Exclusive: The secret calendar of Russian rebel warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin revealed

• A copy of Prigozhin's calendar obtained by Die Welt and shared with Insider shows just how deeply enmeshed he was with the Putin regime.
• It reveals Prigozhin had direct access to Putin's inner circle for nearly a decade.

Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, has some cleaning up to do.

It's been less than two weeks since Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group mercenary organization, carried out an abortive mutiny, marching with a column of troops toward Moscow before making a deal to stand down. The operation, which Prigozhin called the "march for justice," was the largest direct challenge to Putin in his 23-year rule. While the immediate threat posed by Prigozhin appears to be over, Putin must now grapple with the lurking threat posed by Prigozhin's allies embedded across Russia's sprawling state security and military bureaucracy.

One Russian general with close ties to Wagner — Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine — has already disappeared from public view and is believed by some analysts to have been detained.

An analysis of Prigozhin's secret calendar conducted by Insider suggests that if Putin intends to clean ranks of potential Wagner loyalists, he has his work cut out for him: Prigozhin regularly scheduled meetings or calls with Russia's ranking general and numerous top Putin deputies.

Earlier this year, Insider (along with Die Welt, the Dossier Center, and Politico) obtained a cache of internal Wagner Group files from a group of anonymous hackers who called themselves Bogatyri, or "knights." One of the files is Prigozhin's personal calendar, showing 17,824 appointments over a span of nearly 10 years. The original file has a .dba extension, a format associated with Palm devices that has been obsolete for years in the West. The Dossier Center assisted with converting the file into a readable spreadsheet.

Neither the Wagner Group's spokesperson nor Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, replied to emails requesting comment.

While the calendar has gaps during the periods of Wagner's most notorious operations, including the 2014 Ukraine invasion and the 2020 US election, it offers an intimate account of Prigozhin's daily life, noting everything from appointments with his personal physician to scheduled times for taking dietary supplements. It is also a chronicle of Kremlin power, revealing just how deeply Prigozhin had integrated himself into Putin's circle, working as a de facto cabinet member for years as his Wagner troops became an indispensable tool of the Kremlin's efforts to extend Russian influence into Africa and the Middle East.

Prigozhin's relationship with Putin began in St. Petersburg, where Putin frequented New Island, one of Prigozhin's first restaurants. But while the two men have been photographed together several times, the calendar leaves the question of Prigozhin's direct access to the Russian president unanswered. Putin's name appears in Prigozhin's calendar only twice, and neither entry records a one-on-one meeting. The first entry is a September 2015 event at Russia's Donguz military base, which was also attended by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the archrival that Prigozhin took up arms in late June to remove. The second is a TV press conference Putin held at Gostiny Dvor, a vast Moscow shopping center, in June 2018.

What's more explicit from the calendar is Prigozhin's direct access to Putin's inner circle.

There are 75 entries for Ruslan Tsalikov, who has served as a deputy minister of defense since 2012.

Anton Vaino, the chief of staff for Putin's executive office since 2016, had 73 scheduled appointments with Prigozhin.

Another 36 appointments simply read "НГША," which stands for "chief of the general staff." This is almost certainly General Valery Gerasimov, who plotted Russia's initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine and now oversees the expanded war. Gerasimov, along with Shoigu, was repeatedly savaged by Prigozhin as corrupt and incompetent in the months before his armed coup.

Thirty-three entries denote meetings or calls with Aleksey Dyumin, a former bodyguard of Putin's who is now the governor of the Tula region. Dyumin is among the close Putin allies who have fallen under suspicion over ties to Prigozhin since the rebellion. While Prigozhin was still on the march to Moscow, there was speculation among the Russian media that Dyumin might replace Shoigu as minister of defense, and he reportedly helped negotiate the deal where Prigozhin would lay down his arms and leave Russia for Belarus.

Working from the same trove of files, CNN reported that Sergei Surovikin, the Russian general now under house arrest for his Wagner ties, was secretly a member of the group. He was assigned a Wagner VIP identification number — M-3744 — and an alias, Matveev Kimovich. But in the calendar, Prigozhin simply refers to him as Surovikin. His name appears 11 times for calls and meetings.

Another 14 entries mention Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia's president between 2008 and 2012, although some of these entries refer to appointments with his assistants.

The absence of any one-on-one meetings between Prigozhin and Putin could be explained by a small number of entries which include the word "Президент" or "president." One of these is a "Елка" or New Year's party. Another two have country names — Germany and Korea — along with the word "president." The country names could be code for specific locations, as Prigozhin and his operatives took some pains to cover his tracks. Wagner employees typically identify themselves and sign documents using three or four-digit employee numbers, and most Prigozhin's meetings with Wagner Group employees are presented this way.

The trove of Prigozhin calendar entries ends in November 2021, with one final entry, likely scheduled in advance, for a "helicopter permit" in April 2022. It does not contain evidence of what Prigozhin was up to in the days before Putin launched an all-out assault on Ukraine that pulled in Wagner Group troops from operations in Africa and the Middle East. During the campaign, Prigozhin stepped out of obscurity to drive for victory, often obtained at a heavy cost as Wagner recruited convicts to bolster their ranks of fighters. By June, his time was running out.

The ministry of defense that Prigozhin had railed in rants posted online to his Telegram channel was now demanding that Wagner mercenaries sign official contracts with them by July 1. Prigozhin's power was now publicly subordinated to those like Shoigu, whom he had come to loathe. And the clout that he had wielded for years in the Kremlin appeared to have diminished. In the end, his demands for a slot on Putin's calendar went unanswered.

Walt Hickey contributed reporting.

Mattathias Schwartz is Insider's chief national security correspondent. He can be reached by email at schwartz79@protonmail.com.