Polina Prigozhina is the eldest daughter of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian caterer who founded the Wagner mercenary group. Since 2022, eight governments have placed her under sanctions over property registered in her name. The European Union, which listed her father, her mother, and her brother, never added her.
Most of what the public knows about her comes from those sanctions files and from corporate registries. One photograph is the exception. In 2016 she posted a photo of a private jet’s cabin to Instagram, and a friend commented that her father was a man with a good soul. She replied, “You don’t say.” Investigators at Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation had spent months trying to track down that jet, and the cabin fittings matched.
The aircraft was a Raytheon Hawker 800XP using the tail number M-VITO, registered to a Seychelles shell company with no named owners. Reporters at Novaya Gazeta and the OCCRP traced its flights. It had made dozens of trips to Beirut, crossed Syrian airspace more than twenty times, landed in Sudan days after a 2019 coup, and flown into the Central African Republic close to the killing of three Russian journalists who had gone there to report on Wagner. The US Treasury sanctioned the company that owned the plane in September 2019.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Polina Evgenievna Prigozhina |
| Born | 15 August 1992, Saint Petersburg |
| Father | Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner Group founder (died 23 August 2023) |
| Mother | Lyubov Prigozhina (later Kryazheva) |
| Siblings | Pavel (born 1998), Veronika (born 2005) |
| Background | Competitive show jumper, holder of family assets |
| Sanctioned by | US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Ukraine |
| Not sanctioned by | European Union |
Table of Contents
Who is Polina Prigozhina?
Polina is the oldest of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s three children. Her mother, Lyubov, ran a chain of boutique shops in Saint Petersburg. Her brother, Pavel, fought with Wagner in Syria. Her younger sister, Veronika, is the only one of the three the West has not sanctioned. Until Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the children moved freely around Europe.
The rider who competed across Europe
Polina spent much of her twenties as a show jumper. Her first result outside Russia came in July 2011, when she was 18 and finished 86th out of about 130 riders at a youth championship in Comporta, Portugal, according to International Federation for Equestrian Sports records. She went on to ride in more than 600 events across the continent and won two.
In April 2012 she set up a company in her own name in Germany, Polina Prigozhina sporthorses Management GmbH, in the Lower Saxony village of Winsen. German commercial records describe its business as running tournaments, training riders, and operating a sales stable. It closed, insolvent, within about two years.
Polina and her sister kept competing at events around Europe through the same years their father was attacking Russia’s elite on Telegram for sending their own children abroad, according to the Financial Times.
The assets registered in her name
The phrase that recurs through the US and UK sanctions records is nominal owner. Her name sits on the paperwork while the money runs to her father. Reporters have linked several assets to her:
- The Trezzini Palace Hotel, a 21-suite, five-star hotel on Universitetskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, set in an 18th-century building her father used as an office.
- A villa at Lake Lakhta, inside a gated estate of 49 houses built by his Concord group.
- A country house near Saint Petersburg, bought at auction by a company tied to her, as Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.
- A stake in the Chocolate Museum, a Saint Petersburg retail chain she co-owned with her mother.
She did not buy these properties. They were put in her name, and the arrangement was built well before any sanctions existed, which left her holding the title to assets the freezes would later try to reach.
Eight governments, and the gap where the EU should be
On 3 March 2022, a week into the invasion, the US Treasury named Polina under Executive Order 14024, alongside her mother and brother. Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and Ukraine each added their own listings over the course of the year. The reasoning was consistent. She benefited financially from her father, and she held his assets.
The European Union is the exception. It sanctioned her father, her mother, her brother, and her grandmother, Violetta. In March 2023 the EU General Court struck down the grandmother’s listing, ruling that a family connection on its own, without specific and current evidence of involvement, did not meet the legal test.
Brussels never listed Polina, and that ruling is the most likely reason. The effect is concrete. A company or bank inside the EU can deal with her without the automatic legal exposure an EU listing would bring, the kind that follows the rest of her family.
The raid, the crash, and what she kept
On 24 June 2023, as Wagner pulled its fighters back from Rostov-on-Don during Prigozhin’s one-day mutiny, Russian security services searched the Trezzini hotel. The Saint Petersburg outlet Fontanka reported that officers removed cash, gold bars, several firearms, an unidentified white powder, and passports carrying Prigozhin’s photograph under other men’s names. Polina’s name was on the hotel’s ownership papers that morning.
Her father died two months later, on 23 August 2023, when his business jet came down north of Moscow. A document that surfaced online as his will reportedly left most of his holdings to Pavel, though investigators cautioned that they could not confirm it was real, and Novaya Gazeta Europe described a fight among the heirs. Polina kept the Trezzini hotel anyway, because she already held it.
The rest of the empire unwound over the following year. Her mother went back to her maiden name, Kryazheva, in October 2023. Concord’s main companies took on a new director that December, and their Russian shareholder records were then closed to the public.
Where things stand in 2026
Her file is still open. In April 2025, nineteen months after her father’s death, Britain added a director disqualification order on top of the asset freeze and travel ban she has carried since 2022. The UK’s consolidated list still showed her fully designated in October 2025, with no appeal or removal on record, and Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation kept her on its war enablers list. The Trezzini hotel is still taking bookings.
Most of the person stays out of view. She married at the Konstantinovsky Palace near Saint Petersburg in 2015, but no reliable source names her husband. There is no record of where she studied. Whether she has children is not known. Eight governments have built their cases on what she owns, and beyond that she is still little more than a name in a registry.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Polina Prigozhina?
She is the eldest daughter of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who founded the Wagner Group, and a former show jumper. Eight governments have sanctioned her over assets held in her name.
Why was Polina Prigozhina sanctioned?
The United States and seven other governments listed her in 2022 as a nominal owner of her father’s assets, saying the setup gave him a financial benefit.
Why has the EU not sanctioned Polina Prigozhina?
The bloc sanctioned her relatives but not her. After its court annulled her grandmother’s listing in 2023 for resting on family ties alone, the EU appears to have steered clear of the same legal risk with Polina.
Is Polina Prigozhina still under sanctions in 2026?
Yes. The UK and others still list her, and Britain added a director disqualification order against her in April 2025.
What does Polina Prigozhina own?
Reporting has linked the Trezzini Palace Hotel, a villa near Lake Lakhta, a country house bought at auction, and a former stake in the Chocolate Museum to her name.
