catering company and became known as putin s chef, and from there things really went up for yevgeny prigozhin. he started a media company which turned into a media propaganda empire, which of course the u.s. says meddled heavily in the 2016 election. yevgeny prigozhin was actually indicted for that in the united states. but then there was also the wagner private military company, and i saw them in action really at the beginning when they were starting to go to places like syria, and on the ground in syria their forces back then were pretty much doing base protection for the russian military that was on the ground in syria, but from there things really did evolve. they started getting involved in the oil business in syria, and then of course also things like gold and diamonds in african countries and started training the forces of african countries as well. but it really wasn t until the war in ukraine that wagner turned into pretty much a full on army with really heavy
the firepower that was unleashed there by the artillery, by the tanks wagner now had in its possession, that certainly seemed to be a very professional army. and it was now yevgeny prigozhin seemed today bow at the height of his power, but it appears as though he s gone one step too far. fred pleitgen there for us. now, prigozhin s actions are considered a serious threat to vladimir putin s grip on power. earlier we spoke about that with our russian affairs contributor, jill dougherty, and asked her how the russian president is now viewed through the eyes of other world leaders. here she is. i think if xi jinping, you know, the leader of china, looking at this he s already seen putin botch the war. this is not good i think for any type of respect that the chinese would have for the russians. he must be in the basement at this point. it s really a disaster, and so