The admission by the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin that he has interfered in US elections and would continue doing so in future, is both unsurprising – not least because it has long been known to be true – and, perhaps, not to be taken entirely at face value.
While it is the first such admission from a figure who has been formally accused by Washington over Moscow’s efforts to influence American politics the timing of Prigozhin’s comments ahead of the midterm elections are also significant.
In comments posted by the press service of his Concord catering firm on Russia’s Facebook equivalent VKontakte, Prigozhin said: “We have interfered [in US elections], we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.”
US prosecutors have previously alleged that Concord had funded an operation that had promoted Donald Trump during the 2016 US elections – an allegation which Prigozhin and the company strongly denied.
But the public statement underlines the point of such interference operations – a point that is sometimes misunderstood.
Put simply, a key point of Russian hybrid warfare – with its focus on political interference – is that it does not necessarily matter whether the interference actually succeeds in any meaningful way.
Instead, a significant part of its function is actively to sow distrust about the health of democratic institutions – not least by suggesting an outsized reach and capability.
By saying he is continuing to interfere – a day before the US midterm elections – he appears to be trying to shape the idea that the results cannot be trusted.
And the public nature of his statement suggests that there may be other agendas at work than simply his feelings of enjoying impunity.
Known as “Putin’s chef” because his catering company operates Kremlin contracts, the former convict has long been accused of sponsoring operations that seek to influence western politics and spread disinformation across the globe, attracting international sanctions.
That has seen social media companies, including Meta and Twitter, move against Prigozhin’s internet operations in Africa, which saw Facebook remove fake Prigozhin-linked accounts that have promoted Russian policies aimed Central African Republic and, to a lesser extent, Madagascar, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and South Africa.
In July, the US state department offered a reward of up to $10m for information on Prigozhin in connection with “engagement in US election interference”. This came after a 2020 report by US Senate intelligence committee which described how Russian operatives had worked online to disrupt the 2016 election.
“Masquerading as Americans, these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content and social-media platform tools to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of millions of social-media users in the United States,” it said.
However, in 2018 US Cyber Command claimed to have knocked Russian operatives offline during the 2018 US congressional elections, raising questions over the scale and impact of Moscow’s continuing efforts.
Prighozin’s latest comments come as the previously publicity-shy Putin confidant has chosen to come out of the shadows in recent months.
One possibility is that Prigozhin’s remarks should be seen as part of his efforts to position himself in a more formal role in Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine in alliance with a faction of hardliners who blame Russian generals for bungling the prosecution of the war.
But efforts being led by Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries around the key Donbas town of Bakhmut are not much more impressive than Russia’s conventional military and they have made imperceptibly slow progress.
It is possible that Prigozhin himself needs to claim a success on the hybrid warfare front as his own fighting force has visibly underperformed.
What is clear, however, is that, after years of denying his involvement with Wagner and with influence operations – to the point of pursuing journalists through the courts – Prigozhin now sees it more useful to emphasise his claimed usefulness to Putin in public.
Or, just perhaps, he has done so with an eye to whoever might follow Putin.
