 2018.
Prigozhin’s big break came in 2001, when Putin started dining at his luxury floating restaurant in St Petersburg, called New Island. The former hotdog seller would hover at Putin’s favourite table, ever the subservient maître d’hôtel.
For all his shadowy business interests ranging from Libya to Sudan, Prigozhin is still involved in the kitchen.
One event organiser learnt this to her surprise when she visited St Petersburg recently, to be informed by the mayor that there was only one company to cater her prestigious international event: Prigozhin’s.
“It was not a suggestion,” said a friend of the organiser. “It was not negotiable. Prigozhin would be awarded the contract – or no event.”
While Prigozhin flits around in his private jets, leadership of the Kremlin’s private army is left to Dmitri Utkin, a former “Spetznaz”, or special forces officer whose call sign was “W” for Wagner, the German composer admired by Adolf Hitler.
“Utkin seems to have a penchant for all things Third Reich,” explained Akimenko.
From Africa to the Middle East, his men have left a trail of bloodshed behind them. Videos have circulated online of six Russian-speaking men smashing a Syrian army defector’s hands and feet with a hammer before decapitating and dismembering him and burning his body in 2017.
Russia’s independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, has identified one of the attackers as a member of Wagner. But the killers have never been brought to trial because of complicated jurisdictional problems related to mercenaries.
“Holding them to account is almost impossible,” said Sorcha MacLeod, who chairs the UN human rights council’s working group on mercenaries. “In the Central African Republic we have seen the most serious human rights violations and potential war crimes being committed with impunity. Many who complained about it were disappeared and tortured.”
Putin has insisted that the mercenaries have nothing to do with the Russian state. “That’s a brazen falsehood,” said Keir Giles, senior Russian military expert at the Chatham House think tank. “They train with the Russian military, co-operate closely with them and receive Russian military decorations.”
He added: “They are a tool the Russian state uses to probe the bounds of acceptable behaviour, they are deniable, more easily deployable than the Russian army and also more expendable. The past days have shown how unconcerned the Russians are about the deaths of army soldiers. They care about paid mercenaries even less.”
Some in the mercenary ranks are former convicts, like Prigozhin, but others are officers of the GRU military intelligence service – the same group whose agents tried to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a GRU defector, with the lethal nerve agent novichok in Salisbury in 2018.
Training is said to take place at a military base in the Krasnodar region near where the GRUs 10th Special Operations Brigade is stationed. Some experts believe the mercenary force is subordinate to the GRU.
Its fighters have been provided with an impressive array of weaponry, including Mi-24 combat helicopters, fighter jets, transport planes and anti-aircraft missile systems.
Yet they have not always prospered on the battlefield. Things went awry on a mission to Mozambique in 2019 when 200 Wagner mercenaries were hired to take on Islamist rebels in exchange for Russian access to natural resources.
They suffered heavy casualties in various ambushes and pulled out the following year. “The jihadists knew the ground better,” said the source in communication with Wagner associates. “The Russians had never operated in jungle conditions before, they couldn’t hack it.”
Wagner mercenaries also were badly mauled in Syria, suffering dozens of casualties in a four-hour battle with American troops in 2018. Russian commanders insisted the men were nothing to do with them when American officers urged them over the radio to call off the attack.
The mercenaries have also been operating in Sudan, training a paramilitary warlord’s troops in exchange for access to goldmines.
“Wagner is really good at identifying vacuums and creating openings for the Kremlin, particularly in Africa,” said Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In the Central African Republic, besides providing military muscle to fight rebels and protect the president, Prigozhin has tried to woo hearts and minds for the Kremlin. He sponsored a football tournament and a “Miss Centrafrique” contest.
His most eye-catching piece of propaganda, though, was Tourist, a war film glorifying the “Wagner men”, as they are known locally. Dubbed in Sango, it was shown to a packed stadium in Bangui, the capital, last year.
Since then, Prigozhin’s PR efforts have moved from films to statues. One has appeared near the Bangui stadium showing Russian soldiers defending women and children. Monuments to the mercenaries have also popped up in Syria and Ukraine.
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