Yevgeny Prigozhin, a prominent businessman who founded a private mercenary force closely linked to the Kremlin, posted a sardonic statement about election meddling.
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Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and the founder of the private military force the Wagner Group, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 2016.
With alarm over foreign manipulation of the U.S. midterm elections swirling ahead of Tuesday’s vote, an influential Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin sardonically boasted on Monday that Russia was interfering in the election.
“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will interfere,” the businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s Chef,” said in a statement, posted by his catering company. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once.”
RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency, described the comments as ironic. But Mr. Prigozhin — the founder of a shadowy mercenary force closely linked to the Kremlin — has been accused of being deeply involved in such operations. In 2018, he was indicted by the United States in a case involving the troll factory that spearheaded Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 elections in the United States.
Last year, the F.B.I. also put Mr. Prigozhin on its most-wanted list and the U.S. Treasury placed him under sanctions for organizing disinformation campaigns in elections in Asia, Europe and Africa. The U.S. government imposed additional sanctions on Mr. Prigozhin in March, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, called Mr. Prigozhin’s comments “a bold confession.”
“If anything, it appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin,” he said during a briefing Monday afternoon in Washington. He added that it was clear that a person of Mr. Prigozhin’s stature would not be in a position to make such claims unless “the Kremlin, at some level” didn’t approve.
In late September, Mr. Prigozhin acknowledged that he was the founder of the Wagner Group, the private military force that has fought on Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine. Its fighters have also been deployed in support of the Kremlin’s military campaigns in Africa and the Middle East, occasionally doing battle against U.S. forces.
Researchers have detected a new, though more concentrated, campaign by Russia to try to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections. They said that the goal, as in previous U.S. elections, has been to empower angry conservative voters with the aim of undermining faith in American democracy. And, at a time when soaring energy prices and inflation threaten to dent support for the war, the campaign also appears intent on undermining the Biden administration’s extensive financial and military support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.
The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans — has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most heated races, including the Senate seats being contested in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The calculation appears to be that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could dent American support for the war in Ukraine.
Michael Crowley in Washington contributed reporting.
Source: nytimes.com
