No one in Russia embodies the anti-elite essence of populist politics today like Yevgeny Prigozhin, formerly known as “Putin’s chef,” more recently as the boss of a vast troll network, and right now as head of the infamous Wagner mercenary army.

The maverick businessman has made the “special operation” against Ukraine—which in his rhetoric is an all-out war—the mainstay of his identity and a way of aligning himself with ordinary Russians rather than with the establishment, including the Defense Ministry. Indeed, following the Defense Ministry’s recent announcement that all “volunteer detachments” would now have to sign contracts with the ministry, Prigozhin was quick to insist his fighters would be doing no such thing, as that would only damage the private military company’s efficiency.

In his logic, it was politicians who started the “special operation,” but they have proven unable to finish what they started. Now, only the people—represented by Prigozhin himself—can secure a victory and an end to hostilities. Prigozhin represents an emerging leader who speaks to the people without intermediaries, just as befits a populist and true leader as described back in the 1930s by the German political theorist Carl Schmitt.

The only problem is that Russia already has such a leader: President Vladimir Putin. He may not tour the trenches or make videos at the graves of fallen fighters like Prigozhin does, but his claim to leadership lies in his direct, intuitive, and mesmeric contact with “the people.”

But Putin is a member of the elite, while Prigozhin is positioning himself as a counter-elite—despite being a product of the Putin regime and government contracts. Like any classic populist, he sends anti-elitist messages to the public. Yet he is like every other oligarch, and owes everything to his ties with the state and the resources outsourced by that state.

Prigozhin is scornful of people from Moscow’s elite Rublyovka neighborhood, but he comes from the same place as they do: from the very depths of the system. The sleep of reason produces monsters; authoritarian regimes produce multifaceted monsters; and he is just one of them. Outside of ties with the state and its resources, the phenomenon of Prigozhin could not exist.

Prigozhin is playing at independent politics, raising the stakes and testing the susceptibility of the system as he goes. But both technically and physically, this is only possible as long as this shaven-headed enfant terrible is useful to Putin, as long as his outlandish escapades continue to amuse the head of state.

Even Prigozhin’s tour of the country, titled “Wagner: A Second Front” is a caricature imitation of that other Russian populist figure, the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Wagner boss is supposedly heading deep into the Russian heartland to meet the purest and most simple folk, communing with them in everyday places with no ceremony—but all of this is an extremely expensive undertaking that would be impossible without permission from the very top.

Prigozhin is becoming an increasingly well-known figure, of course, but for most of the Russian public, a politician is someone who is “appointed” to a particular political role by Putin; who heads something official, such as a party or a body of authority. For ordinary Russians who have not followed the political transformation of this Kremlin outsourcer, it’s not at all clear who Prigozhin is.

Many find the extremely crude manner of speaking of Prigozhin—a former convict—off-putting. It is also worth remembering that Russian society is, after all, largely modernized, urbanized, and marketized. Accordingly, Prigozhin’s calls for a general mobilization, for people to be ready to make great sacrifices for the sake of some kind of victory, for the return of a planned economy and the death penalty, and in general for life in Russia to become like that in North Korea are unlikely to boost the number of his supporters.

As head of the feared private military company Wagner, Prigozhin positions himself as an effective military manager. But his success—the recent capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut—was achieved at the cost of enormous loss of life (which he himself readily admits) and the use of prisoners as cannon fodder: Prigozhin toured Russian prisons and recruited convicts willing to risk their lives in a six-month tour of Ukraine in exchange for their subsequent freedom. There is certainly no legal basis for such a scheme. 

In spite of all these limitations, Prigozhin entered the Levada Center’s rating of the Russian people’s trust in public figures for the first time in May 2023 with 4 percent: comparable to that of former president Dmitry Medvedev and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. In the current political system, however, Prigozhin can only be against the elite—and popular as a result—so long as he is for Putin. It would take the slightest sign from Putin for the Wagner boss to disappear from the information space (and indeed other spaces), and there would be no popular uprising or protests by prisoners.

Also unfounded are the fears that his private army might turn its firepower on the Kremlin. There were similar concerns about those fighting on behalf of separatists in the Donbas back in 2014–2015, yet nothing of the kind happened. The main risk from Wagner mercenaries is from their post-traumatic stress disorder, and here, the risk is not to the Kremlin, but to ordinary Russians: the prisoners-turned-Wagner-fighters who have survived their six months at the front and have been released back into society are already starting to commit new crimes.

Prigozhin’s charisma could also be extinguished in a more “vegetarian” way, using the methods used repeatedly in Russia’s post-Soviet history. When it was necessary, for example, to turn a communist oppositionist into an obedient gray official, they were simply appointed to an economic post. The logic is simple: since you’re so vocal about the inefficiency of the powers that be, go on then, show them what you can do in this technocratic job.

In this situation, it would be better for Prigozhin to return to the ranks of the Kremlin chefs and caterers, but those spots are already taken. In film director Mark Mylod’s dark tragicomedy The Menu, a chef establishes a charismatic dictatorship over staff and guests—but the only goal he can strive toward is to kill himself, his chefs, and diners as revenge for insufficient appreciation of his own talent. Similarly, for Prigozhin, whose career has peaked in a bloody massacre, there are few career options that would satisfy him. His upward trajectory could be interrupted by the Kremlin, but now that he feels like a nationwide celebrity, downward is no longer an option.

The mercenary boss may well have electoral ambitions, but it’s hard to see how they can be capitalized upon in the absence of normal electoral procedures, or even whether he himself knows exactly what he wants.

Prigozhin is a product of the transitionary identity of Russians, who are ready to associate themselves one day with an autocrat who sprang forth from the KGB, and the next day with a former convict with leadership ambitions. The electorate has given little thought since the beginning of the 2000s to democracy and the rotation of power: that they do not actually have to identify with any one person for a long time, and can always change their minds. Then the electorate ceased to exist altogether, turning into easily controlled electoral plankton. Now it has all ended in disaster, making it starkly clear that democracy is an applied tool for maintaining normality, prosperity, and peace.

One thing is certain: Prigozhin will not be able to save the nation. He will never be Winston Churchill, who promised his nation “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” to achieve the great goal of victory, not least because autocratically minded politicians have no goal other than power for power’s sake. And far from all Russians are prepared to die for the sake of that power, or indeed to live like North Koreans.

• Andrei Kolesnikov