Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, also took credit for founding the Internet Research Agency troll farm sanctioned by the US government for interfering in American elections.
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Russian oligarch and warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin was the head of the Russian private military company Wagner Group, condemned by Russian leader Vladimir Putin for organizing a 24-hour mutiny in June 2023.

Two months later, Prigozhin was on a private jet that crashed in western Russia on August 23, 2023, killing all 10 people on board including Prigozhin’s right-hand man at Wagner, Dmitry Utkin. Russian authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.

"Critics of the state do not get happy endings," Dr. Kenneth Dekleva, a SPYEX consultant and author of The Last Violinist, said. "As you can see in the assassination of Boris Nemtsov or Litvinenko in London, who was poisoned with Polonium, or the attempted poisoning of Alexei Navalny, and even people whom Putin has branded as traitors like Sergei Skripal, the former GRU officer who was the victim of an attempted 2018 Novichok attack in the United Kingdom."
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From Putin's chef to troll farm operator and warlord

Prigozhin was at one point one of Putin's close confidants - they both hail from St. Petersburg - and he was sometimes referred to as 'Putin's chef' as he owned restaurants and catering companies that supply the Kremlin.

The petty crook and former convict began his catering career selling hot dogs but by 2023, Prigozhin had amassed considerable wealth. He also took credit for founding the Internet Research Agency troll farm that the US government sanctioned for interfering in American elections.

A Wagner Telegram channel asked Prigozhin to react to the suggestion that he was the founder of the agency.

“I react with pleasure,” Prigozhin said in a statement. “I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West.”

Many believed Prigozhin's days were numbered after he orchestrated an aborted coup that saw a convoy of Wagner forces head to Moscow in the early hours of June 24, 2023.

Prigozhin reportedly cut a deal with Putin for a safe haven for himself and his men in Belarus. He appeared in a recruitment video days before his death at the age of 62 in August 2023.  Prigozhin was buried in a private funeral in St Petersburg, his press service said.