Putin and Wagner boss Prigozhin: How a 25-year friendship turned ugly

"I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the 1990s," Vladimir Putin recalled this week

Theirs was a relationship borne out of the murky world where Russia's state security services mingled with the criminal underworld.

While Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner military company grew into one of the most influential structures in Russia, Vladimir Putin bec…