(MENAFN) Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian tycoon, has acknowledged starting the Wagner Group, a private military organization, in 2014. This is the first time the connection has been made publicly after Prigozhin previously denied it and threatened to sue journalists who reported it.
The Wagner Group, which is made up of former Russian military personnel, has fought in places like Mali, Libya, Syria, and the Central African Republic.
In response to a request for comment from a Russian news website on why Prigozhin had stopped denying his connections to Wagner, the press department of Prigozhin's Concord catering company put his remarks on the social network VKontakte.
“I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this. From that moment, on May 1, 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion,” Prigozhin asserted.
Due to his company's catering contracts with the Kremlin, Prigozhin is referred to as "Putin's chef" and has received sanctions from the US and EU.
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