Russian President Putin and the head of the Wagner group, Prigozhin, most likely have a criminal, financial, corrupt and personal connection.
Russian opposition activist, human rights activist and lawyer Mark Feygin is convinced that the so-called "Putin's cook" carried out "certain personal tasks and dirty deeds" in St. Petersburg and other cities, specially for Putin.
Feygin spoke about this in an interview with TSN.
The human rights activist notes that most of the people around Putin come from St. Petersburg, because Putin "has a weakness for people with whom he has known for a long time."
âPutin trusts people for a long time. Still, over these decades, we have not seen any significant, radical changes in his environment. There are individual inclusions, but mostly he prefers relationships that have developed over many years,â Feygin explained.
So, according to him, Prigozhin turned out to be Putin's countryman - he is also from St. Petersburg. Feygin suggests that the head of the Wagner group was associated with the St. Petersburg criminals, like Putin himself.
"Putin was not a stranger to this. He was also closely connected with him (criminals - ed.) in the role of an official. But this did not interfere with him either as a former KGB officer or as an official with Sobchak. He had close ties with him. I think ", this connection arose in 1990. We don't know everything completely. But it is customary to call him a "cook" - because he was engaged in catering and had government contracts," says Feygin.
âI think they are united by a criminal, financial, corrupt, and personal connection. They say that Prigozhin carried out some personal tasks for Putin in St. Petersburg and other places, dirty deeds,â the lawyer said.
According to him, Putin still needs Prigozhin for dirty criminal cases, so he could not be deliberately sent to Popasnaya, which was recently opened fire by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
"Putin and Prigozhin sometimes pinch each other at some lower levels. But to say that he was specially sent to Popasna so that he would be covered with Himarsami - I do not think so. It is necessary for all sorts of dirty, criminal cases," Feigin said.