SOCIETY
Yevgeny Prigozhin may be one of the most recognizable Russians in the world, but his private habits, up until recently, have remained as obscure as he once was. Since his failed coup last month, the world has gotten to know how “Putin’s chef” used to live. There’s the Bob Guccioni-style pleasure dome in St. Petersburg, the central casting disguise kit, the closetful of wigs, and the golden guns.
But until now, Prigozhin’s bedroom habits haven’t been disclosed.
The Insider recently spoke to a Russian woman who sold her virginity to Prigozhin when she was eighteen and now says she regrets the decision. (To protect her identity, we’ve agreed to refer to her only as “Masha;” her testimony was corroborated by a representative of a sex workers’ union in Russia.) The mercenary boss likes his girls on the younger side but he also has an eccentric obsession with exchanging bodily fluids with virgins. He believes having sex with first-time partners “prolongs his youth,” according to Masha.
Before his downfall and exile to Belarus, Prigozhin used to keep a rotating harem of very young (“a little over 18”) girls in rented rooms at the Solo Sokos Hotel in St. Petersburg. “He had sex without a condom,” the sex workers’ union representative told The Insider, because “he believed that this is how he exchanges energy, fluids. It’s as if he receives a charge of vitality from them.”
Prigozhin also has metallic spheres implanted in the foreskin of his “very small” organ, devices he apparently believes enhance his own sexual prowess and pleasure for his partners. In fact, the sex union source said, women found the balls to be painful during intercourse.
“It was in the fall of 2019,” she told The Insider. “I was 18 years old, I lived in St. Petersburg, I was deeply depressed and had to go to the hospital. At that time, I met another girl, around my age, and she had been kicked out of her home and she really needed money. She asked me if I would like to sell my virginity for 40,000 rubles [$623]. She’d receive a commission. I was like, ‘ok, let’s ,’ although I didn’t need the money that much myself.”
Masha in the hotel room waiting for Prigozhin
Masha was introduced to Prigozhin’s pimp, another woman in her 30s with long, dark hair, at a cafe on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main avenue . “She said I had to go to the clinic to have my virginity checked. I was sent to the Sogaz clinic, right there on the other side of Nevsky Prospekt. At the reception desk, you had to say a password: ‘women's sports,” Masha said, to indicate you were having your hymen inspected for Prigozhin.
After Masha’s virginity was confirmed, she was sent to the Solo Sokos Hotel on Vasilyevsky Island on the western side of the city. “It seems like there were always rooms reserved for him and the girls and there were always people who supervised them,” Masha said. “There were girls, not virgins, whom he paid 5,000 rubles [$78] for sex. They were the ones who told me that it was Prigozhin. They hadn’t seen him for several days.”
Masha said she already knew the name from independent media investigations she had read into Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg troll farm and his private army’s activities on behalf of Russia all over the world. “In complete shock, I went to the hotel room and waited for him. He started knocking on the wrong door and thought that I was not opening it. He got angry.” When Prigozhin realized his mistake and tried the right room, Masha sat motionless on the bed.
“Everything was very fast. He has a very small penis, in which there were some kind of balls embedded under the skin. He just left the money in a pile on a chair. It was 100,000 [rubles] . I had to take 40,000 for myself, 60,000 was for the pimp.”
When Prigozhin took his leave of Masha, he instructed her to “Be nicer ,” owing to the dour expression on her face, she said. “Even with my insane personality, selling my virginity to Prigozhin was a bit over the top,” she said. “Anyway, I felt really down. I remember that day I was thinking about not being late for a doctor’s appointment at the psychiatric hospital.”
Masha was one of countless women Prigozhin has visited at the Solo Sokos, where his underlings kept a ready supply of them. The virgins, Masha learned, he dubbed “shampoo,” after the disposable bottles found in hotel bathrooms. “You open them and then toss them away.”
Written with the participation of Milan Czerny