Yevgeny Prigozhin: the hotdog seller who rose to the top of Putin’s war machine

Russian officials have said the Wagner group founder was on a plane that crashed outside Moscow. Some of those who knew him describe - what had been up to his abortive rebellion this summer - an extraordinary journey from prison to power

At the height of Russia's first, covert invasion of eastern Ukraine, in summer 2014, a group of senior Russian officials gathered at the defence ministry's headquarters, an imposing Stalin-era building on the banks of the Moskva River.

They were there to meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, a middle-aged man with a shaven head and a coarse tone whom many in the room knew only as the person responsible for army catering contracts.