It’s been a year since Yevgeny Prigozhin shocked the world with his ill-fated march on Moscow. Soon, it will be a year since Prigozhin was killed in a mysterious plane crash. But before all that, Prigozhin was “Putin’s chef,” and one of many violent entrepreneurs at the beck and call of the Boss in the Kremlin. A good boyar, the Chef, with the help of generous state contacts, supplied food to the Russian military. He reinvested those profits into troll farms to spread disinformation. Then he became the head of the primer Russian mercenary company, Wagner. His troops fought in Syria, central Africa, and in eastern Ukraine. Often Wagner’s successes outshined the Russian military. So just who was Evgeny Prigozhin? Where did he come from? And how did this former criminal become catapulted into the Kremlin’s orbit? What made him fly too close to the sun? And what does his rise and fall say about the political system in Russia and its future? To answer these questions and more, the Eurasian Knot talked to friends of the show Anna Arutunyan and Mark Galeotti about their new book Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia published by Penguin. Guests: Anna Arutunyan is a Russian-American journalist, analyst and author. She is the Associate Director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. She is the author of several books on Russia, including The Putin Mystique, and her latest on Russia’s war in Ukraine, Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine. Mark Galeotti is one of the foremost Russia-watchers today, who travels there regularly to teach, lecture, talk to his contacts, and generally watch the unfolding story of the Putin era. A prolific author on Russia and security affairs, he frequently acts as consultant to various government, commercial and law-enforcement agencies. Together they are the authors of Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia published by Penguin. Send us your sounds! euraknot.org/contact/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/euraknot Knotty News: eurasianknot.substack.com/ The Knot’s Nest: eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/ Website: euraknot.org/