WHO IS YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN?

This latest brouhaha within Russia is momentous, for it is the first real challenge in 23 years to Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule.  However, the significance is minimal relative to that Russian Revolution of 1917.  Responsible for all this unexpected activity is a former close friend of Putin, and hot dog entrepreneur:

Yevgeny Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch who has a net worth of $1 billion. Known as "Putin's Chef," in the 1990s Yevgeny Prigozhin parlayed a hot dog stand outside of a flea market into a restaurant which was frequented by the Deputy Mayor of Saint Petersburg. That Deputy Mayor was a young man named Vladimir Putin. Putin was so passionate about Prigozhin's cooking that he made his company the official caterer of the city. When Putin became President of Russia just five years later, Prigozhin's company Concord Catering, became the official caterer of the Russian government. Over the years Concord reportedly has received billions in government contracts to provide everything from school lunches to military and prison food services. This catering empire has turned Yevgeny Prigozhin into a billionaire. Today he also runs a network of companies that include the paramilitary organization Wagner Group and a number of companies accused of interfering in the US elections in 2016 and 2018. Integrally tied to Russia's Ministry of Defence and the GRU, Prigozhin's operations have drawn sanctions internationally and criminal charges from the US.

He is 62 years old and spent nine years in prison for theft and fraud.  It was after his release in 1990 that he opened a network of hot dog joints with his stepfather, got rich and gained considerable influence.  The Wagner Group was said to be Putin's private army, and they dabbled in Africa and the Middle East, helped out Russia in Ukraine, and gained special permission to recruit convicts.  Their efforts allowed Moscow to plead plausible deniability.

The Wagner Group was first organized by Dmitry Utkin, a Russian officer in the Chechen Wars, and he formed this group in 2014 at around the time Russia annexed Crimea.  There are several explanations as to why Wagner, but the most prominent one has to do with Utkin's own call sign, Wagner, and Utkin's passion for the Third Reich and the German Composer Richard Wagner.

Very little real information is available about what truly is happening in Russia, for this is a controlled society where official information is totally controlled by the Kremlin.  But here is my personal take on what happened:

• For several months now, Prigozhin has been complaining about the ineptitude of Russian forces in Ukraine.  His group has been slighted in gaining armaments from their defense department.

• 
  While there might have been some internal skirmishes, he lost his patience and felt the timing was right to make a grand stand by sending a convoy to Moscow to plead their cause.
• Certainly, he has friends in the internal bureaucracy, and this built his confidence to do something for the future of Russia.  He himself is an oligarch, and he also has close friends there who are disenchanted with Putin.  Prigozhin has everything to gain from a strong country, and is an enemy of the West.
• 
  While he doesn't want to run the country, he has unveiled certain flaws and weaknesses of Putin's hold over the nation.  This apparent fragility is more real than earlier thought.
• This action he took probably places him next to Alexei Navalny as endangered within the country.  #3 now, though, is Putin.

Yesterday I participated in 15 Craigside's golf tournament.  Eight of us went to the Royal Kunia Golf Course and had a fun time.  This troubled course has quite a sad history:

• 
  Was for a long time land for sugar cane.
• Royal Kunia in the late 1980s was master-planned by Herb Horita and Castle&Cooke Homes as a 2,000-unit development.
• A golf course was built in 1994, but was kept closed because the owners had a $13 million debt to the city.  
• 
  That infamous councilwoman Rene Mansho tried to gain concessions for the company, but that failed.
• She is mostly remembered for shockingly killing the first attempt at mass transit in 1992.  If this project had continued, Honolulu would be a different city today.
• In 2002 she was convicted for misusing funds and spent a year in jail.
• She volunteers her time now on a Lion's project, Going Green.
• There was a sense then that we had too many golf courses in Leeward Oahu, 15.
• Since 2003 when it officially began play, $1 of every golf fee goes to the City and County of Honolulu, forever.
• 
  Then in 2017, the Star-Advertiser reported that the 172 acres (the golf course) would be sold for farm crops, livestock or maybe a waste disposal facility.
• The community wildly clamored.
• In the fall of 2021, the Royal Kunia Community Association sent out its first newsletter in a decade.
• Said that Royal Kunia is a Master Planned Community envisioned to be home to 4,000 dwellings, parks, a school, industrial spaces and 3 golf courses.
• Haseko Royal Kunia is responsible in Phase II to get up to those numbers.
• This newsletter is now into edition 6 for 2023 Spring.
• 
  In any case, the course somehow continued to operate, but the promised clubhouse never was built.  Read why you might want to golf here.
• Sensational Robin Nelson-design rolls gracefully through its 7,007 yards.
• The Gold Senior's tee box, however, is usually (except for par 3s) around 100 yards closer to the green
• Rating/Slope:  73.8/136 (Black)
• $79 golf fee...but we paid only $47.

So on to our personal tournament:

This bag of spam musubi, apple, three macadamia nut candies and water was prepared by the dining room.

Steve and John with their musubi.

Mary Ann.

George.

David sizing up his putt.

On the last hole I lost my ball in that pond and ended with an 8.  15 Craigside provided local cuisine, boiled peanuts and edamame of two flavors, with other stuff, including wine and beer.

Our golf group.

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