And progosion.
All of a sudden is you know, in the limelight. He officially is, you know, the founder of Wagner. He's in Putin's good graces, and he starts promising ever bigger things. He eventually promises bach Moot that he's going to take bach Moot. And the mod too is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front, and so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of you know, cool guys in the Russian context of you know, to bring in men to recruit.
And so the billboards are going up across Russia. Joined PMC Wagner, so he's recruiting new volunteers and then he gets access to Russia's prison population.
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Special Operations Cobert Ops, SB and I The Teamhouse with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hi, everyone is episode three hundred and thirty one of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here today with journalist and author John Leckner. He's the author of Death Is Our Business, which came out just yesterday. It's probably it is the most comprehensive biography of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company. I just finished reading this book this week. It's pretty incredible. There's a lot of stuff for us to go through in here, with some very
colorful characters. Yeah, John, thanks for coming on the show. And before we jump into the book, I mean, let's hear a little bit about yourself, Like you have a pretty extensive background, you know, working in journalism, and also you speak like eight languages, which really explains why you were able to write this book. But tell us a little bit about like who you are and what led you into the book project.
Yeah, for sure, I mean I think I was telling you. I mean, I love for whatever reason, my primary interest in life is languages, linguistics, and like learning new language. I just love it. And I don't know why. It's been since since I was a little kid. And according to this handy little sheet that you're published by, yeah you speak Russian, French, Sango, Turkish, Georgian, Bosnian, Croat, Serbo Croat, German,
and Chechen. Yeah yeah, and working on right now Arabic, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, and I should be going in April to the Amazon to hang out with an indigenous community to try to learn their language. Is awesome, and I'm going to write a piece about it. So I just like love I love this. So, yeah, you're like a linguistic cartographer or something. Yeah, that's what that's what that's
that's what I really enjoy. And I mean like like along with that, like if you're into that, you kind of have a like a predisposition to being interested in different cultures and history, and so I you know how I came upon this. I had lived in Russia for a little while. I spoke Russian and then went to
college and was a Russian studies guy. And then, like a lot of people who have like super niche interests, I went into investment banking and worked on Wall Street for like seven years and slowly kind of allowed my soul to be crushed. And then finally kind of I made the decision I got to do something that is like closer to what I'm passionate about. So I moved down to DC, and I had been spending some more
time in Africa. And so when Wagner first touchdown in the Central African Republic in twenty eighteen, and I remember reading about it, and I mean there were kind of like two things, Like one was I thought it would be fascinating to find out, you know, that this was a confluence of my interests Russia and Africa. This I wanted to know how these people were interacting and adapting to each other or not adapting to each other. And also I just like wanted to be the person who
writes about it. I didn't want other people to write about it.
So I mean, did you have a job going over there or did you really just hit the ground and just start filwing like wire reports?
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I don't, like, I don't know exactly how like yeah, basically that like there's a weird thing about like when you get in I mean I got into journalism, and I still like don't feel like super like I still feel a lot of kind of imposter syndrome calling myself a journalist, because there is this interesting thing about journalism that you can't do an investment banking. You can't just show up and New York can say you're an investment banker and like
manifest it that way, like you have to. But like with journalism, you can kind of show up in a place and say you kind of declare yourself a journalist and try to figure things out and write articles and pitch them and you know they you know, over time, it takes a lot of effort to get those pitches accepted and then it takes a lot of effort to move up the but you can basically kind of manifest it yourself.
As far as like the networking part on the ground in some of these countries is very interesting, you know, just to you got me thinking about it. Everything over in a lot of these places is based on personal relationships.
So like if you know the right people, if you have the right like interlocutors and they like you, you can get wild interviews, Like you can get introduced to people that like it just would not happen in the United States, for instance, Like you can be a journalist and come fly to America and I want to interview the Delta Force commander. That will never ever happen. But you can fly into the Philippines or Kurdistan and if you know the right people, you can interview their equivalent of that
of their intelligence service or their counter terrorism unit or whatever. Yeah, it's interesting how that works.
And and I mean there's kind of a aside to it that is both an advantage, you know, and also a negative as well, which is, you know, specifically, when it comes to conflict reporting, you see a lot of freelance journalists because I mean basically the model that they're doing is going to a place without you know, a
lot of insurance, insurance and and and operating there. And because it's so expensive for the big outlets and the risk profiles and everything, you can kind of jump ahead and get kind of those big pitches by basically putting yourself in danger. And so there's always kind of a big risk reward to it too. That also makes it easier in a place like yeah, like you said, the Central African Republic or you know, Mally or Libya, these
kind of places. So I first started showing up in the Central African Republic in twenty nineteen, and so just a little bit after Wagner had touched down. And I think for me, it was very clear right away that the kind of like overarching narratives about Wagner and Russians in Africa as these kind.
Of omniscient.
Hyper ten feet hall was just like was not what was matching what I was seeing. And so I first realized that I had to understand the Central African Republic first before I could understand how Wagner fit into it. And then kind of the book started rolling from there.
We'll get deep into the into the book, but I mean, since you kind of talked about it a little bit right there, there's something interesting about this book that I thought you teased out sort of like on a more meadow level about warfare, which is you point out that, especially in the chapters about Central Africa, that the way these conflicts sort of like cole Less, is in a manner that all of the players involved get the benefit from some in some shape or form. And I saw that.
I mean, I think we saw it all over the world with ISIS, So isis came in and these little groups of bandits in Mozambique, Philippine wherever, got to raise the black flag, try to attract international attention. It brings in press attention, It gives them legitimacy, It gives the government, you know, they get more American funding counter terrorism, they can come in and fight them, and it gives us
military something to do, like we're sending our advisors. Everyone kind of gets something out of it.
Yeah, you hit on the whole book, I mean like but but I mean, I think it takes That's why I think it's so interesting talking to you, because you have a lot of experience kind of on the other side of it. And so some of these like what we think of like these overall structures of conflict kind
of become apparent over over time. And and the thing that was fascinating to me throughout the book is and we can get into you get any petegosion and these guys, but you know, uh, Wagner was operating in sort of an interesting kind of ambiguous area where it was both a commercial prize exactly like commercial and uh and kind of also part of the state and H and so where they were especially effective was was where they could sell a narrative back to the Kremlin about you know,
why they're these initiatives that so happened to also involve gold mining and and what have you, are like within Russia's national interests and and kind of the overarching narrative. Well, the narratives that they used were both the War on
Terror Russia's version of it. You know, Russia has a long history of issues of terrorism at home, and you know, uh fought a campaign against ISIS as well in Syria, and so Progosion, the founder of Wagner, he leveraged that to make sure his guys were in but also kind of this new great power competition narrative, the competition between
the US, China, and Russia. And you see how in the book how everybody like you said, positions themselves vis a the the narrative in a way that is politically expedient or profitable to them.
You also get into a little bit about was I going to say, jeez, I'm sorry, I totally lost my train of thought already. Let's jump into the book. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about tonight's sponsor for the show, which is Ridge Wallets. I've been using this for about six months now, really enjoy it. This wallet is made out of carbon fiber, titanium, and steel and it really holds up and lasts. So you know, in the past,
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Yeah, so, I mean, Progosion is an endlessly fascinating character, and he was one who I hoped to I had hoped to actually interview for the book before his sort of epic demise. But you know, he grow he you know, grows up on the wrong side of the tracks in the Soviet Union and is sort of a you know, a thief in a street thug. He goes away to prison I think at eighteen for robbing and stranguling, strangulating a woman she she nearly died, gets caught, goes away
to prison for eight years. He gets out, and in the meantime, the Soviet Union is basically collapsing, and so he returns to what became again Saint Petersburg from Leningrad and it's, you know, right in the swing of the wild chaotic nineteen nineties, and Pregosion joins in with a couple of gangsters who set him up as the manager
of these grocery stores. At first and then he eventually kind of leverages that to owning several restaurants that cater to the nuvau rician in Russia and the Russian elite. So you know, it's serving to find a champagne and caviar like the more expensive the better. And this is where he most likely comes in touch with with a
kind of a younger Vladimir Putin at the time. He he strangely, it's only Progosion himself who has claimed that he sold hot dogs, but his mom like you know, like stirring the mustard apparently, and that the cash was like it was too much. They couldn't even count all the cash they were making from hot dogs, which I mean, I could see hot dogs being a good in the nineties in Russia. That I mean McDonald's was making money handover fists.
And I mean maybe one of the great ironies of your book, if I recall correctly, you point out that Progosion probably made a lot more money from food catering than he ever did from his private military Yeah.
No, and so, and this is what's interesting is that like he so yeah, like you said, he he he leverages these. He's a guy with endless ambition and networking. He's always trying to meet the next most important guy, and he leverages those connections to getting a job providing meals or get the contract for providing meals to the Russian military and the Russian schools. And that was in the context of Russia, that's where you like managed to skim a lot off the top, like that's where the
serious money is made. And so that's probably always where most of his cash was coming from. And you know, we can get into like his character later, but the fact that he was kind of this thuggish, uncouth x KHN with a chip on his shoulder goes into play, you know, who's not accepted by kind of the buttoned up Russian bureaucracy and some of the Putin's old friends like really.
Goes like they seem as a gopnik.
Yeah yeah, yeah exactly, and so uh that will that will become kind of like increasingly important over over time. But he was always trying to overcome that stigma of basically being like a street thug x con from the Russian prison system.
And so how does he then make that jump from being you know, known as Putin's caterer to mean how does that how does he make that jump? So I mean we have to.
Go to and I mean, I guess it's particularly timely. Now we have to understand the context of what is now kind of the first phase of the war in Ukraine, and.
And and and also kind of how how Putin's regime works.
And so a guy like Pregosion, he rises up, he gets these contracts. The Russi state is one, I mean, like any state, but more so than the US, is one with a high amount of ambition on what it wants to achieve, and a lot less capacity and resources to do it. And one of the ways that they filled these gaps within the system is that oligarchs will kind of go out and fund, you know, these patriotic
initiatives for the oligarch. They might not always be making money on it, but it is sort of a form of like virtue signaling, like donating to a political party in a way right in the hopes that it's.
Going to rewards later on. And so if we look.
At what was happening in Russia at the time, it's going to stu like there, you're good.
Cool. If we look at what was happening at Russia, at the time. Here here you go.
Perfect In twenty twelve, there are massive protests against Putin's proposed return to the presidency. And and this is coming on the back of Libya. Yeah, this is coming on the back of Libya, the Arab Spring, the Color revolutions. And Putin eventually returns to the presidency, but he's he's
shaken by it. And there are people from all sorts of ideology, Russian ideologies are marching against Putin, from liberals like Navalni you know who you know was killed much later on, but also a particularly worrisome group which are like the Russian nationalists. And these are I mean, it's pretty nic wolves. I mean, one of them, the night Wolves, were kind of always like pro Putin. There were a lot of guys. I talked to a guy a lot who's in the Russian Imperial movement.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
And these guys are Orthodox and want the return of the Russian Empire, and they want to restore the Tzar a third Rome, and to them, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and and Belarus are the artificial product of the Soviet Union and the Bolsheviks. And so not only is Ukraine illegitimate, but so is the Russian Federation, and therefore so is Putin because he's he's the head of an entity that is illegitimate to begin with, and the tsar is really
what we want to go back to. And so these guys are marching against Putin and and you know, Putin navigates his way through it, but he's shaken progosion, you know, kind of Ever, the astute observer puts out like a big do documentary that called it an Anatomy of a protest, which you know, paints the protesters as you know, like a conspiratorial Western you know, Western students. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, right as kind of Putin is sort
of consolidating again his position. The revolution in Ukraine breaks out that what became known as the mind On Revolution, and as Ukrainians are overthrowing the current government wanting to go on a pathway to the EU and towards the West, the Kremlin makes the decision that they're going to seize Crimea in twenty fourteen. There are a number of reasons they do it. It was a very top down decision. I mean, as you remember, probably it was a pretty
well done operation. In terms of of lack of bloodshed and UH and effectiveness. And Russia's Black Sea fleet is there. It's a warm port. It's important to Russians Russian history in their mind as it's important as a vacation spot. Russians fondly think of Crimea. They they they the Russians turn to a mix of special forces and also these kind of nationalistic volunteers, like these Cossacks and guys who
come in and kind of provide muscle security. Uh, and like a degree of like this is a local thing, right.
Yeah, the little green men that they talked about.
Like little green men, but then also just these like tough guys who know who aren't even who like could be local might not be local. And uh, they they get through, they take it. They they pass a referendum where Crimea votes for UH to join the Russian Federation. Kremlin thinks is basically done in dust. But at the same time, there are these other regions, particularly in eastern Ukraine, the coal mining region of Dnbas, where the kind of
counter revolution or anti Maidon movement is taking place. In These people are taking over administrative buildings, declaring potentially themselves separatists and they're expecting the Russian state to come in, just like they did in Crimea. That the Russian state doesn't want to go in. They don't want to annex these territories. It's not the same thing as Crimea. They
don't want more sanctions, they don't want more isolation. But Putin also can't be seen as among the Russian public of like letting these guys in Eastern Ukraine kind of being hung out to dry. And so the government is the Kremlin is trying to figure out how do we support these guys while not supporting them, and so they
turn to a number of different things. They start letting through volunteers across the border to go and support the separatists, and then they turn to some of these groups that form these mercenaries quote unquote at the time, who formed these units to crossover to support the separatists. And of course, again you need a sponsor for these types of things,
right financially and politically. And so a guy Yevgani Pregosion comes into contact with a gru Russian military intelligence former military intelligence Officermitri Utkin, who has a group of about I think fifty mercenaries at the time, and that forms the nascent Wagner group, which goes into Luhansk and starts supporting the separatists.
And then at around the same time as Ukraine is happening, Syria starts happening. So how does he then goes from that initial contract in eastern Ukraine and then you know, the Russians make their presence into Syria. Yeah wait year was that twenty? Yeah? Exactly.
So it's interesting because initially the guys in Eastern Ukraine they provide support, and then the Russians start sending in more just kind of covert, actual military guys in and these are also the little Green Men. And the idea is they want to they want to get towards some sort of ceasefire. They want this thing to be over with. The first deal doesn't go through Minsk one. It was called those negotiated in Minsk, and so they're trying to
get another ceasefire in Minsk two. The issue is is that especially a lot of these kind of volunteers and separatist leaders who have gone from being like you know again like gopnik, like mechanic, to like owner of a fiefdom world like we have warlord. I mean basically warlord.
They're like, why would we stop? And so Wagner becomes the enforcer and so they start assassinating these kind of wayward separatist leaders as the Kremlin decides, we have to take control of these kind of separatist areas and then negotiate and get some sort of ceasefire, and so in twenty fifteen Minsk two is signed, in the front sort of stabilizes, and a lot for a lot of these volunteers, right,
they just are like they go home. A lot of them hate Putin actually, and they they're disappointed that the Russian state is now in eastern Ukraine.
I thought it was interesting that you kind of keyed in on the liquidations on their side, because I remember hearing about at the time some of the people either they were involved in too many war crimes or they were involved in the shooting down of the Malaysian airlines. But those people like got disappeared, a lot of them because there's just going to be too much of an embarrassment. Yeah, they got moved.
I mean Strelkov, who was kind of a very famous guy, the guy who like shot the first first shot of the war, who was another one of these volunteer guys who was involved in the Malaysia air downing. Yeah, they quietly moved him like into Russia. They couldn't they couldn't disappear him. But there were a number of again like militia leaders, Cossic leaders. One guy Batman was his kind of call sign, nickname. He was gunned down, and then a Cossack leader his car exploded on the way to his wedding.
Car bomb went off.
I mean, they were all just disappearing, not really disappearing, integrating in mysterious ways. And we know that Wagner was
part of at least one from internal documents. But anyways, kind of the opportunity right is diminishing in eastern Ukraine as the front is settling, and like you said, like luckily enough for Progosion, Russia overtly intervenes in Syria, and I want to say September twenty fifteen, and you know, one of the reasons that they do it is because they're isolated and they want to force the Americans into sort of a joint counter terror operation against ISIS, and
so Progosians lobbying to get his guys in. They come in in very late twenty fifteen early twenty sixteen. No one really knows what they're doing and like why they're there. They do training of like local assad forces, and then they get hit by uh, they get hit I think by a missile or something. A bunch of guys die, and the mod the Ministry of Defense panics, and they
decide to send them home. And then it became very clear that that Russian air power alone was not going to do the job against both the rebels against Asad or Isis, And so Wagner comes back in and they partner with a local Syrian PMC, and they start an offensive on Latakia and eventually they take Palmira.
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And there's not a lot of love as you probably sign the book between like the Syrians and in the Wagner guys, and this is this is going to be a recurring theme. So they take Palmyra and then again they're sent home. The mod basically says thanks for everything, and then they lose the city again.
And they lose the city.
They take all the credit, which is always an issue in Russia right because credit credit means like allocation of resources, you know. Being on Putin's radar.
I mean, it was interesting in a lot of these offensives in Syria where it seems like they'd use the Wagner guys as like shock troops, and then afterwards they'd bring in spetsnaz dudes to do like the video interviews, you know with the Russian press, like oh, yeah, we captured Palmyra, it's all right. Yeah. I mean that that was one of the things.
And the Wagner guys were even frustrated too that they felt that the Syrians were taking advantage of that and kind of the Syrians would kind of, you know, slowly disappear, you know, from the action, and so they felt like they were being you know used, yeah, and in all sorts of ways being thrown into it.
So this is my point that I forgot earlier that maybe we can come back to here this might be a good point, is that we have this perception, I think a lot of us in America and in the West, that Wagner is the Kremlins proxy that they you know, they issue their orders to this PMC and they go out there and fulfill the mission in Central Africa or Cyrea or wherever it is, which is generally true, but you point out that it's a little bit more complicated
than that, and that Wagner is also profit oriented and they are rent seeking, so they're out there looking to do for profit operations and sometimes just doing their own thing. And that brings us into the Arcadie oil fields and the Kenoko facility specifically.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean I think and I feel like you probably understand and in your audience probably understands this better than the most, Like you know, like, how does any government function? And I mean especially you know, how does Russia function? Like Putin has the same twenty four hours as we have. Right, the guy is not able to sit in front of a map and just be like I want us to be in the Central
African Republic. They're you know, Russia is filled in the same way that America is filled with entrepreneurs who were going out there and kind of lobbying for what they think policy should be, and very often their lobbying in a way that is kind of politically you know, an officials in their self interest or I mean, like our capacity for rationalization is infinite, and so you know what's why.
We think he's making He's a chess master moving these pieces.
But it's also you know, like it's not even and I try to explain too to people like, uh, you know, Russia is now a version of a capitalist society, right, and so as Americans, we don't think it's counterintuitive that you can uh kind of further the well being of your country and make money at the same time. Like that is American, you know, if you know, like Lockheed Martin will never say we're a profit driven company. They will say they will say protecting We're protecting the homelander.
But there are also profit driven and so you know, there are versions of this in in Russia that might look a little bit more you know, uh in some cases, like a little bit more kind of rough around the edges, I suppose, uh, and not as polished. But you know that is kind of how things are also done at
at a basic human level. And so you have both the supply and the demand, and you have a lot of you know, guys, you can have guys like Progosia who are going out there and trying to push things to right right and and so yeah, like you said,
they get they get kicked out of Palmir. They the Assad loses Palmir again, the Russians lose it again without Wagner to Isis, and so Wagner is brought back in, but this time Progosion signs a deal directly with the Asad government, saying, you know, we'll go after uh, we'll go after Isis, but we get twenty five percent of the proceeds from any oil and gas assets that we capture in this or that we kind of return and
you know this sounds good. They come in. Yeah, they launch an assault, they retake Palmyra, They're heading straight, you know, straight to the Euphrates. Isis at this point is falling back. You have at the same time, the the SDF, the Kurds backed by the Americans coming in through the northeast. Yeah, initially had towards Rakka at the time, I think as the as the Russians in Wagner were moving up. And at a certain point in late twenty seventeen, a couple
of things are coming together. Right. It seems clear that Isis is collapsing, and it seems also clear from letters Provosi was sending to Asad that he wasn't getting paid for all the money that he was investing in this offensive on Isis, and he's complaining. He's like, you know, we've recovered x you know, oil fields and YadA YadA, and you know you're not making us whole. I'm losing a lot of money here and there are everyone knows
about in Syria. Everyone knew about these Conico facilities, which are sort of like the big money maker. It was isis's big money maker for for fuel smuggling, sort of the prized asset. And and so as it looks like ISIS is collapsing, both groups now are kind of positioning themselves for what the post isis future is going to be. And so uh, the SDF starts getting away from Rocca and and down into de Rezor, and the Russians are
Russian up and and the SDF takes Kaniko first. Uh and and you might know better than me, but I mean there was obviously some you know, US special forces who are around and U and Conico lies right on the other side of the Euphrates, which also happens to be the deconfliction line between Russia and and ASSAD forces
and the the SDF and and US. And so that poses a problem for a Progosia who really wants these Conicico facilities you want to just go into the Yeah, I mean his he thought that we would just give it up, right, I think so, so, I think so and so so. So what happens is Progosian decides he's going to take a gamble. And I've talked to like a bunch of people in Wagner about how they think it probably went down.
I'm sure you have something do you think. Do you think like it was like a fate accompany on Progosian's part, like he's like, we'll go do this in the Russian government will have to back us up.
I think it was. I think it was part that I think I think and I mean this is also how Russia works too. I think I think that he thought that at the time that the Americans would fall back, and he probably got like a wink and a nod from some guys in the Ministry of Defense saying for.
Works, it works. Yeah, yeah, you know that's a very Russian.
Yeah, like you know, and if it doesn't, you know, it doesn't work. And and so I think he got some sort of signal like that, and you know, if it does work out, big victory. If it doesn't, you know, it's mercy you know, it's a PC, it's a PMC whatever. And so he decides to take the gamble. He's going to try to take Konnico from from the SDF and the Americans. And and this is on February eighth, twenty eighteen.
In the evening, they they they gear up, and they start rumbling towards closer I think to midnight, if I remember correctly, and that the Americans see this whole build up happening, and they're calling over the deconfliction line to the Russian mod being like, is this are these your guys? And three times the Russians say, no, they're not. And so I think it was on the third time. And again we probably have people listening in who know the
American side much better than I do. But on the third time, the Americans just got permission to them to
hose them. And I mean, you probably know. I mean, I think it's fair to say that the amount of firepower that the Americans brought to this force was overwhelming and probably not necessary other than to send a message, because I mean this was probably like I would say, a force of maybe like three hundred guys most, and you know, there were some tanks and but it was mostly guys just you know, and I mean we were flying.
In apaches overhead, just machine gun those dudes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so it was just an absolute just they got absolutely destroyed. And and then finally, in the early hours of the morning, they the Russians, you know, ask for a pause so that they can go collect their dead. And and and that was that. Progosia never tried to cross the Euphrates again. And uh, and he never really talked about it again. Like when I talked with the guys in Wagner, like, it wasn't you know, for them, it was like.
Okay, another day in the office, Yeah, moving on.
Yeah, And it wasn't really it was something that was kind of like legendary within the community, the Wagner kind of community, but it was not something that they you know, that they brought up.
And then he starts making the jump into Africa right around, yes, a little bit before. And so this is where we I think we start getting into all the different kind of versions of Wagner, right and so and I think probably I think the way that I think about it too, is that the that the relationship between Wagner and the state depended on UH, the context and and and and the geographies, the theaters in which they were operating and UH, Ukraine, I mean, obviously then and even more obviously now is
something existential to to the Russian state. UH And until Wagner was working quite closely with the Ministry of Defense, and and there are all other kind of types of security institutions that are there, right, the F s B, the g R, U, s v R, and the same in Syria. That was an overt There was nothing covert about Syria. It was an overt Russian military intervention. No
one was trying to hide anything. Wagner's usefulness was much more plausible deniability back home that the official statistics of Russians soldiers coming home in caskets was much lower because they were contractors over there, and so the Russian public wouldn't question too much why are we in this far flung location. Do you think that's a lesson that the Russians learned? I mean, and I think you may have
pointed out even in the book. It's like the Russians don't need to mimic the West in order to come up with something sneaky. But I mean, do you think they saw the Blackwater model and saw that, well, that's something we can use to affect Russian foreign policy without as much blowback.
I think so, I mean, especially in Syria, I think that I think that was a a more conscious decision because that was the first that was the first time that that Russia the state was really moving outside of what it considers it's near abroad of you know, the former Soviet Union. And I don't think that there was an incredible amount of support at that time for intervention
in military adventures, and so Wagner kind of helped. And and there's you know, there's also that very specific kind of Russian experience in the nineties in Chechnya, and you know, the kids coming home in caskets, and and the mothers who are very effective political force in Russia compan and so and so they you know, I think that they also you know, probably chance, I mean they they they've surely were watching what America was doing in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and they were certainly picking up on how many contractors were over there.
We know that because.
General Garassimov even you know, mentions the use of Western you know, pmc's in their mind to overthrow these governments and and what have you. But I think I think that they saw I think that that that's how they that they recognized that as something useful and that was probably worth imitating. And I think that Pregosion too, now that he had this mercenary force underneath him, kind of envisioned himself as a sort of Eric Prince or you know, maybe even Barlow or you know, one of these kind
of big entrepreneurs and in this space. But to go back to kind of what you were saying, once you get outside of Syria, like Russia's footprint in these other places is very light, and and we know that because
just the state isn't really there. And and so I talked with one one guy who was the head of Progosian's gold mining operation in Sudan, and the way that he told me about kind of how everything went down was that in twenty sixteen, a a probably a g r U guy goes to Pregosan in Saint Petersburg and it's like, hey, I got an opportunity to like dig gold in Sudan.
You interested?
And Progoshian obviously is like Progosian, and so he's like, yeah, hell yeah, And so he sends this guy who I talked to Patiopkin to go there and this guy again this is like as we get back to like what is like who are these guys? And like are they're ten feet tall? Like they're kind of just like buddies in Saint Peter's They're all kind of part of the
same like little network. And then you know, someone is like, oh, my cousin is like real good at this, and okay, send them the Sudan see if you could like do a gold feasibility study, you know, and like and so like he goes down there and he realizes that these guys are all like swindlers, and he goes back to Progosion and he's like it's not gonna work and he's like, you don't know anything about gold, which is like true, he did it, and so then and so then they
he's like, go back and figure it out. And so then he goes back and figure it out, and they end up like inking this this deal between Sudan and Russia, that that that Russia will provide military trainers not something that is like totally unknown in the West by any stretch, and and would also get these kind of concessions in gold mine. Uh and and that's kind of what kicks it off. And then Progosian starts sending out his associates doing business development in a way.
The something I want to get into and maybe a surprising part of your book was you talk about twenty eighteen in Wagner Group in Madagascar, which I had not
heard about before. Yeah, and this may be a good point also to point out that Wagner was not just a mercenary organization in the sense that like sending in shooters and fighters, right, that there's a more robust support system there that like he brought in like political analysts for some things, got information operations, disinformation operations, and like it sounded like some election racketeering going on in Madagascar.
Like I think you say something that like they try to work with the incumbent, but then they see that's not going to work, so they go to like his competitors, the ally with some guy who's named like doctor Doom or the Profit of Doom or something. It's like a cult lead. Yeah, he was a cult leader. It's like this like this, this is fucking crazy.
Oh my god, there's so many every story is just
like it's they. I mean, they were just always up to just crazy insane stuff, but like yeah they Uh, the president of Madagascar shows up in Moscow and he meets with Progosion, and then the Russian leadership talks about how he wants, you know, their help, and so Progosion says, oh, I have these like political guys who political consultants who can go down and uh and I mean this is so all of these things like like I think, like what we're thinking of when we're thinking about Wagner, like
these are all it's I mean, I'm sure the audience knows this. It's kind of like well known, but like there wasn't like there was no LLC Wagner LLC registered some where in the Cayman Islands, right.
It was.
It became a collective term for all of the companies that and shell companies and what have you that revolved around progosion. And this guy was like if he had love in life, it was to create shell companies and like and have ever more complex like like financial like financial structures and and so he but a lot of
it was born first like in Russia. Right. And so there's that scene as well, with a friend of mine who who went undercover at the Internet Research Agency, which became like super famous obviously during the twenty sixteen president
US presidential elections for interference. And the start of this whole like troll farm thing was kind of just to go after progotions, like opponents at home and just like post about them and to like post shit posting, just like shit posting and like shit and and like giving like good comments about like his catering company, you know, like and.
Then but he's he's he he.
Is to his credit, he is incredibly entrepreneurial and he understands and he's always thinking about how can I like create synergies between these various businesses that I'm trying to get into, and so he develops like the slew of
services that can be offered. And so in this in Madagascar, it's political consultants and they're coming out of that Saint Petersburg scene around progotions, and so yeah, they go down and like I mean, they they don't know anything about Madagascar and it's politics, and so like he said, they first start backing and they make like a lot of mistakes that like like I don't even think like deliberately just like accidentally breaking a lot and stuff like that,
like you know, like starting a newspaper at like so that was like illegal. They like give out these pens that like misspell the president's name and uh. And then they end up like realizing that he's going to lose, and so then they oh and so then they also like have this new Candidate's like a lot of guys running in this election, so they're going around and trying to find like the right one and they there's this guy pastor my home who runs the Church of the Apocalypse,
and that sounds promising. Yeah, and like twenty years earlier, God told him that he would be president of Madagascar, so that's why he's running. And the Russians like give him money and like obviously that doesn't like work out and and so but in the end, one of the guys who they you know, gave ended up winning. But you know it wasn't. Yeah, I mean, and I think again we get back to like often bumbling through.
You could write that into a novel and people like come on, yeah and stop me, like like that's too over the top. That would never happen.
I mean, I mean, they continued to do, like you know, and in Car they're opening breweries and like vodka distilleries and then like like like attacking the other brewery that's operating there.
I mean, they're always up the So they got in their hooks and pretty good. It sounds like Sudan was sort of like their foothold in Africa.
Dan was inal, but like very quickly after that they go on this quick like period of like and so in in in Central African Republic, they they're someone in the Central African probably reaches out to them saying, hey,
are you interested in in something similar? They get everything put together and they get that through in twenty seventeen too, and so they touched down there in twenty eighteen and then I mean probably six months after that, Progosians meeting with Hoftar and Libya and so they're like he and and you know, for every one of those they're they're like throwing things against the wall, right like we should see if there's anything in Zimbabwe, we should see if
there's anything in like Congo, South Sudan. And so they're out there trying and these are the ones that like stuck c Ar.
I mean, that's where it sounds like, you know, these guys really became like comic book villains. I mean, you have the quote in there from somebody like, yeah, they told us to kill the women and children because it'll terrorize the rebels, and you know, like, holy shit, tell us about you know, the Black Russians, these like death squad ops that they went on and they these commanders of names like Zombie and Lotus.
I mean, it's I mean, Central African Republic was also. I mean that's why I spent the most of my time. I met a bunch of the guys over there, the Wagner guys over there. I traveled like throughout the country, and I think it was I think it was the most interesting case just in general, right because.
They uh they yeah.
So, I mean the first thing that they do when they show up there is the car government owns just like basically the capital, and it's all these predatory armed groups in the countryside. And so Progosion and his gets his guys together and they decide they're going to like get a piece deal between the car government and all these armed groups and and and there's a fun section about how they go about that, and they do it, and and and they they they bring them all in
and and it's looking good. They're gonna now there's kind of territorial integrity, figure out how to how to do mining and and they I mean this was also a good like peace was good. Yeah uh, And but you know, the elections are coming up. It's very destabilizing that the agreement can't hold. And and six of the armed groups joined together to form a new armed coalition and they
start going down to take Bangi. And I was in Bangee at the time when when this was all going down, and and that's when like things really changed and and Wagner's mission went from like a training mission like it was in Sudan. Decision was made to defend Bangi. And so they they bring in like fifteen hundred to two thousand guys from Syria and it becomes the Syrian Operation just in in are they defend Bangi, which like even like humanitarians and everybody like quietly thanks them for doing.
And this is the weird things that happen on the ground, right, And then they go on the counter offensive and it's very effective. And like Central Africans for the most part are very happy unless they're from some of the groups that are perceived to be as supportive of the armed groups, because, like you said, the Russian the Russian doctrine around counter insurgency is not like the same as kind of some
of the other models. And so in some of these communities where they perceive them to be as supportive of the armed groups, very often it's ethnic. They again, they employ these tactics which are just you know, scared, you know, create intense pain, scare the shit out of people. There's a lot of killing in the belief that they won't support armed groups or harbor armed groups.
Again, and.
In the case of the Central African Republic, it is it is relatively effective and also relatively popular among the general population that you know, for them, they've lived in precarity and in conflict for like twenty years. Like this, it's not the idea of people dying is not. It's also the poorest, least developed country in the world, like you know, at least one in five babies doesn't make
it to one. I mean, so this is a you know, and so for most people it's a question of you know, is my life better under the armed groups or vawr am I able to go to my field and cultivate and do a little farming and go to the next village without getting killed and robbed, and uh, for a lot of people, that was better despite the brutality that that was going on.
At the same time. Let's jump a little bit into Libya. Yeah, an interesting, there's a lot of interesting stuff. Yeah, with with saf Gadaffi and then Turkish intelligence gets in sending Syrian mercenaries and like this is like also kind of mind boggling.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean they're yeah, I think one of my favorite favorite I mean it's always tough. It's like my favorite and tragic moment.
Your favorite, thank you, John. Yeah, yeah, my favorite tragic moment.
Is Yeah, like you said, so, uh, progusion kind of well, I mean we can go into there's that interesting section where kind of pregosion is actually muscling his way in likely a little bit into the Libya portfolio from some guys who are connected to the FSB some other kind of smaller Russian PMC rivals, and and but he does get in there, he strikes a deal with Huftar and the Libya. I always wanted to put Wagner in the overall context of these conflicts, right, they are a piece of the puzzle.
They never are.
The reason that there was civil war in Libya or the Central African Republic. And so to put them in the context of Libya, I wanted to talk about all of the different kind of mercenaries who or security entrepreneurs or contractors, what have you, who were operating. And I mean when it came to Hufftar's attack on Tripoli and started in April twenty nineteen, I mean he had the armed groups, rebel groups from darfour. There were the like ex Janjawee guys who had fought the darfour armed groups
that were fighting alongside them. There were the chatty and rebel groups. You had, yeah, yeah, Tarek you had, you had, you had Wagner coming in. All of this is kind of backed by the UAE financially. Some American security entrepreneurs are around and about and and and initially kind of the offensive is going well. They're on the outskirts of Tripoli,
the southern suburbs called Ainzara. But as the the government in Tripoli is increasingly kind of worried, they they sign a memorandum of understanding with Turkey on maritime boundaries that just so happened to like I think trot like a straight line from like you know, Tripoli to Turkey. That like you know that like puts all of like like Cyprus in, you know, all of the East Men is now all of a sudden like Turkish like territory.
Oil going out. Yeah yeah yeah.
And and so in exchange air Towan UH taps the Turkish intelligence, the Turkish military advisors start coming in, the Bairoctar drones start coming in, and then through Turkey's own very close to the state PMC saddad Uh, they start shipping in Syrian mercenaries from uh the territories that are
under Turkish control in Syria. And then was a small strip and small strip that they had moved, yeah, that they had buffered into a lot of guys from the from the SNA and UH kind of these a hums up militias who.
Are over there. I mean that sounds really bad, like the the Italians have this saying the slaves of the slaves. Yeah, if you're a Syrian mercenary working for a Turkish PMC and Libya, like that sounds like not a a yeah, your life expectancy.
Yeah, And I know there were guys I interviewed for it, and you know, they it was always interesting they get people's different perspectives of the different conflicts in which they were in and and for these guys and were well, I mean they they fought in Syria, like they were saying, for the most part, like.
It's just like a lot.
Of like you know, you know, shooting like this, and they were like, yeah, the like the artillery was like never accurate, so we didn't have to worry too much. And all of a sudden, they're on the Libyan front with like you know, effectively like Turkey versus Russia and UAE, and the Libyans have a lot of money and so you know, I don't know if you've ever managed to
go through Libya, but like it's it's very different. Like the militias like have a lot of money, and so they have like this is oil money, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's just like billions of dollars swimming around there, and so so it's very different. And so they show up on this front line there's drones going and they're like, what the hell did we get ourselves into? And uh, and some of them are like want to go back, and the Turks are like, you're not going back at all.
And they then they find out like that they don't really have weapons, and there's a lot of like captagon and drugs getting smuggled in, which Libyans don't like, the local Libyans don't want them there, and so it's it's a total mess. And of course the Turks had like delegated the recruitment to the cert to the Syrian commanders, and so the Syrian commanders and so it just becomes like a cash scheme and so the Syrian commanders start sending guys over, they collect the salaries, and then the
guys aren't getting paid. It's just a total mess. And then Wagner starts recruiting Syrians from a SOD controlled territory and so now they're bringing in Syrians and there's this This was kind of the tragic moment I'm talking about, where you have this situation where Syrians who had fought each other in Syria are now facing off against each other in triple in Libya and it's surreal and it and it and it was one of those things where you're like you're like, like it feels significant, but I
can't quite put my finger on why.
You put your finger on it. Maybe earlier on in the book where you talk, if I recall correctly, I mean I may have read this elsewhere about like the period of Italian history where of mercenary fiefdoms, Like it feels very much like that, sort of like you know, early Renaissance era.
Yeah, And I think that this is like where I was trying to get out, you know, the subtitle is.
Like the New Era, right, And and that.
Was always tough to try and tease out as well, because we've had mercenaries for as long as we know, and so you know, people, what is new? And then what is new is that we're returning to something kind of in a way, right, But what is different is that the the technology has changed, the logistics has changed, and and and the resources that are at these people it's global, it's global. And so this became kind of in a way like the dark underbelly of globalization.
Right.
But the same the same processes that come together that allow Amazon Prime to give me, you know, deliver something same day to me, are also making it possible to ship you know, Syrians relatively easily from from Syria to another location to fight, and the distances is collapsing.
Let's jump into at least I feel like we should touch upon briefly mozam Beacon, Mali. Yeah. Yeah, those were two other places that Wagner went into, tried to go into. Yeah yeah, uh yeah, Mozambique. Again.
This is during this period of kind of intense expansion, you know, trying to get everywhere, and in one of the places where they they successfully managed to get in was in in Mozambique.
Uh.
And just immediately the mission is a disaster. And I talked to some Russians about it, and and they said that actually in this case, like Progosion was being warned by people in the MD that it's like not a good idea to go in. The politics at the time were not conducive.
Uh.
There there was a big piece deal that was about to kind of come together after decades of conflict between for Limo and and Renamo.
Uh.
For those organizations even still around.
Yeah, I just forget the crazy Cold War relics. And then there's a big division between uh, the the the police, Uh, the police and and the and the army. Uh and they hate each other's guts. And and then this thing, this kind of unknown thing is kicking off in the north and Cablo Delgado where at the time, like no
one really knows what's going on, but there's there's an insurgency. Uh, and it's getting close to these massive like LNG fields that are owned, not owned, but being exploited by the French.
So tell LNG is a light natural gas.
Yes, yeah, and and so of course progosions like perfect, like let's go in and uh, and he inks the deal. And they show up and like they don't like no one knows why they're there, like, uh, it's not clear what the what the mandate is. The guys decide that they want to actually go like to Cabo Delcado where I can't remember if it's like around this time that they declare themselves an ISIS affiliate, and so all of a sudden it's you know, oh my god, you know, uh,
you know what's going on in Cablo Delgado. And so they they show up, they're in they're in this kind of dense jungle that they're not prepared for. They they have a bunch of drones that they can't use, and and they they basically fall into these ambushes, lose a bunch of guys, and you know, I like I think and I put in the book, like I think the standard kind of story was like, oh they lost a couple guys and or they lost guys, it's a failure, like and they leave.
And I think kind of like tied to like.
Our whole previous like what we were talking about previously, Like Prusian was like pretty use it, like he had a high tolerance for losing guys if it was worth it, right, Like I mean this is after Hasham right where he Hasham the Knico fields in Syria and they had lost you know, maybe around ten guys or something like that in Mozambique. I think the reason that he pulled out was that the the the first of all, there was
one institution that that hated him. And then I don't think that he saw a way that he could sell it back to the Kremlin in a way that would result in kind of meaningful subsidies.
And slept out repeatedly. I think that for Russia, Africa was just not a priority like which which makes it kind of interesting that he was gallivanting all around North and Central Africa.
So like the thing that I wish like I was would have been. And like I know the guy and he talked to me for the book and he like saved this whole quote like after the book gets published. But he likes to think of himself. He works it for a Russian PMC. And he likes to think of himself, as you know.
And he is.
A historian and kind of an intellectual as well. And the way that he described that he was, he told me, he's like John, you have to go back and look at how Russia conquered Siberia. He said, the way that it happened, you know, this is like the sixteenth century. Is a Cossic leader. He goes to the czar and Yudamak is a guy's name, and he says, you know, give me the troops and give me the funds, and I'll go conquer Siberia for you. And the Tsar goes,
that's interesting. Prove to me that you're successful, and then I'll give you the funds. And so Yimah goes to like the boyars the barons around and he raises up the money from them to to uh to go out, and then he starts conquering Siberia. He starts running into issues when he when he's at the at the Chinese border. So he goes back to the Tzar and says, you know, like I need I need your help, and the Tzar says, sure, we're taking this over.
We got it from here. And he gets kicked out.
And and he and and and you know, the the guy, you know, the guy who works at the Russi of PMC is like in this sense like what he like Progosian was working as he was in a very Russian style and in in Africa.
That's how he put it.
And it's sort of the Francis Drakemonk right, where like you go and you plant the flag in the name of the state and you're hoping that the state is then going to like come in.
It's it's interesting with Progosion and also with Eric Prince who sends that bitterness like neither of them I think really understood at the time that they were being used as tools by the state apparatus, right, it.
Was only in retrospect that yeah, And I mean I think you know, and and Eric is a good example of a guide too, who goes out there and is looking you know, is looking forward for these opportunities, these opportunities that you can then you know, the primary client is really the you know, your own government, right, and you know for a PMC, what what is kind of you know, what I would think is sort of the sweet spot is you have to find these places that
present a threat of some sort, right, or a need of some sort to your home government. The threat can't be so high that the government wants to descend in its own troops. But it can't be like too low, because then why would they find. Yeah, and so you have to find something that's like kind of right at that perfect like we should be there, but like not too much.
And that's like the sweet spot. Low intensity conflict low the conflict in Africa is and that's why everyone is there. And and so you know, you you talk to Eric.
And and and some of his guys, I mean they were oscillating around, you know, orbiting the same opportunities, right. Progotionon got into Mozambique because he was able to underbid those guys so much because he was initially able to labor is cheap, Yeah, labor is cheap, but also he had he had that preferential access to Putin, and he had deep pockets himself that he was willing to invest
like crazy money in for a long term investment. And Mozambique though he couldn't get it to work for whatever reason on the economics.
And on the political So Ukraine take two, Yeah, we get into the twenty twenties, tell us a little bit. This was an interesting thing interesting lead in. Tell us about like Russian imperial myth making in that period and how it kind of intersects with Wagner.
Yeah, I mean it's sort of the like imperial boomerang effect, right where the policies and the periphery kind of come back home.
In a way.
And so over time, I think the the you know, the Kremlin more generally in Putin as well, like come to kind of believe their own myth making about Russia as this powerful state, about you know, the west in Ukraine. Putin is going to be this next you know, the leader that returns Ukraine back to the fold.
And so at least you know, Putin.
Himself becomes like also personally obsessed with this, especially during COVID nineteen. He's like a famous germophobe. Yeah, he he isolated, He's very good at isolating anyone who wants to see him, even like his best friends. You know, they have to quarantine for like three weeks. The Progosion isn't a best friend. You know, Progosion is a guy who can like get his He's an acquaintance and like he can get his ear. Putin likes him because he's like rough around the edges.
You know, he's a little bit different and he'll do whatever, you know, Putin says. But you know he's not he's not like the closest confidant and so and as you can imagine, like Progosion too has made a lot of enemies as he's been going around doing all of the crazy stuff that he does. Uh and so uh, you know, the decision is made that you know that the from the from the Russian perspective, the Ukrainians are not willing, you know, to come to a final resolution on Crimea
and Eastern Ukraine. They need to be you know, the regime in Kiev needs to be overthrown. They think that this will be a relatively easy thing. All the guys, all their spies who are basically like not working that much in Ukraine or just sending them back like, yeah, they love Russia over here, you know, what have you. And so they're they're believing their their own kind of it's it's a it's a circular information space, right, they
believe what they're producing, the information that they're producing. And so the for the operation, the Ministry of Defense initially does not want to go have progotion there. He's a thorn and their side in so many different ways, and so they try to raise their own what they call p mcs, but I mean they're really kind of just volunteer.
But I mean, they thought this was this was a three day you don't you don't need to bring in these PMCs.
They raised their PMCs for their for their own reason that you know, they think if we if we need them, we got them. But they really thought that this was going to be very quick, like you said, like three days,
and uh, it very clearly was not. And so uh it's already going pretty poorly for the Russians, like I mean almost, I mean immediately and and and a few weeks in and Provosion finally gets to call that he's allowed to get his Wagner guys in, and he was pissed about not getting in because this is I mean, this is where you make real money, right, I mean, this is the full scale war. Central African Republic is
nothing to the Kremlin. This is this is everything the Putin too, And so he gets his guys in ironically like they're mercenaries, contractors, what have you. But these guys are like have have had more experience than you know, most people in most soldiers in the Russian military, even some of the special forces guys. Right, they they've been in the interim, they've been fighting on the ground in Syria,
throughout Africa. It's not going to be the same thing by any stretch, but they have more experience, and so they start to make a difference and progosion.
All of a sudden is you know, in the limelight.
He officially is, you know, the founder of Wagner. He's in Putin's good graces, and he starts promising ever bigger things. He eventually promises bach Mout that he's going to take bach Mout, and the mod too is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front, and so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of you know, cool guys in the Russian context, of you know, to bring in men to recruit. So
the billboards are going up across Russia. Join PMC. Wagner, So he's recruiting new volunteers.
And then he gets access to Russia's prison population Project K Project K.
And again we don't know like exactly, I mean it was it was a wink and a nod from the presidential administration that Pregotionion gets this right to do something which is illegal in Russia. And this is always a double edged sword, right because if it works, you're good to go, but if it fails, you know you're going to prison. You're going to prison. And this is always the world in which he's operating, right.
You lay out this like totally insane scene where like a helicopter comes a land it's in prison, gets off and it's like we have special mission for you.
Yeah yeah, yeah no, And it was really and he knew how to ham it up. Now his x Cohn, his history as an x Cohn comes into play because he can speak like the language of prison prison Russian and and he shows up at prisons across the country and he gives the deal of uh, you know, if you if you fight for me, for six months. Uh, you you go free, your your criminal record is expunged.
He is open.
He says, you know, my losses are worse than Stalin groud and uh, and that any deserters will be shot on site. But I mean he taps into this old Soviet history of we will sacrifice, sacrifice and some of the language, and so the Soviet in the Soviet during Stalin during World War Two, he swept to the gulags for persons, and they had penal battalions as well of you know, people who became politically unsavory had their own special units that they would throw into the worst parts
of the fight. And the whole idea was that you atone for your sins with blood. Oh and literally this language actually shows up again in the contracts, that these guys are suns, that it's a chance to atone for their sins, you know, with blood for you know, Mother Russia. And so up to I think fifty thousand guys end
up taking the deal and Progsion they go through. They go through a very intense two week training with like Russian special Forces instructors and like very kind of experienced Wagner instructors, and then they're thrown into the front and and you know, they're used as kind of human waves, going going at first, going first, jumping over and and attacking. And you know, the life expectancy was pretty short. I think about probably half of them, uh perished.
You talk about in the book how they basically use these dudes as like scouts, like to go out and see where the enemy is. Yeah, and like they'd all get wasted and like, oh, okay, we'll send out another group. So you find out a little bit more like oh, that group gets wasted and like okay, so we know they're sort of around that area.
Yeah, And I mean, and it's and the thing is and I you know, I was I was there on the front, and I was talking to the Ukrainians who were dealing with it. And it is obviously incredibly inefficient, but it it is an effective method if you have unlimited access meat.
Yeah.
Yeah, And and so you know, for the Ukrainian I mean, and and you know, we can get into you know, should they have even been defending bak Moot in the first place and not have you know, pulled back to a more strategic position. But uh, for you know, the ratio was created you know, probably like one Ukrainian for every four Russians or something like that.
Was was you know, getting casualtied out.
But in the Russian mindset, they they were using an expendable force and the Ukrainians were losing some of their kind of most talented experienced guys in this fight because again, like you said, they're used to find the positions. You know, if you send out ten guys, you know, eight might, but then two of them do jump in the trend trench. They get you know, one or two, and it's just and lectric, it's just attrition and uh. And this is how progosion is going to to take Bach moved.
And but.
Ultimately he his star is ascending. He's everywhere, he's known internationally. Now Bloomsbery is like, wait, we have a book about this guy, Like why like and I'm sitting there like, oh my god. But you know, his ego is getting increasingly. I mean, he's already a narcissist and very egotistical. It's getting you know, it's reaching all sorts of new heights. And then the Ministry of Defense cuts off his supply of Russian prisoners, which is effectively cutting off his means of taking bach move.
Did they I mean, did they do that for an actual reason? Like I have to think it's not because of like on moral grounds, but it wasn't. Because the Ministry of Defense was also recruiting prisoners. There was This was about the time where the Russian MOD starts taking over the private military companies, right.
It's pretty soon after that. So they cut they cut off Progosion. There's continuing the MD itself is continuing to recruit from prison. So it was not a moral thing.
And but it's like mod's taking control of this.
Yes, MLD is taking control of this, and because the MD has more leverage, they get the Russian Parliament to like rubber stamp rubber stamp like the legal backing for them to be doing this. And so Progosion is getting kind of squeezed out and he's going and he can't get to putin So what's the best way for him?
He is good at recognizing the cards that he has and like the advantage that he has over his opponents, and and where he has advantage in this situation is on social media, posting through it and and uh, you know he's going out there and he's given updates from the front, like much closer than like the Minister of Defense Shoygu is ever going to go. And Shoygu can't post on telegram. He's the Minister of Defense. And so he starts going after the Minister of Defense about how
they're cutting them, not giving these guys enough ammunitions. Here is miammunition like these decaded bureaucrats in their Mahogany offices, you know, they've forgotten like the you know, the average Russian soldier, you know, like you know, and so I mean that's kind of his route to to get back
onto Putin's radar, and it's not working. And and then ultimately, you know, the thing that like snaps is the MLD is pushing for all people fighting in Ukraine to now re sign under contract with the Ministry of Defense, and so for Progosion, who who had mentioned in one of
those like many telegram messages that he's sending. And he does it in such that way that he's like, you know, some people are saying that that, you know, having all this big mercenary army like makes me political or something, you know, and it's like, oh, really, like some people are saying, And so he recognizes him and now and now what makes him political is about to be taken
away from him. And I think though, and if you look at kind of his personality already at this point, like he is not some dude who is going to like fade quietly into the yeah.
Yeah, he's not going to accept the quiet desk job, like no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no log cabin in Siberia. That's like waiting for him to like chop wood before the before the helicopter comes in saying we need you for one last mission. So like uh, and so he he always you know, when in doubt, he doubles down, well speaking of which was talking about the mutiny, Yeah, I mean, and so this is where he he basically decides that the way that he's going to get himself out of this situation with the Minister of Defense shoygu Uh is that he's
going to kill him. And so Bold move hits and and so he he turns you know, his force. They cross uh, you know, from Ukraine into into Southern Russia. They take over the Southern military headquarters through Rostov and Rostov, yeah, Rostov on Dahn and uh, and he's looking for Shoigu and and Shoygu isn't there, and so then he's like they've taken the thing. And I think it's so tough to tell, like how much of this was like playing.
At some point he's kind of clearly freewheeling, you know, like but so they you know, they're, yeah, they're they've taken over this othern military kband headquarters.
He's not there.
Some of the Russian generals are trying to like talk with him and and he's just like, give me Shoygu and and they're like, we can't do that, and he's like okay, and so then and then he declares kind of this march for justice, and he turns his guys from from there and they start heading up the highway to Moscow. And I talked to one of the participants for the book and uh and and and I was like,
what what was your mission? They were like it was very simple, like we were going to try to take over the Ministry of Defense, and like in the process, Shoigu was going to like have been shot, you know, accidentally, but like the whole thing was like kill kill the Minister of Defense and creates some sort of fate accomplice, which sounds crazy that like, oh, because you killed my minister of defense, I now have to name you my
minister of defense. And I think too that he that progosion at that point was also hoping that the Russian military was going to like rise up with him, and that wasn't happening. They're getting closer to Moscow and it's like closer and closer to the point of no return, and like for the first time, he just like calls something off, which is like not his tendency to do.
He did that on his own.
I mean, Lukashenko, the Belarussian leader, broker some sort of agreement. I think he was probably looking for at the next strategy and exit strategy, and so he calls it off, and you know, for the next couple of months, everyone's like waiting, like what is going to happen, and he's moving around everywhere trying. You know, they're making a move to Belarus because Wagner can't be and they've been exiled. They've been exiled, so he's doing this move to Belarus.
But he's also trying to like lobby for them to keep the Africa operations. He's trying to prove you know that that he is still the man to do that. And then ultimately three months later, he gets on a private jet with Utgen, his number two guy, and a bunch of top lieutenants and they take off from Moscow heading to Saint Petersburg and midway through, plane explodes and he comes crashing back down to earth.
So yeah, and yeah, Putin's now famous quote that he was a man with a complicated fate. Yeah, his eulogy.
Yeah, and I mean he even said something. I mean, I'm trying to remember exactly what he said. He said, he said he did a lot of things. Sometimes he did things for me, like, yeah, he was a man of like complicated face. But yeah, it's like yeah, it was yeah. And then like I think a little couple of weeks later, Putin's like, oh, they did the investigation and like someone was drunk with a grenade on the plane.
Sounds legit, and it's yeah, and that was, you know that and there and and that was I mean, there was no effort to like disappear.
They don't want to do.
They didn't want to Yeah, I don't know, it was so there there was no reason too. I mean, it was an extraordinary way to do it.
I was meant to be. Yeah, exactly, I think. I think.
I think though that pregosion again is like speaks to his ego and at the time, because people were like, didn't he like expect And I don't think that he actually did. I think that he somehow thought he had gotten away with that his balls were so big. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think because it only because only that way can you understand how the mutiny could have occurred in the first place. Because again, how are your balls so big
that you like turn on Moscow? Yeah, Like you had to be already like, you know, pretty out there outside a few yeah, a few standard deviations outside of like the norm in terms of like yeah, and so it's so kind of yeah. Inevitably he thought that he got away with it in a way, and and he was the last one to find out. I suppose post pregosion, Uh, what is the present for Wagner? I mean, does it still exist? I mean yes, but it's uh, it's still very much. I mean now it is very much under
the control of the MD and it depends. And again we get back to like each intervention was very different, and so you know, we didn't get a chance to talk too much about Mali. But you know, if we think about like Africa, right the in Libya after Hofftar has failed offensive, there's a ceasefire in October twenty twenty that the Turks on the Russians on either side, who are kind of guaranteeing a stalemate. Nothing's really moving, and
so there are Wagner guys who are stationed there. The mold shows up and it's like, hey, here's you know, here's a new contract most people signed. Sudan at that point had like gone through its own issue of outsourcing like security to paramilitary and is in like a full scale civil war with the RSF and the Sudanese military. But Wagner is still in in Mali and in the Central African Republic and in car.
They show up.
And again this is a place where like it wasn't important, and so progosion had the ability to There was no natural check on him, and so he could expand into whatever opportunity he saw a fit. And so they had breweries,
vodka distilleries. I mean, they were mine like logging, mining, They were doing diplomatic activity, I mean they were doing I mean it was like a kind of a British East India company thing going on, and so the guys in the military like show up and you can imagine these are like, you know, kind of bureaucratic guys, and they look at all of this and they're like, we don't understand what the hell is.
Going on here.
Only the guys who are here do, and like if it's not broke, like let's not it's not it's like not important enough for us to like do you know, So, like I think some bank count numbers shifted in terms of where things are getting transferred, and like some some
people were replaced, but it was left largely intact. And then in in Mali where you have this kind of mix of mod advisors and Wagner on the ground going after only two thousand guys going after two different kind of Jihatis arms one al Qaeda, one isis affiliate, and then they decide to also take on were acceparatists in the north.
It's a full deteriorating situation.
They they don't really know like how to hand it over because resources too are already constrained with everything that's going on in Ukraine, and so they're kind of like trying to fix the plane in the air like as we speak, and so but again, like all of the all of these things still now or you know, there's no kind of like independent.
Aspect to.
The legacy Wagner right now. It's all in one way or another kind of subordinate to the state.
I mean that kind of leads us to like a bigger question for Russia but also for the rest of the world, Like we had these kinds of conversations. I feel like through the War on Terror years, about many conversations maybe over philosophizing about it. You know, the state losing the monopoly on violence and these private military companies and is the state becoming irrelevant or you know, subsiding
and you know, giving way to these transnational corporations. There's like this very large like conversation to have about that in the aftermath of Wagner, because Wagner does sound like it's kind of like the press is worst nightmare about Blackwater, which did some bad things, also did some good things, but you know, but Wagner was really like off the rails and sounds like it became that well. I mean, geez, the mutiny is the epitome of it, right that you
create this monster that's going to come after you. Yeah, what do you I mean, what conclusions do you have about the private military company industry and the future of warfare?
And you know, after writing this book, I think, I mean, I think, I mean, it's obviously here to stay, and I think it's probably only going to grow from from here, if not for the only reason that Wagner self and and Progosion and his associates went out there and they created a market for their product as well. And and now that Wagner has existed, it's again everything is It's like everything right, It's tough to close Pandora's box once. Once something is out there, Even if if Wagner itself
goes away, there are going to be other people. And I think what I what I try to do with this book as much as humanly possible, is make it about like the actual people, because I don't love it when we talk about like, you know, what is Russia doing, or like what is China doing? Like these anthropomorphized like right, you know China is in Africa because you know minerals, and and.
I want, like.
Wagner was a bunch of individuals who go out there and try to do like crazy things, and so inevitably there are going to be uh uh others who, now that this market has been created, will try to imitate it in some way. And so you know, the Sadat who was providing the Syrians is kind of experimenting in that way. There are UAE officials who are thinking about their own foreign legion. Rwanda does kind of a lot of similar things in Africa in terms of the model
of kind of providing troops for mineral resources. And I think overall this is existing in a context of ever increasing outsourcing and privatization under this second Trump administration that that's clearly the direction that I think they want to go. I'm still kind of for the same reason that we
were talking about earlier. I'm still not sure yet if like for some of the top markets for private security, like in Africa, they would are are interested actually in even funding like American p mcs to be over there, or if they're just like not interested at all. And you know, one, if they're not interested at all, it's it's becomes difficult for you know, these PMCs to be operating. But I think that it is an increasingly competitive space too.
And one that will that will only grow. I I what was I gonna say.
I think, you know, ultimately too, like the supply of guys who will be available for this is probably going to increase as well. You'll I mean, if if there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, I mean the the UH, You're going to see a lot of UH guys hovering.
Out of soldiers.
You see a lot of out of work soldiers who will be looking for something on both sides, who will be looking for things to do. So the Ukrainians, I think if there's a ceasefire, will very much get get
involved in this space as well. But I mean, like I think sometimes the whole like is this a threat to the nation state is kind of sometimes overblown because I don't want to Our reference point still is very much the nation state, and and we still very much operate, even even though at the edges it might not really exist. It's still like the reference for us, right.
And and and the PMC is still the tool of the state rather than the other way around.
It's going for the most part, they're going to this, they're going to states looking to like like they're like, I think, like the theory, the theory of like a I mean it happened I think a couple of times in the past, but like the theory of like a PMC going into you know, like eastern Congo and just like setting up like the country of Wagner, right like that would be the international system would pretty quickly like seek to destroy that because you know, the the the paradigm is still.
Yeah, yeah, the system deploys red blood cells.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, very yeah. We like yeah, they don't like, they don't like that. And so I don't think we're we're at any point where anything is where any kind of entity like that is in position to replace the nation state either. But will things be further and further outsourced, Absolutely, and.
We'll create a world where conflict is just more rife, Like are we moving back into this sort of medieval system where city states sponsor mercenary companies and deploy them out against each other, especially Syria? You know, it seems like a harbinger of that. I think in some ways the way these groups came together, like LLCs conflict the conflicts.
I mean, it's an interesting question because and I think it's important and we mentioned it earlier, like PMCs are not the like the source of conflict. Right, there's a symptom of conflict.
There are some tangential exceptions where in the fear is that they are exacerbating the conflict.
The exactly exactly, and so they they certainly can exacerbate, right, and they profit driven reasons for profit driven reasons, I don't think, and and like having spent a lot of time in the central there there's also this theory that like you know, PMCs will like are incentivized to keep a low grade conflict going because that's how they stay hired.
But like, I mean, you know, like anyone, you can't maintain anything like anyone who like tries to like anyone, like just try managing like three people and you realize that you can't like maintain a low grade conflict at like a perfect love. And so like what we attributed to like what people attributed to you know, Wagner like creating you know, more armed group uh insurgents because of its methods.
Uh. You know, they weren't doing that on purpose. It was the result of what they were doing.
But like you said, it can really exacerbate like the war economies, and in a lot of these places, I mean, car is one of them, the Sudan border with Chad. I mean, to bear arms is how you live life. That's the political economy, and that might expand, uh might expand to two more areas. But you know, how these things are solved is ultimately a question of politics and the equitable distribution of political power and resources from you know, among the people of the state.
It's the only way. So the book Death is our business. It's out now. People can find it wherever they shot find books are sold. Yeah, they're out there. Anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to get into, anything that I missed, No, I mean I think I think we've covered like quite a bit. Yeah, we've covered pretty pretty much the story. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Yeah, So guys, go check out the book. Like I said, I read it this week. It's definitely worth your time.
And this guy John speaks like eight languages and he was in that This is really I can say this as a writer and as a researcher like this is one of the stumbling blocks for any type of book like this. It's like I am not bilingual or tri lingual or whatever it is you are, So there's a difficulty in like reaching across these cultural lines, like I can't talk to Russians in Russian, you know, I can't
talk to Afghans and Pashtune. I have this problem. And so you were uniquely positioned, I think to write this thank you, thank you, And I think it comes through uniquely stupid too in a lot of respect. Well, it required it required a little bit of that uh, that egotism right too, that I can go into c R and I can write this book. Yeah, it's okay. A little bit of ambition is a good uh Yeah. Questions, what do we got, Dmitri uh from mccarbon.
Have they ever used Wagner to pull people east of the Urals for the Russian military?
Have they ever used Wagner to pull people.
Even it's like like in Siberia or Central Asia? Yeah, to pull people east of the Urals for the Russian military?
Oh No, I mean the people within Wagner come from all across Russia. Their recruiting offices were from all across Russia. I'm not sure that there's like a massive geographic distinction in terms of where people are from and and and fighting on the front, like a distinction between like it's mostly like European Russians or like you know, people from Siberia or.
Or what have you.
One more question, Adam, have you ever read the book written by a Russian ex Wagner guy who fought in Palmya. It's called the Same River Twice, published in twenty twenty two.
Yeah, yeah, and I know I know Marat who wrote that book, Uh very well. And and Marot also uh shared his story uh again and I cite his book and his story his books, but also he shared uh some some extra stuff as well. Uh.
For this one, I got a question, what's the deal with uh uh pavel progosion? Now? I don't think so Paveo progosion is you've getting progotions? Son.
I think there are kind of these like rumors that he's like the head of Wagner now, but I mean again, I mean, if anything, I think the guys like in a golden cage where the agreement was probably that he can you know, keep some money and like not like do anything that would be you know, considered a threat. And so if he does even have a role, I don't think that he I think, if anything, it would
be as like a figurehead. But I've never seen anything to show that he even has like a serious role at the moment.
So we will see all you guys on Tuesday. For our Patreon subscribers, and if you're not subscribed, there's a link down the description and you can subscribe for just five dollars a month and get access to all of these episodes ad free. And if you subscribe for ten dollars a month, we'll send you the patch, the Team House podcast patch, and we'll also have some links down the description to death is our business. I hope you guys will go and check it out and we'll see
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