In the grisly world of Russian mercenaries, where a former hot dog seller sends convicts to the “meat grinder”.

AMID the bloodbath of Bakhmut, the mercenaries of the Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin have a strong incentive to run to the “meat grinder” front line.

If they don’t, the sinister boss of the Wagner group likes to have his dissatisfied beaten to death with a sledgehammer.

7

7

When a suspected defector from his ragtag army of convicts was murdered by the gruesome method, Prigozhin gleefully said it was “a dog’s death to a dog.”

It helps explain how a former hot dog salesman – who “never refused to do dirty deeds” – rose from prison to become one of Vladimir Putin’s most powerful lieutenants.

The jerk Prigozhin, who calls Putin “dad” like a mafia henchman, formed the private army Wagner to give the Russian president a “plausible denial” about his sordid activities.

From Ukraine to Syria and some of Africa’s most brutal conflicts, Wagner has waged dirty wars and allowed Russia to shift blame.

A British mercenary recounted an incident off the east coast of Africa: “The Wagner boys had caught some pirates.

Two grenades

“They tied her up, put her back in her boat, doused her with petrol and set her on fire.

“If you had said something, they wouldn’t have thought anything was weird – ‘That’s what we do with pirates’.”

Now the private army of billionaire Prigozhin could play a major role in deciding the fate of Ukraine. He recruits himself from the dregs of Russian prisons and says to murderers, rapists and robbers: “I need your criminal talents.”

He promises that if they survive six months on the front lines – a tall order amid Russia’s chaotic battle plans – their convictions will be overturned and they can go home free men.

In one video, 61-year-old Prigozhin can be heard saying to the convicts: “If you have to spend ten years behind bars, do you have anyone else who can get you out of this prison?”

“God and Allah can, but in a wooden box. I can get you out of here alive. But I don’t always bring you back alive.”

Those in the front would get two grenades – to blow themselves up if they were surrounded.

Prigozhin said: “No one is retreating. Nobody backs down. No one will be captured.”

Deserters, he told the lags, “will be shot.”

Others are afraid they will get the sledgehammer treatment.

One recruit – in love with the brutal nature of the Wagner leader – said: “He’s one of us.”

In fact, Prigozhin himself is a convicted violent criminal. He was born in 1961 in Leningrad – now St. Petersburg – in the Soviet Union and grew up with his single mother, who worked at a local hospital.

He dreamed of a career as a professional cross-country skier and graduated from a renowned athletics boarding school in 1977.

A life in sport eluded him – instead he turned to crime.
In 1979, at the age of just 18, he was sentenced to two and a half years’ probation for theft. Instead of prison, he worked in a chemical factory.

Two years later, Prigozhin and accomplices went on a robbery in which they stabbed a female victim.

Prigozhin grabbed the woman from behind and choked her until she lost consciousness. He was imprisoned for 13 years, nine of which were in a high-security prison camp.

A video surfaced last year claiming he had performed sexual acts on other prisoners.

7

7

A tattooed man who claims to be a crime boss said of Prigozhin: “He knew his place and he agreed to his place.”

Pro-Kremlin bloggers say the claims are slander by Ukraine, while analysts believe its many political enemies in Russia may be behind the proposals.

He was released from prison in 1990, and the Soviet Union collapsed the following year.

Prigozhin opened a hot-dog stand — which soon thrived amidst the chaos as Russia transitioned to a capitalist economy.

He soon ran a chain of convenience stores, then several high-end restaurants in St. Petersburg.

The jewel in its culinary crown was a floating restaurant called New Island that sailed up and down the Neva. When Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori visited Putin in April 2000, the couple dined aboard the New Island.

Prigozhin recalled that Putin “saw me turning a kiosk into a shop” and “saw that I had no problem personally serving plates to dignitaries.”

In 2002 US President George W. Bush dined with Putin at the New Island and a year later the Russian President celebrated his birthday there.

Though not a chef himself, Prigozhin soon earned the nickname “Putin’s chef” and the Russian leader’s trust.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny – now behind bars – said of Prigozhin: “He became something of a court jester.”

He was soon receiving government contracts worth £2.5 billion to look after the army, schools and state banquets. Riches were flowing and the father-of-three – married to businesswoman Lyubov – is said to own a £7.5million estate, a private jet and a £4.4million 121ft yacht.

Then he went from Putin’s cook to his private military contractor. In 2014, Prigozhin’s Wagner group – named after Hitler’s favorite composer – began fighting in Ukraine’s Donbass region as Russia attempted to conquer them.

The mercenary group gained a fearsome reputation for barbarism and propped up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, where a video was shown

Wagner killers beat a prisoner’s wrists and ankles with a sledgehammer.

They then laughed as they beheaded the man and set his remains on fire.

Russian journalist Denis Korotkov identified one of the killers as a former Russian police officer and said: “They are out of control. I don’t think it’s an isolated case.”

Prigozhin boasts of his army’s grisly reputation. Russian stores sell a Wagner-engraved “Souvenir” sledgehammer, etched with the mercenary fighters’ logo and a bunch of skulls, in a coffin-like presentation box, as well as similarly branded keychains and bumper stickers.

And when the European Parliament last November called Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, Prigozhin said he was sending them one of the hammers.

A video posted to one of Wagner’s Telegram channels then showed a sledgehammer smeared with fake blood being packed into a violin case.

In another film, Prigozhin said to “traitors” and wealthy Russians abroad: “The Wagner sledgehammer will be waiting for you.”

During much of the unsolicited invasion of Ukraine that began last February, Wagner mercenaries were involved in “human wave” attacks on the Bakhmut logistics center.

Former Wagner recruit Andrei Medvedev, now seeking asylum in Norway, said: “They would round up those who didn’t want to fight and shoot them in front of the newcomers.

“They buried them in the trenches dug by the trainees.”

On Sunday, after months of trench warfare, Prigozhin claimed to have flown a Russian flag atop the city’s City Hall, adding that “Bakhmut is ours in a legal sense.”

Ukrainians firmly deny that the city fell. But the 50,000-strong private army – about a quarter of Russia’s forces in Ukraine – has significantly increased Prigozhin’s clout.

He has publicly insulted Russia’s senior military officials, even “acting like a parallel government,” as one analyst put it.

Some believe he may even be in contention to succeed Putin as president. But lately there have been signs that Putin might rein in his former caterer.

Wagner is now unable to recruit from prisons and some believe that the Russian high command starved his group of ammunition and support in an attempt to downsize Prigozhin.

Ex-Wagner husband Medvedev – who calls his former commander “crazy” – predicts a grisly ending, saying: “When this whole spectacle is over, I think his own men will kill him.”

Putin’s chef could feel a sledgehammer blow.

7

7

7