A trusted partner of Putin, Prigozhin was always ready to do the dirty work

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenaries who nearly sparked civil war in Russia on Saturday, many say was never afraid of a dirty job.

Coming out of prison as the Soviet Union was collapsing, he began his post-criminal career selling hot dogs on street corners in St. Petersburg, Russia. There he befriended Vladimir V. Putin, then a petty official in the city government, developed a catering company and made billions in government contracts when his friend Vladimir became Prime Minister and then President of Russia.

Mr. Prigozhin quickly won the trust of his benefactor, who assigned him a number of important tasks best performed at a distance from the government. The first and most notorious of these was overseeing the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm created in 2013 to flood the United States and Europe with disinformation that discredited liberal elites and promoted hard-right ideologies.

From there, he raised mercenaries to fight in Syria and Libya, and, most fatefully, founded the private military group Wagner, which emerged during Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. It quickly gained a reputation for being ruthless violence in pursuit of lucrative diamond and gold concessions, while the Kremlin built up political influence in countries such as the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Sudan.

During those years, Mr. Prigozhin kept an extremely low profile, never even admitting that Wagner existed, let alone playing a part in it.

That began to change during the war in Ukraine, when the Russian military suffered setback after setback and Mr. Prigozhin was disgusted by the greed, corruption and ineptitude he claimed to see in the upper echelons of the military.

“These are Wagner boys who died today; the blood is still fresh,” said Mr. Prigozhin, addressing Russian Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu and Armed Forces Commander Valery V. Gersasimov. “They came here as volunteers and they die so you can get fat in your mahogany offices.”

As his criticism of Russia’s top military leaders became more frequent and intemperate, he began to emerge as a public figure, insisting that his troops could do the job much better than the Russian regulars.

He recruited thousands of convicts from Russian prisons and threw them into the bloody battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, often with the ruthlessness and indifference to human life he ascribed to Russian commanders. En route, he quarreled with General Shoigu and General Gerasimov, accusing them of robbing his troops of ammunition to try and destroy Wagner, an action he says “can be equated with treason”.

A breaking point was reached for Mr Prigozhin on Friday night, when, he says, Russian troops attacked his men as they slept in their camps (something Russia denies and has not independently confirmed). On Saturday, he led a force he claimed numbered 25,000 from Ukraine and into Russia, taking the city of Rostov-on-Don, a military center, with virtually no resistance.

Always a complex figure, he was prone to outbursts and threats that were quickly forgotten or contradicted, as happened on Saturday. After first claiming that he would march his troops all the way to Moscow, he reversed course later in the day. He had agreed to a proposal from the Belarusian leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, “to stop the movement of armed persons of the Wagner Company” and move to Belarus. In return, the Russian government would drop the charges of treason against him and grant amnesty to his soldiers.

It remains unclear whether he will be able to return to Russia, but he has taken advantage of his feud with the generals to establish himself as a populist political figure, fighting for humble military personnel and others who suffer at the hands of “unqualified scoundrels and schemers”.

He has contrasted that with what he sees as the decadence of the Russian elites and the injustice in society.

“The children of the elite smear themselves with creams and show it on the internet; common people’s children come in zinc, torn to pieces,” he said, referring to the coffins of dead soldiers, adding that those killed had “tens of thousands” of relatives. “Society always demands justice,” he said, “and when there is no justice, revolutionary feelings arise.”

Where Mr. Prigozhin goes from here is difficult to determine, as is Wagner’s fate.

If he retains control of the company, which is by no means certain, he will still have significant military assets at his disposal, but they will be devalued if they cannot count on the support of the Russian military.

Aside from his permanent force, Mr Prigozhin claimed this month that 32,000 former convicts who had served with Wagner in Ukraine had returned to their homes in Russia. According to interviews with survivors and their relatives, many of these veterans have expressed strong loyalty to Mr. Prigozhin and considered returning to his ranks, creating an additional pool of potential recruits for the rebel cause.

Still, most experts believe that Wagner’s real strength falls far short of what Prigozhin claims, and that he hopes more Russian soldiers and security agents, disgusted by the corruption and mistreatment they see, will respond to his populist criticism of the leadership and will join him.

The US government estimated in December that Wagner had 10,000 professional soldiers. That number has most likely dropped in recent months as Wagner was forced to mobilize his most experienced units to complete the capture of Bakhmut, Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials said.

Mr Prigozhin himself said this year that his force would “downsize” after the capture of Bakhmut as it prepared for new missions.

Mr. Prigozhin, in particular, had managed to lead a force of tens of thousands of fighters, largely with cash. Veterans and their relatives had received salaries, as well as death and injury benefits, through a vast network of no-name agents located across the country.

The mutiny probably wiped out that logistical support. And most experts believe that no amount of personal wealth can sustain a large military force capable of challenging a regular army for long, especially without access to the state-controlled financial system.

Earlier on Saturday, videos circulating on social media showed alleged Wagner convoys moving through Russia towards Moscow with mounted tanks, air defenses and self-propelled rocket launchers. However, most of the rebel convoys seemed to consist of unprotected trucks of soldiers.

Mark Galeotti, a Russian military expert, said the limited supply of heavy weapons would make it difficult for Wagner to operate independently of the Russian military.

“Without artillery you can’t really go to war,” he said.

Before Saturday’s crisis, many analysts had said that Mr Prigozhin was looking to transition into the political sphere in Russia, although he had made sure he did not pose any threat to Mr Putin.

“He sees his future on the line and is doing everything he can to carve out a place for himself in the greater war after Bakhmut,” said Jack Margolin, a Washington-based expert on Russian private military companies.

Neil MacFarquhar reporting contributed.