“Shades of red kindle the appetite,” Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, a real-estate developer and restaurateur from St. Petersburg told the city’s Time Out magazine in 2009. In the baroque Count Stroganov palace—of beef Stroganov fame—Prigozhin’s then new venue, the restaurant-cum-nightclub Gloss, was the talk of the town. The Pan Asian–themed food was served in a setting of gold canvas ceilings, colossal Ferrari-red chandeliers, and original 18th-century statues of Roman gods looming over Philippe Starck chairs. The restaurant was designed by Prigozhin himself. “It’s a mix of intricate visuals from the past with contemporary luxury; it fits well with the concept of a pre-party venue,” the restaurateur explained somewhat confusingly.
Fourteen years later and roughly a thousand miles south of Gloss, Prigozhin, wearing military fatigues, demands in a rage that the Russian Ministry of Defense provide his mercenaries with the necessary ammunition to capture the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. Behind him, in one of the more disturbing images of an already gruesome war, lay the remains of some of his troops. “I want you to remember that they came here as volunteers,” screams Prigozhin as he points at the corpses. “They died so you can thrive in the luxury of your [government] offices.”
