Prigozhin explained how Canada offered him the opportunity to avoid sanctions.

The Canadian government offered Russian producer Iosif Prigozhin waivers of sanctions in exchange for public statements criticizing the Russian military operation. Prigozhin revealed this in an interview with The New York Times (NYT).

A journalist for the publication reported that, while preparing the article, Prigozhin forwarded him an excerpt from a letter received from Ottawa in December 2023. The document was sent in response to Prigozhin's attempts to challenge the sanctions, the reporter clarified.

"When you were given the opportunity to publicly express your point of view, you repeated the regime's disinformation statements," the journalist quoted from the letter.

Canada's Foreign Ministry declined to comment to the NYT on the document's contents.

In March 2023, a recording of a telephone conversation was leaked online, allegedly between Iosif Prigozhin and businessman Farkhad Akhmedov. The authenticity of the leak was never confirmed. The participants discussed the military operation in Ukraine , making negative comments about it and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Shortly after its publication, Prigozhin dismissed the leak as a fake. Later, in an interview with Fontanka, he said that people can talk about anything in private, but he doesn't recall such a conversation with Akhmedov.

In July 2023, Prigozhin and his wife, singer Valeria (real name Alla Perfilova), were included in Canada's sanctions list.

In an interview with the NYT, Prigozhin lamented that in April 2023, when he celebrated his birthday shortly after the recording was released, only a few dozen people called to congratulate him, instead of the usual hundreds. The producer also said that some friends advised him to flee Russia and Valeria to divorce him. Furthermore, according to Prigozhin, some of his partners stopped doing business with him.

In 2014, Prigozhin signed a collective appeal by Russian cultural figures in support of President Vladimir Putin's policies in Ukraine and Crimea. In 2018, he served as Putin's trusted representative in the presidential election, and as Sergei Sobyanin's trusted representative in the Moscow mayoral election.

Since 2015, Prigozhin has been listed by the Security Service of Ukraine as a threat to national security. In January 2023, he was placed on Ukraine's sanctions list for justifying Russia's actions.

Prigozhin himself, speaking about the military operation in the first days after its launch, noted that "if a fight is inevitable, then you have to strike first." "And in this situation, a fight was inevitable," he said. At the same time, the producer emphasized that he was "against any war or violence."

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