How will the footage of the search affect Prigozhin’s image?

State Duma Deputy Oleg Matveychev expressed disagreement with numerous military officers who the day before they expressed outrage at the appearance in the media of footage from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mansionmade, presumably, during the search.

“Prigozhin is, of course, a billionaire who should have rightfully been in the top ten on the Forbes list long ago. Of course, he is a commercially oriented person, whose whole life proves that the most important thing for him is money and contacts with politicians.

Everything was used for commercial purposes, even the Wagner PMC was needed in order to extract additional contracts worth hundreds of billions of rubles from the Ministry of Defense. And then, in the same way, he continued not only from the Ministry of Defense, but also from our governors, city mayors, and so on, to demand contracts, taking advantage of the fact that he allegedly has connections at the top, and therefore cannot be refused.

This money, accordingly, was spent on all kinds of planes, passports, etc. A person was always ready to flee abroad - that’s what patriotism is all about. If something goes wrong, you can always escape on a private plane, with other people's passports and cash.

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As for the media that are shielding him, their motives are completely clear. They, like suckers, have been drowning for Prigozhin over the last year, he used them, paid them, and now, when everyone has seen the true moral character of this man, it turns out that they helped him and now they just want to justify themselves.

Some people, of course, continue to work for money, but basically this is a psychological complex of self-justification,” said Matveychev.

By the way, it can be assumed that over time the number of Prigozhin’s defenders will decrease – and the mentioned footage of the searches and other facts from the biography of the PMC leader, which in recent days have become the property of the federal media, will play a role in this.

It’s just that the influence of these data on the mood of citizens has a somewhat delayed effect, as sociology shows.

“According to the FOM, for the first time since September 2022, the topic of SVO ceased to occupy first place in the ranking of weekly events, giving way to the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin. The event is extraordinary and for this reason interesting.

It is important to note that immediately after the riot itself, only 19% of respondents named it the event of the week. Seven days later, the share of Russians marking the mutiny as the main event had risen to 49%. This suggests that the reaction of the political system and government actors to the rebellion turned out to be, firstly, extremely noticeable, and secondly, it aroused more interest among Russians than the rebellion itself,” notes Mikhail Karyagin, an expert at the Center for Political Conjuncture.

And columnist Andrei Gusiy draws attention to how the responses of respondents in the FOM survey were formulated.

“No matter how Yevgeny Prigozhin calls his action, for Russians his actions are regarded as a rebellion, an attempt to overthrow the government. This is exactly how the Russians responded.

Judging by the increased trust rating for President Vladimir Putin, against the backdrop of the respondents’ wording, Yevgeny Prigozhin turned out to be an anti-hero,” states Gusiy.

In which direction the public assessment of Prigozhin’s figure will drift as a result of the work of the federal media can be understood today. The same shots of the mansion cement the image of Prigozhin as an oligarch in the mind.

“Prigozhin can be considered an oligarch. He positions himself as a patriotic oligarch who is guided by the interests of the country. Therefore, he enjoyed the support of the Kremlin; according to the president, hundreds of billions of rubles were allocated to him for the formation and maintenance of the Wagner PMC. He also received contracts for feeding the Armed Forces and providing food. This money was measured at 85 billion rubles.

A person with such income and such turnover, of course, can have a helicopter, and a playground, and mansions, and gold, and money in cash rubles,” says Honored Lawyer Dmitry Krasnov, a member of the Supreme Council of the All-Russian movement “Strong Russia”.