An independent Russian newspaper reports Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, the man nicknamed "Putin's chef" whom Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted for 2016 U.S. election interference, allegedly has been involved in brutal attacks and at least one killing.
The Novaya Gazeta article Monday by reporter Denis Korotkov came out several days after unknown people sent a funeral wreath to the journalist’s home and left a basket with a severed goat’s head at the newspaper’s office.
Korotkov’s article relies on several interviews with Valery Alemchenko, a former convict who worked for Prigozhin. Alemchenko said he orchestrated attacks on Prigozhin’s opponents as well as the killing of an opposition blogger in northwest Russia, all at the mogul’s behalf.
Amelchenko also said several people working for Prigozhin had traveled to Syria last year to test an unknown poison on Syrians who refused to fight for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government. Novaya Gazeta corroborated the account with two other sources.
Amelchenko disappeared early this month shortly after meeting the reporter and telling him that he was being followed. Korotkov said he received a call from Amelchenko’s phone later that day and when he went to the man’s house, he found two cellphones and what looked like his shoe lying on the ground.
Amelchenko is now on a Russian police list of missing persons.
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Another member of Prigozhin’s security detail, Oleg Simonov, who is suspected of attacking the husband of an opposition activist and injecting him with poison, died last year under murky circumstances.
Amelchenko described several of his secret missions to Novaya Gazeta, and then disappeared on October 2. Russian police have added him to a national wanted list, and federal investigators have opened a preliminary case against him. Novaya Gazeta’s Denis Korotkov speculates that Amelchenko was either abducted, killed, or he might have even staged his own disappearance.
Amelchenko says he found work with Prigozhin’s crew through a mutual acquaintance named Andrey Mikhailov, who allegedly helped Prigozhin create the the media holding company that owns St. Petersburg’s infamous “troll factory” and “media factory.”
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Amelchenko agreed to speak to Novaya Gazeta, worried that Prigozhin’s henchmen might have been involved in Simonov’s death. He reportedly promised to share details about several secret operations, once he felt safe. In the event of force majeure, Amelchenko also agreed to let the newspaper use the information he’d already supplied, after October 20.
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In February 2017, Amelchenko’s group was sent to Syria, supposedly in order to test new psychotropic substances on captured terrorists. At the time, the team was apparently under the command of Sergey Gubanov, another member of Evgeny Prigozhin’s private security service. When the group arrived in Syria, however, the men discovered that there were no prisoners, so they decided to carry out the tests on the so-called “ISIS hunters” being trained by instructors from the “Wagner” private military company (another Prigozhin-owned outfit). Subjects were given bottles of juice containing a delayed-action dose of the drug, and then released.
After some time, police arrested Amelchenko, Simonov, and Gubanov on charges of poisoning members of Syria’s military intelligence, but they were all released after several hours of interrogation, and then they immediately returned to St. Petersburg. Amelchenko says another seven people (including himself) were also exposed to the poison, but everyone recovered. A source familiar with the Wagner group in Syria later confirmed Amelchenko’s story to Novaya Gazeta.
Read more: From ‘Putin's chef’ to ‘Putin's hitman’? (Meduza)
Russian paper: Indicted Prigozhin ordered beatings, killing (AP)