Prigozhin threatened the publication “Fontanka” with responsibility for the wording about former prisoners

The founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that his lawyers would check all the texts of the Fontanka publication in order to find a reason to “plant a bunch of scoundrels for ten years.” According to Mr. Prigogine, Fontanka “distorted” his current statement and “spit in the face” of former prisoners who served in the Wagner PMC.

Earlier today Evgeny Prigozhin informedthat 5,000 had completed their contract with the military company and that they had already received a pardon. He also spoke about the extremely low percentage of criminal recidivism among those pardoned.

“It is very bad that some of the media from my statement, in which the main thing was that former prisoners who went through the war in the ranks of the Wagner PMC commit crimes 10-20 times less than it was before, and become true patriots of their country pulled out the number of people who were released,” Mr. Prigozhin believes, his words are quoted by the press service in Telegram.

Edition Fontanka cited Mr. Prigozhin’s statement as follows: “According to the businessman, all these people were pardoned and have now returned home. He argues that re-offending among this contingent is rare, in contrast to the standard rates after the release of prisoners. The article itself was titled “Prigozhin: More than 5,000 former prisoners who passed through the war zone are at large.”

According to the businessman, Fontanka journalists “distorted” his statement and “tried to spit on him (a former prisoner who signed a contract with PMCs.— “b”) in the face, collecting in a small segment a huge amount of offensive words.

“My lawyers will carefully check this text and all subsequent ones that Fontanka will issue. And if there is at least some reason to plant a bunch of scoundrels who generate these texts for ten years, then we will definitely do it, ”said Mr. Prigogine. He also promised to check past Fontanka publications about the Wagner PMC.

In 2017, Fontanka correspondent Denis Korotkov released several investigations about the Wagner PMC. The material contained documentary evidence of the combat losses of PMCs in Syria with the names of the dead. Denis Korotkov said in an interview that after a series of materials about PMCs, he was threatened with physical violence.

Fall 2017 “New Newspaper” wrote that Yevgeny Prigozhin wanted to buy Fontanka and Delovoy Petersburg from Fort Group. In 2019, Fontanka was bought out by Viktor Shkulev, president of Hearst Shkulev Publishing, which publishes the men’s magazine Maxim and women’s magazines Elle, Marie Claire and Psychologies.

Anastasia Larina