Newshour - Who really was the late Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prighozin? - BBC Sounds

On Sunday, Russian officials confirmed that Yevgeny Prighozin was among those killed in a plane crash last week.
Prighozin was chief of the Wagner mercenary group, a private military company.

Marat Gabidullin is an ex Russian soldier and former convict, who joined Wagner in 2015 and knew Prigozhin well. He fought with the mercenary group in eastern Ukraine and Syria. He says he parted company with Prigozhin in 2019 and later moved to France, where he currently lives in exile.

“I wouldn’t call him brutal, but he advocated harsh methods of rule. He was indeed a smart person, a capable man, very creative. He followed a patriotic way of thinking," he tells Newshour's James Coomorasamy. “There’s no doubt that he was significant person, somebody who was able to create this effective militarised structure.”