For the first time since July 2022, the Russian invaders in Ukraine have been able to claim that they’ve captured a Ukrainian town — Soledar, prewar population 10,000.

The man responsible for the recent victory, such as it is, has no military rank and is better known as "Putin’s chef”: He’s Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group Private Military Company.

In the telling of Western intelligence services and analysts, Prigozhin has been gaining influence as his private force, which has been allowed to recruit convicts in exchange for pardons, has become one of the main driving forces of the invasion. This narrative has been backed up with impressive numbers. The U.K. government and the U.S. National Security Council estimate the size of the Wagner force at 50,000, 80% of them convicts, and the U.K. has put the group’s monthly outlay at $100 million, suggesting major state funding.

Prigozhin, though wealthy from government catering contracts, could never afford to spend on such a scale or even to pay 50,000 soldiers the 240,000 Russian rubles ($3,500) per month plus the bonus that Wagner offers volunteers (even if the convicts make less).

At the same time, Prigozhin has had the temerity to criticize the official military leadership, even to mock it in the most contemptuous manner. Back in October, his public relations service’s Telegram channel quoted him as saying: "Those fighters who are effective today have fought in dozens of wars, while many of those who are part of the so-called cadre have learned nothing except how to click their heels, wear bling and write pretty reports."

Prigozhin is always careful not to name names, but the official command of Vladimir Putin’s "special military operation,” from Army Gen. Valery Gerasimov on down, appears to know exactly whom he means. The military brass has attempted to put Prigozhin in his place with icy silence.

Pro-war Telegram channels had been reporting for months that the only Russian line of attack that remained viable during the invasion’s disastrous autumn — the one against the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk regions — was manned predominantly by Wagner mercenaries, or "musicians,” as they call themselves. But the official Defense Ministry dispatch on the capture of Soledar ascribed the victory to regular units, neglecting to mention Wagner’s contribution altogether. A Telegram outcry orchestrated by Prigozhin forced the ministry to correct the initial report, acknowledging the "courageous and selfless action of Wagner volunteer storm troops.”

On the face of it, Prigozhin’s clout — his monopoly on freeing prisoners, his license to be relatively outspoken in a country of buttoned-up mouths, his freedom to mount military operations independently of the official command and, of course, his apparently inexhaustible financial resources — may even appear like a potential political challenge, or at least a special claim on Putin’s trust, a precious currency the dictator has never squandered. Yet Putin’s close circle has long since tightened to a few old friends who share with him an intelligence background or experience in St. Petersburg city management in the 1990s.

Prigozhin is not part of that circle, and the freedom the ex-convict caterer enjoys in invasion-era Russia is likely a tribute to Putin’s decidedly unusual idea of private enterprise, born like many of his notions from what he learned as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the wildest post-Soviet years.

By night, Russia’s second city was run by gangs then, and Putin, according to many accounts of that era, was unavoidably in contact with the man known as St. Petersburg’s "night governor,” Vladimir Barsukov, also known as Kumarin (who denies knowing Putin personally despite reports to the contrary). Kumarin, known for his buccaneering ways, ran numerous high-profile businesses and was rumored to have rendered valuable protection services to Putin and his closest friends. He, however, ended up in jail during Putin’s presidency.

Prigozhin, with two criminal convictions under his belt, started some of St. Petersburg’s most exclusive restaurants and casinos back in the 1990s. He was part of a scene Putin knew and understood but didn’t quite belong to: In Soviet times, as a KGB officer, he was on the other side of the barricades from the street-smart entrepreneurs. As an official and then as president, he was willing to play with them on his own terms. The KGB knight was supposed to keep his hands clean, but he needed people who weren’t bound by those ethics.

Since the invasion began, Prigozhin has put on a formidable demonstration of this kind of private initiative — and of its advantages over Russia’s bungling, corrupt state management. As the Defense Ministry published vacuous and demonstrably untrue press releases, claiming the elimination of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and thousands of units of equipment — sometimes more than Ukraine actually had — Prigozhin has relied on pithy comments, sometimes seasoned with prison-bred humor.

Asked if he was one of the leaders of Russia’s "party of war,” Prigozhin was quoted by his Telegram channel as saying, "I am not a leader of any war party, but I am a member of the War to the Victorious End Party. I have taken part in eight wars and was on the winning side in six.” (An incomplete list of these wars includes the civil conflicts in Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic, as well as both of Russia’s wars in Ukraine.)

A deliberate show of respect for Ukrainian fighters is part of Prigozhin’s public discourse, one that is missing from official propaganda narratives. "The Ukrainian Army is fighting courageously for Bakhmut and Soledar,” his Telegram channel quoted him as saying. "The Ukrainian armed forces are defending the territory of Soledar with honor.” Such rhetoric is part of the soldier of fortune image Prigozhin cultivates for his desperado troops.

Channels close to Wagner always show well-equipped, well-prepared soldiers who contrast sharply with Russians mobilized into the military without proper gear and training. The bang for the buck is always on display.

Mikhail Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claims Ukrainians have thumped Wagner’s prisoner troops, with a whopping 77% of the recruited convicts dead, wounded or captured. Be that as it may, Putin doesn’t necessarily mind the pruning of Russia’s prison population — that’s why Prigozhin’s promises of pardons have been backed up officially and why Wagner’s fallen, including the convicts, have reaped a bumper crop of medals.

Yet for all his PR efforts, even as Prigozhin appears to be receiving money and unusually heavy administrative support, formal power of any kind is not on offer. He doesn’t have a government post, nor does he appear next to Putin at any official functions, despite holding the prestigious Hero of Russia award. He is not exactly deniable — but nor is he accepted as part of the Putin establishment.

Wagner's unsophisticated tactics have earned the derision of Igor Strelkov, one of the most eloquent personalities on the nationalist flank of the invasion’s supporters. Prigozhin is no more a hero to Strelkov and his ilk than are Putin’s generals: The nationalists have nothing but contempt for business and Prigozhin’s operation is nakedly commercial. He is even suspected of having sacrificed all those lives merely to get his hands on the salt deposits around Bahkmut and Soledar, some of the biggest in Europe; mineral concessions have been among the Wagner Group’s rewards when it fought in Africa and the Middle East.

The position of a useful businessman under Putin, however, is traditionally and transparently insecure, forcing Prigozhin to seek allies among the official elite, if not among the generals. He has taken pains to stress his respect for Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman of Chechnya; the governor of the Kursk region, which borders on Ukraine, recently reported having taken the Wagner training course for fighters. As political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya wrote on her Telegram channel,

Prigozhin is a figure without an official status. ... Essentially, he’s a private businessman who is deeply dependent on his relationship with the government. It’s a very vulnerable position, so horizontal relationships with specific figures in power are critically important to him.

As Kumarin put it in a rare interview, "It’s always worth remembering that glory, honors and respect may run out in a single moment.” For Prigozhin, this means an imperative to win even when everyone else is losing: In a Russia built around the state and designed to serve the state, his position as a nonstate actor and as someone a little too unsavory for elite status even by late Putin-era standards is shakier than that of other invasion stalwarts. Like a hamster in a blood-smeared wheel, he has to keep running just to stay in place.

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the automation team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s "1984” and Franz Kafka’s "The Trial.”