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France 24
France 24
Politics
FRANCE 24

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner boss who led an armed rebellion in Russia

A screen capture from a video posted on Telegram on May 20, 2023 shows Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin standing in the ruins of Bakhmut, the site of a bloody struggle between the mercenary group and Ukrainian armed forces. © AFP

The head of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said overnight he had taken control of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don as part of an attempt to oust Russia’s defence minister. The 62-year-old's open challenge to Moscow’s military comes after months of growing tensions over the conduct of the war in Ukraine.

Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin announced early on Saturday that his forces had taken control of Russia’s army headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people where Russia has based one of its outposts overseeing military operations in Ukraine.  

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