Europe News: Meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, arguably the most influential mercenary in modern history whose Wagner Group, a shadowy private military company with close ti.
The battle to quit QAnon and other premium stories you may have missed this week
16 Apr, 2021 02:30 AM
8 minutes to read
The -Trump QAnon movement remains popular around the world. Photo / Getty Images
NZ Herald
Welcome to the weekend.
Settle down with a cuppa and catch up on some of the best content from our premium syndicators this week.
Happy reading.
Quitting QAnon: Why it is so difficult to abandon a conspiracy theory
It took Leila Hay, a softly-spoken university student from northern England, less than 24 hours to become sucked into the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory during a lonely first coronavirus lockdown.
Putin s secret army – and the chef he chose to run it
19 minutes to read
By: Larisa Brown
How did a former hot-dog seller turned billionaire restaurateur end up running an army of mercenaries on behalf of Putin? Meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man behind the shadowy Wagner Group that conducts black ops across the globe – from assassinations to election-rigging and cyberwarfare. Larisa Brown investigates the former penniless convict who ended up becoming one of Russia s most powerful men.
Last summer I was at the Russian ambassador s residence on Billionaires Row in Kensington, resisting the temptation to devour a plate of gold-wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolates while anxiously awaiting the arrival of Vladimir Putin s top diplomat in London. I had previously met Andrei Kelin s predecessor, Alexander Yakovenko, 66, on a number of occasions in the aftermath of the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury and had become accustomed to his masterclasses in the art of obfuscation.