Putin associate admits to link to Wagner group

On Monday, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin, acknowledged that he is the founder of the Wagner GroupWagner Group, a shadowy private military company that has fought Russia's side in the war in Ukraine.

I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted the bulletproof vests, and found specialists who could help me with this, Mr. Prigozhin said in a statement posted on Monday by the press service for one of his companies, Concord Management and Consulting.

The statement is Mr. Prigozhin's first public admission of his connection to the group, whose fighters have been deployed in support of the Kremlin's military campaigns in Africa and the Middle East, occasionally fighting U.S. forces. The Russian oligarch had denied links to Wagner before he was sued by a Britain-based investigative journalist this year for suggesting he was its founder.