Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 112 - Wagner Group

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

The Wagner Group is what happens when money, strange neo nazi cults, and proxy wars have a baby. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-wagner-group-mercenaries-where-operate-2018-4 https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/10/diplomacy-and-dividends-who-really-controls-the-wagner-group/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/russian-mercenaries-wagner-africa/568435/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me as always is your boy, Nick. Thank you, Nick. Yep, that's me. Intro right there. It's a rough day. Really? For the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. Not for you. I'm the sentimental one

of the group, I guess, since I spend too much time in this room. But this will be the last episode we ever record in this studio. Oh yeah, it is. Every episode of this show has been recorded here. And that ends today. Sucks.

Sad day. Yeah. When this comes out, I will have moved across the Pacific Ocean to an undisclosed location. With Jesse Ventura. Hawaii.

It's Hawaii. With Jesse Ventura over there? I hope not. I don't think I need to worry about the predator there. But if I do, I know where to find him. Or the body. Minnesota, I think. Probably.

I don't know. But yeah, this is the last episode of the show we're ever going to record here. At the end of it, we have to thermite the whole thing. To make sure nobody gets our secrets. And nobody finds all the lines that Nate has cut out of the show to save us from being libeled or being brought to court for libel or slander. It's like, aha, all these times that I think one time you called Milk Epsom a pedophile or something. Yeah.

There's that. I believe that was the Patriot episode. He's like, yeah, you guys can't do that. Yeah. I was trying to call him and his character in the movie A Pedophile. Yeah, in Minecraft as a bit. I don't even know what I have to say in order to skirt laws anymore. Yeah.

Anyway, have you ever heard of the Wagner Group? No. I don't blame you. It's kind of their whole reason. They're so secret. But, you know, we've talked about mercenaries on the show. We've had a mercenary on the show. Nice.

You've probably heard of... I've played the game Mercenaries. Which one is... Is that the one where they were in North Korea? I honestly don't remember. Because it was a long time ago. I do remember that there was a ghost recon in North Korea? I honestly don't remember because it was a long time ago. I do remember that there was a Ghost Recon in North Korea. Soldier of Fortune. There we go.

I don't think that was North Korea. Do you remember that game? I do, yeah. It was weird because we've been over this before. It was weird that it had the same name as the magazine, but we're not connected. No, we're not connected. There's going to be a couple names like in the

mercenary world you're going to know like blackwater or dine core or titan or aegis fuck i've had my clothes washed by people who work for dine core um but nobody's now unless you've been paying attention to weird uh national security type people on social media, which I encourage people not to do. They're terrible. I try not to. You've probably never heard of the Wagner group, or you've probably heard them called Wagner.

It's Wagner. It's named after the German composer Wagner, but we'll get to that point. And I really hadn't either until I was reading a news story that came out in 2018 that documented a battle that sounded like it belonged more to a 1980s Chuck Norris movie than real life. Hell yeah. And that was the time. Roundhouse kicks and denims. maybe, purporting to be working for Wagner, maybe, attacked a U.S. base in Syria, definitely,

defended by around 40 Green Berets and some members of the YPG. Heard of it. The battle lasted about four hours, involved multiple airstrikes and gun runs and artillery, and ended with the deaths of maybe hundreds of Wagner mercs or maybe Wagner proxies, but not a single United States killed in action or

SDF either. Maybe. Notice I'm sprinkling that in there a lot. There's a lot of reason for that. One, by nature, this group does everything it can to hide its existence in everything it does. Secondly, I don't want to disappear.

Because they maybe have done that to a few people so you're not going to hawaii i heard no i actually i accepted a new and prosperous uh job position in uh the el nuzra front uh just kidding uh that that's a bit i am not a terrorist no i actually got an email from a nice Russian man in Vladivostok. And he told me not to bring a cell phone. So, like, it's weird. I'll probably never hear from you again. So that's the battle we will talk about eventually. But we do have to get a little bit more into the weeds on this what people have probably not correctly

called russian black water oh uh so what would eventually become known as wagner was founded sometime around 2014 by a guy named dimitri utkin or utkin i'm not entirely sure which he was born in the ussr but more specifically Ukraine in 1970. The man's life is pretty much entirely shrouded in mystery, like you would imagine a guy that we're talking about on this show and a weird Russian mercenary group would be. And there's a very good reason for that. He ended up in the GRU Spetsnaz, the GRU being the main military intelligence directorate. the GRU being the main military intelligence directorate. We've pointed this out before in our Soviet-Afghan war series,

but Spetsnaz isn't really a thing. It's not a unit. It's not like the SEALs. It's an umbrella term for special forces in the USSR and various successor states from that. Everybody has a Spetsnaz. The GRU has a Spetsnaz of Ukraine, like a couple other post-Soviet states do. You can't just say, he was in the spetsnaz uh of ukraine like a couple other post-soviet states do like there's no there's you can't just say he was in the spetsnaz like it's not even a thing uh but yeah like

several different spetsnaz units exist what's actually important is he was in the gru which is spook shit yeah it's more equivalent to the n than anything else okay I guess maybe CIA maybe like CIA paramilitary organization uh it's weird they really don't have an American counterpart that we've ever heard of which I guess is the point uh I guess that's good yeah um that's sure now what he did during his time in the GRU to to the surprise of absolutely nobody, is completely unknown. So yeah, that's kind of the point. Yutkin and the Russian government have not been very open with his service record,

though he does have a Hero of the Russian Federation award, which is weird because he's not Russian. He's Ukrainian. How do you get that award? Service in the Russian army. A lot of them are given out during the Chechen Wars and stuff like that,

but it's probably almost certainly due to his involvement in the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Ukrainian Civil War or the war in the Donbass or also Russia invading Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah.

Though, I will have to say that his service record within the GRU covers both Chechen wars. Oh, wow. Probably dabbled heavily in war crimes, and there's a good chance that's where his hero award came from. I don't know. I'm swinging for the fences here.

It could come from anywhere. Also, it's not like we have a 214 or anything with that on it. He just wore the goddamn thing. But he also had to be staying next to Vladimir fucking Putin. So he probably earned that medal. And since he was in the GRU and probably fought in both Chechen wars, he probably disappeared a lot of people for that little bit of uniform flair. He eventually retired as a

brigadier in 2013, though that definition of retired is pretty fucking tenuous. As soon as he technically kind of became a civilian, he dived headfirst into the wonderful world of private military contracting, also known as being a mercenary.

This just so happened to be around the same time that the Russian government decided it was a really good idea to prop up the Syrian genocidal dictator Bashar al-Assad, noted eye doctor who likes to gas and barrel bomb his own people. Yeah, he's an eye doctor. I don't know why that's the weirdest part of that sentence,

but it is. Russia wanted to get involved, but it wanted to do so in a way that would allow them to be hands-off on the international stage. That golden plausible deniability that every world leader loves, but Russia's always been kind of bad at. Awful. Like if you remember in Crimea, like, look, it's the little green men, as they called them, but they're definitely Russian soldiers. Yeah. It led them to reach out to a company that was called Moran Security.

Like most PMCs, Moran generally did support work, like DynCorp-type stuff, where they supported builders and laundry-type shit. They did some security, too, but what they went to Moran for was kind of what blackwater did back in the day was like we need you to run armed convoys and shit like that like moran didn't do that so they reached out to utkin or utkin whichever i'm calling him he had an idea that would pretty much

do what blackwater did uh that was scoop up highly trained soldiers of the military since they got out of service but before they end up becoming racist cops or whatever it is Russian vet bros do, I legit have no idea. Is there any Russian vet bros? Is there a t-shirt company? Yeah, it's just them, but they're just saying Chechen slurs.

I don't know. I guess it could just be Black Rifle Coffee because they have infidel shirts and stuff. It could be the same thing. There it is. That's like the connection. That's what's finally going to end. I don't think coffee would be that big over there.

It's Russian fucking vodka companies. Yeah. Maybe they say just really hurtful stuff about Armenians. I have no idea. But they're out there. I know they're out there. They have to be. We need to know.

Yeah. If you're Russian, tell us. Don't send're out there. They have to be. We need to know. Yeah. If you're Russian, tell us. Send us a Vetbro Russian t-shirt. No, please do. I would love to see one. Just send a picture. Anyway,

you can find a lot of them. These guys are promised $4,000 a month, which doesn't sound like, so we're used to like crazy, like triple canopy recruiters reaching out to us. Like you're going to make $15,000 a month, which doesn't sound like... So we're used to crazy triple canopy recruiters reaching out to us like, you're going to make $15,000 a month. At least I've gotten those emails before and I knew that had to be a lie because I'm not qualified to do anything. But that's a lot for a US soldier, but even more in Russia. They had a phone interview. So they'd call them like, yep,

I don't know what job you're hiring me for but four thousand dollar a month sounds great like I used to get paid in food this is awesome yeah um and then they had an in-person interview uh with a guy that worked for Moran named Slavic Kalashnikov yeah any relation no okay um yeah so like he now this no okay um yeah so like he now this kalashnikov guy said he was a general in the fsb he is not he never was you get his 214 he actually is a reserve lieutenant colonel um after their second meeting he's the the the the recruit would be given a contract to sign and then was immediately sent out that same day. Um, like so fast that like,

they didn't like, they weren't like warned ahead of time, like bring bags, like bring extra, get on the fucking train. Oh, I see you signed great signature. Get the fuck on the train. Like literally they,

uh, people commented like, yeah, they were signing their contract on the side of the train before they got on it. Really? So these new hires would be the backbone of the Slavonic Corps Limited,

a subsidiary of Moran. Huh. Though, they would try their best and fail miserably to say that the two had nothing to do with one another. Every single one of them would also be breaking the law because under Russian criminal code, it is strictly illegal

to be a mercenary and to run a private military corporation. Really? Yeah. You can't be down for it. Uh, well it's like South Africa. It's illegal there too.

Uh, but like most people think of like South African mercenaries, there's ways around it. And the, one of those ways around it is, uh, you can actually founded quote unquote, the Slavonic corps in hong

kong it's a shell company okay yeah uh but moran was based in russia so by proxy everyone involved is still doing crimes huh yeah they're not good at this that's when they got sent to syria and they were told they'd actually be protecting some like syrian government infrastructure like you're gonna be protecting these buildings so like they can free up syrian soldiers to go do war crimes against kurds and stuff right um so after they got there things pretty much immediately went south the soldiers signed contracts being told they would be surrounded by the best of the best quickly found out this to be a huge huge fucking lie. The Slavonic Corps was filled with some soldiers, but mostly criminals that had

very obvious prison tattoos. Because, like, Russia has a very pronounced prison tattoo culture. I saw the $4,000, I went blind. Yeah. And a lot of them had never fired a gun before. And there's, like,

various other people, like, their missing fingers and stuff that like they just scraped up that crunch time. The soldiers were told they'd be under Syrian government contract and they'd be issued the best equipment that could be furnished in the country. That also was not true.

The contract was not with the Syrian government, but instead was signed by just some friend of the Syrian president and there was nothing in place to ensure these guys got anything a lot of them never got paid what they were stationed a lot of kia housed in a horse stable and issued weapons that were in some cases 70 years old holy shit also they found out they were not going to be guarding anything they would instead be used as infantry like assault troops uh their first and only mission would be to regain control of syria's eastern oil fields and they were packed aboard

old minibuses that were at least 50 years old trucked 350 miles across rebel territory in order to accomplish this and like a lot of them noted that like they had tanks they were supposed to like escort them right but then they immediately started driving in a different direction like they just got ditched as they were driving across rebel held territory a syrian helicopter thinking they're an enemy convoy

swooped in and uh to shoot at them but then got tangled in some power lines and then crashed directly on top of a bus that was in the convoy. You think the pilot's like, ah, I meant to do that. Nailed it! First try. Exploding

in just like an acme-sized fireball. The only person that died in this incident somehow was the pilot. He meant to do it. He's like, yeah, first try. Got it. He's like, man, working for Bessar El-Assad sucks. I'm gonna kill myself in the most radical way possible.

When the enemy has tanks, how will I be able to kill them without power lines? He was actually just like a radical eco-terrorist. I'm going to take out the power lines. I can't use fuel anymore. After that, they pulled into the city of Homs where 200 were there 200 and so mercs immediately were attacked by thousands of

anti-Assad rebels. $4,000 kind of sucks right now. Yeah. Sucks bad. The Russians did not even attempt to fight. It was not a retreat as much as it was a rout and six of them were wounded. Uh,

they abandoned all of their equipment so they could get away faster. Uh, but somehow none of them died. I don't get that. Like maybe they really were highly trained elite Spetsnaz operators. Cause like someone should have died. Not just some random Syrian pilot. I learned this in Spetsnaz.

How to run away. You zag, not zig. I learned how to run away expertly in the French military. Hey! Yeah. The lamest military history joke on earth. The mission was supposed to last five months.

It barely lasted one. It started off good. The men were flown out of Syria and as soon as they landed, they got arrested by the Russian authorities. Because it turns out

the Russian government had never actually said that they were okay with any of this despite the company telling everyone and all of the recruits that nothing that they were doing

was illegal and the government was totally involved. Do I still get 4,000? Thankfully, the soldiers were released after it became clear that they had been lied to and the government was totally involved. Do I still get $4,000? Thankfully, the soldiers were released after it became clear that they had been lied to and they were all very, very stupid. Instead, the head of Moran now faces

eight years in prison. Did any of them get paid? No. I think some of them may have gotten an installment, but none of them saw their full prorated month of salary or whatever. I hope one of them was like, fuck, this is like

Afghanistan again. Someone like an old retired colonel's like, hmm, I've seen this play before. Don't worry, this is how we used to eat and drink. Gather around, kids, I'm gonna teach you to drink this jet fuel. That's a bus. Bus fuel,

jet fuel, no difference. I don't think he can see. Alright. So I do have to admit that since this is the FSB we're talking about, there is a very, very, very solid and good chance that they did greenlight this operation, only to get

pissed off and embarrassed to watch it fail so miserably. Because what happened was the anti-assad rebels uh like grabbed the equipment that they ditched which happened to include moran security ids which literally id them as russian civilians and then they put it on the internet on twitter nice like. Like any good rebel group, I suppose. And it kind of broke the whole secret that Russian mercs were suddenly in Syria. Now, could that have happened in the FSB? Like, well, time to wash your hands of these guys. Sure.

Maybe. But I think if that was the case, they would just kill the Moran security people. Because then they could just be like, no, they totally agreed to all this. And the FSB kills mad people all the time. So this would not be that big of a chore for them. Right. I think they're just stupid. There's a pretty funny conspiracy theory behind the creation of the Slavonic Corps, which

is- Could they have come up with a different name? They should have just called it the Slav Corps. Right? Slav Corps sounds like a particularly awesome version of hard base. Dude. Like, imagine the Free Syrian Army is holding the oil fields like, wait, do you hear that? You hear...

They're like, oh, God. They're coming. Dude just fucking dirt kicked up around and fucking dancing. Dude, so, no lie. They're firing only from the squat position. Get a good squat the squat position. Get a good squatting supported position. Everybody gather around in circles.

Load. Sunflower seeds. Spit. So, no lie. You didn't even tell me that we were doing this. Yesterday, I was listening to some fucking hard bass because I was falling asleep. I was falling asleep and I was like, you know what? I'm going to listen to some hard bass right now and just watch some random drunk Slav dude dance. The fucking Adidas racing stripes to start tattooing across your legs.

Oh, yeah. So the conspiracy theory is, because remember... Like the Avatar. The Sylvanic Corps is a shell company of Moran. And so the theory is moran was emailed by somebody claiming to be an official within the syrian ministry of petroleum um but had no proof that they worked for the syrian ministry of petroleum and they were worried they were being duped into a hoax but weren't so worried that they like didn't just delete the email so they created a

proxy company that being the slavonic core so the proxy of a proxy at that point it's like inception like also it didn't end up being a hoax though because they'd pretty much be were just hired by like a guy who happened to know asad and not the government so they kind of did fall for that it's almost like they're going off word of mouth like don't worry no yeah it's it's 2014. Things like phones and email and, like, I don't know, official letterhead don't exist. I mean, at this point, someone like the Slavonic Corps' rebooted version is wandering around somewhere in Nigeria attempting to rescue a prince. I got an email!

Just a dude on the side of the street. Yeah, I'll sign that for you. I know him. I know a guy. But you can did learn some solid lessons from this whole clusterfuck. As he kind of should have as he was in a convoy that got ambushed and he would have learned better than anybody. You can emerge again. This time at the head of the Wagner Group.

A name he chose because of his love for Nazis. And Nazis love them some Wagner. So, like, that's a problem. There's also rumors that he had numerous swastika tattoos and also he happens to dabble in a weird neo-Nazi religious cult based on Norse paganism that pretty much all of the leadership

of Wagner are signed up into. Oh, wow. Now, some people would say, Joe, that just sounds like neo-paganism yeah that's why i called him a neo-nazi i don't care for your bullshit right now uh but i do need to point out there's a good chance you can is not the real owner of wagner but rather it is a billionaire who also happens to be a close friend of vlad named Yagveny Parisian, I think. I don't know.

And he just keeps Yutkin around to actually lead operations in the field. Also, there's a rumor that Yutkin got the nickname Wagner because he wore a Nazi Stahlhelm into battle. Really? I'm going to say maybe. Also, I heard stories like he had horns grafted onto it, which, you know, if you take away all the Nazi stuff, that's legitimately cool. But you don't have to hand it to the Nazi Joe. But like most things in this episode, we're operating in a whole lot of gray. Anyway, this time, his venture would absolutely, absolutely Without a doubt lead him to Ukraine

Ukraine had been torn apart by civil war Instigated by Russia And Yukon, to the surprise of nobody, was on the side of the Russian-backed separatists Now, if you remember back from a few minutes ago The Slavonic Corps and Moran Could pretty obviously The Slav Corps The hard-based boys

That's even better. And Moran could be very obviously separated from the Russian government because like they literally separated them and arrested them. This does not seem to be the case with what became Wagner. One of the biggest hints of this is where Wagner recruits do basic training. And that is right in the middle of a Russian military base in Krasnodar, home of a very specialized GRU unit. This is pretty much like if Blackwater did their induction training at like Bragg. Yeah. Smackdown.

Yeah. Their training is given to them by officers of the Russian military and using Russian military equipment. Once there, recruits must turn in all cell phones, tablets, or anything else that can be used to contact the outside world, at which point they send a 10-year non-disclosure agreement, meaning they could never speak about anything that happens during their time with the company. They are then stripped of all identification

and given a company dog tag that lists only a serial number on it. It does not even know who they work for. Wow. There's also a rumor, again, not maybe, maybe not. I'm going to lay it way on the side of maybe is that if you have one of those stereotypical

tattoos that has your name on it, they cover it up right then and there with a big black bar. Like a tattoo bar? Yeah. I feel like it'd be easier just because it's them. They'd just cut it. Just slice it off. You get a choice between a knife and a blowtorch like Sons of Anarchy.

According to a report given by a Russian investigative journalist, unlike Moran, most of the Wagner mercenaries, or at least the ones directly under their employ, we'll talk about more of that in a little bit, are all Russian soldiers. And most

are retired, with them being around 35 years or older. Though the pay is somewhat worse than the glory days of our hard-based boys, the pay isn't bad, depending on what their rank was in the Russian military. They do have a pay scale.

They start off at around $1,000 a pay scale they start off at around a thousand dollars a month all right she's a great no uh but a commander can make around four thousand uh and that's if that sounds bad a normal russian soldier makes about 320 bucks a month oh wow yeah so it's a race uh but also like you can get steps. Like if you are canine or you know how to fly jets or whatever. Um, I would lie on my resume. Yeah. I know how to fly jets. Use your jet. Oh boy.

And then I get it. We didn't have these jets. I didn't use these jets back in the day. Yeah. Like how much you get paid is directly corresponding to like what your job was in the Russian military. So like, if you were just like, well, one one of us you'd make about a buck yeah if you're like someone with an actual skill like we don't have you'd get paid more so almost as soon as the civil war in ukraine began hundreds of wagner fighters were crossing the border into russia and into the donbass area in company-sized

elements along with tanks apcsCs, and other weapons. How many fuckers were there? Thousands. Thousands. Wow. Yeah. And getting bigger as we speak. Huh.

Because of heavy Russian and Wagner, which may or may not be the same thing, support pro-Russian rebels had some serious gains against the early-on confused Ukrainian armed forces. During this time, Wagner fighters were involved in the shooting down of a military transport plane that killed 49 people. There's also a fair bit of evidence that Wagner may have been involved in shooting down that Malaysian airline flight over Ukraine.

Tentative. I'm not going to go into it a whole lot. It seems like Wagner may have been involved, but it's inconclusive. Like 99% of what we're talking about. But the battlefields of the Donbass

ended up becoming something of a fertile recruiting ground for Wagner. As intelligence began to note, Wagner operatives were soon in charge of entire formations of rebels. The Wagner group used real rebels as newly hired fighters as the companies or possibly the russian state scope began to spread so like they effectively got involved in this war acting like ukrainian separatists and then recruited actual ukrainian separatists like it's like a i don't know a self-licking ice cream cone or something.

It's weird. Like a sneaky eating itself. This will not be the only time they do this. It's actually kind of ingenious because the Ukrainians get paid less, so they outsource their own mercenary work. But the Ukrainians do get paid more than the Syrians, which we'll get to.

Okay. Wagner forces found themselves being hired out through Syria and Africa around the same time, as world news began to try to figure out just who the hell these guys were. The U.S. government had already slapped sanctions against the people they thought it was in charge of, that being Parisian and Yutkin, but that didn't really do anything because that never works. If you run an ultra-secret mercenary company that is involved in literally six different fucking war zones across the planet, there's a good chance that you're not using legal means of funds for your night on the town or whatever. It's fucking dumb. Oh, damn.

They froze my local credit union account. I lost all my money. Anyway, I'm going to go in my secret army that has tanks and jets. Anyway, as the company's footprint in my secret army that has tanks and jets. Anyway, as the company's footprint expanded, leaks began to come out. Soon there were horrifying stories about what these guys were doing in Syria, with accounts of Wagner employees testing poisons on Syrians who refused to fight for Assad. Yikes.

Which, you know, if one person doesn't need help with poison, I feel like it's probably Assad. Oh, that's for sure. A journalist named Denis Korotkov made contact with a former employee of the company who said he took part in said tests. But as soon as they made contact and the contact became known, the former Wagner employee vanished and Korotkov was never able to speak to him again. Like he went to his apartment and it was empty. What? Yeah. Like, Wagner disappeared the guy. People could say, well, maybe Wagner heard about it and they bought him out.

What? I wish I was that dumb. I wish I believed that people would just deal with their problems with money. This is a Russian mercenary company. They made him go away. He committed suicide. Yeah, with three shots to the back of the head. With a drone strike. Him and Jeffrey Epstein both.

Yeah, and then in the front door of the office where Krak have worked a severed goat head appeared with a note pinned to it with his name on it. At least it wasn't the severed dude's head. That could be worse. At least you could use the goat I guess

Make some fucking goat face meat tacos Or something You think that's what he thought too? He's like oh yeah that's good meat right there Let's make some barbacoa boys And while he's cooking he's like is that a note? It says my name on it that's weird I'm gonna eat the note

I feel like Russian goat face meat tacos is just eating it straight from the goat. Like straight from the face raw with the first still on it and shit. It has to be, everything has to be miserable. It's about like you have Russian history. Wait, it gets worse.

Yeah. Our whole show's tagline is stolen from Russian history. If this all sounds like something of a St. Petersburg grandition of the Godfather, uh, it's cause it is, but also it's very on brand for wagner we're going to jump into the future for a second and talk about a similar story

in 2018 three russian journalists are looking into the wagner group's activities in the central african republic believing them to be involved in mineral exploitation in the reason in the region which is super common um a lot of places where they're at in Russia, and they're in a few, people think that they're not actually getting paid, that they're just getting a cut out of the mining industry, which is very unbranded for mercenaries operating in the region. But during their investigation, they were killed during a road ambush. Wow. The official explanation is that they were killed and robbed by bandits, a common occurrence in the CAR, which is a largely failed state. Shout out to France.

But some things make this really hard to believe. Mostly the fact that absolutely nothing was taken from the scene of the crime and they were not robbed. Really? Yep. Furthermore, their driver survived unharmed and said the people who ambushed them were wearing turbans and speaking Arabic,

despite the fact they were on the completely wrong side of the country for Arabic-speaking Muslim population to be there. An independent investigation showed that the driver was connected to a high-ranking local cop. The same high-ranking local cop had recently committed training by... Dremel?

Oui. Wagner Group. Turns out all cops really are bastards. Even the African ones. Cell phone records show that the two were in communication every hour up until the time of attack. Holy shit. So, yeah. Wagner definitely killed those guys.

Fuck yeah. So, back to our boys in Syria. Were the journalists just going around telling people, yeah, we're investigating this. We're looking for Faulkner Group. And the Texas guy's like,

ew, hey, I'll give you a ride. I mean, I'm just going to go to a limb here. And if you're a journalist in a failed state and a cop comes up and talks to you, you know you're fucked.

Yeah. Because they don't do their job for free. They're not going to stop and question you for anything other than A, a bribe, B, they're hired to kidnap you. They didn't just see you jaywalking and go, hey, come over here.

Yeah. So back in Syria. Oh, back to Syria? Could you imagine getting arrested for jaywalking in the Central African Republic as there's a civil war going on around you? You see people getting shot at and you're just like

really the cops like hey we do what we can yes some fire uh russia got more involved in nearly every aspect of that war in case anybody has been paying attention to the last six years of news uh but they needed more soldiers that were technically not russian soldiers because like when russian soldiers die it's i mean it's 2020 in russia's were really good at that though i mean it it's it's hard to hide the shit that they used to hide like you can't just like yep your boyfriend went missing like they they did kind of do that like to the russian soldiers who are fighting in ukraine like there's no Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. They're on leave and they went over their own free will.

And we don't know what happened to them as they like silently buried them late at night. Yeah. Uh, but like even then that raises suspicion, but like if you just vanish in Syria and you're a, and you're a Merck who doesn't, that doesn't actually work for the government,

quote unquote, like it's a lot easier. You don't have to bring that body home. Saves a plane ticket. I mean, they're like subcontractors, I guess. But they were all pretty much subcontracted out to Syrian

oil and gas agencies with the idea of Wagner worked for them and those oil and gas industries paid them directly, so that didn't count against the Russian Ministry of Defense spending. It's bookkeeping, but it's kind of not dumb. I guess this is the weird Russian synergy version of imperialism. I'm not really sure.

They employed two different kinds of mercs that being the smart probably former vdv paratrooper former member of the various bets non-formations gru types those guys train and assist syrian forces the syrian arab army right um as force multipliers which a term that everybody in the show should be used to by now. They make proxies. Or just straight up fighters. And those guys were not the highly trained people that people think they are. Even one former Russian officer called them, quote, cannon fodder. Yeah, not a good sign.

No, not at all. These guys were just higher paid grunts. Though I do believe that if you died, your family was just wired like 30 grand told to shut the fuck up. I guess. I guess. Whatever. And this is what brings us to this hilarious firefight.

Probably the most direct military confrontation between the United States and kinda sorta but definitely the Russian Federation since the Korean War. Yeah, Russia. Because if you remember during the Korean War, the Soviets had straight up pilots fighting in the air. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is probably the most direct confrontation, unless there's some things that have not quite made it to light. the most direct confrontation unless there's some things that have not quite made it to light. America being America had also got involved in the Syrian Civil War, mostly to contain and destroy the threat of ISIS.

In order to do so, they quickly backed America's favorite local proxy in various wars in the Middle East, the Kurds. Though these actually being the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is heavily made up of the YPG and YPJ, not all Kurds. A lot of it's Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans, you name it.

But most people just know them universally as the Kurds. So fucking sure. I'm not going to go about this. Blanket name. This is Armenian erasure, okay? But these groups, while not technically an open war against the syrian government were certainly against some of their proxies and some of those proxies were being led trained and manned by members of the wagner group this led to both sides meeting each other in the oil rich area around the dirizor and syria um now the syria this syria contracted wagner group

wanted to secure these oil fields for the Syrian government. And that's actually probably the entire reason this group was contracted out. Because remember, they had tried that before. Yeah. Well, the American forces and their SDF allies wanted to secure the oil field because ISIS had made a killing selling black market oil mostly to Turkey to fund their insane death cult. Yeah. So they wanted to make sure they didn't get retaken. Also, obviously, the SDF wants to secure the oil because they want to sell it too.

But at least they're not selling it to fucking ISIS or Turkey. I guess what I'm saying is fuck Turkey. I think you are. Yeah. I should have squeezed it in whenever I can. I'm not biased. Yeah, I felt like there was maybe a bit of bias there. No, I don't Turkey? I think you are. Yeah. I should have squeezed it in whenever I can. I'm not biased. Is there? Yeah, I felt like there was maybe a bit of bias there.

No, I don't know what you think that could be biased. Fact, I'm Armenian, or there's a YPG flag sitting on our desk. Though, both countries did openly talk to one another. They had a line of communication open to make sure there wasn't confliction zones, mercenary or otherwise. It was one of those, the US, the US like look we know these aren't technically Russian soldiers but could you tell them to fuck off and move and Russia like well they're not

our soldiers but we'll see if they'll listen to us and then they'd follow orders move yeah and like the US would do the same thing which is like how they had confliction zones and made sure that Russians and Americans didn't murder each other all the time but I mean, I guess that's a neighborly thing to do if you're waging a proxy war right next to one another. When the

US saw there happened to be an incredibly large buildup of what they thought were Russian mercenaries, or at least Russian proxies, or at least a larger group of Syrian Arab army soldiers led by Russian proxies near a, their special forces base. They asked him to cut the shit. Like, come on guys, you know, we're here.

Stop. To which Russia said they had no ability to control those forces. They're not involved. Now this is interesting because the U S had broken the radio encryption and all of them were speaking Russian. Ooh. Yeah. So whoops.

Uh, the small American outpost consisted of about 30 Delta Force operators and a couple rangers mixed in, a dozen or so SDF soldiers. And they're all posted next to a Conoco plant. So, like, it's not exactly a fucking castle they're defending here. Right. and about 20 miles away from them was a different American base known as Mission Support which had another couple squads of Delta Force operators and

some kind of drone operating detachment and that drone detachment was watching this huge group of what they were pretty sure were Wagner guys massing they counted around 500 soldiers 27 vehicles including tanks and APCs watching this huge group of what they were pretty sure were Wagner guys massing.

Right. They counted around 500 soldiers, 27 vehicles, including tanks and APCs in various support vehicles. Mission support set up a quick reaction force of about 16 guys, which is about all they had to attempt to run out there and, and, uh, reinforce the,

the kind of co-plant, um, at 1030, the small Delta force base came under heavy tank and artillery fire. While the troops inside quickly began setting up a defensive printer, manning anti-tank rockets and machine guns, it was not going to be

enough. As you can imagine, the troops on the ground and mission command wanted to think this is an accident by Russia. And instead of calling in air support or anything like that, which was also in the works, but they're like, call these guys off. They must not. They must just think it's SDF here.

Right. But Russia strongly denied that anything to do with what was going on. This is actually where Russia fucked up after being told by Russia multiple times. They were not in control of these soldiers. U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered General Joseph Dunford to annihilate the force using every means possible which means supporting

Marine Rocket Artillery open fire waves of jets were called in and they were bombed for three hours Jesus like they were bombed artillery striked and strafed and otherwise just a fucked up for three hours but the attackers did not break really and this is the part where like we'll we'll get to but like that's the important part here is under hours of literally every kind

of weapon that they could call in these attackers did not stop attacking like they withstood an attack and kept kept attacking that's something that surprise the sirium aram arby does not do right um they withstood the barrages when the jets finally had to turn around and refuel and then that's when they press their attack uh according to reports it was a simple now unsupported frontal frontal assault. Jesus. The assault was beaten back long enough for another wave of jets to be called in. This finally broke the attack. Inside the base, only one SDF soldier was lightly wounded.

I assume he, like, sprained his ankle. Yeah, he was running and fucking, oh, my ankle. Oh, fucking rocks. My ankle durability. Since then, people, and even now, have been arguing just how many people and who died in the attack. Russia said that four Russian citizens died in the attack, and they are supporting a force of around 100 Syrian soldiers. That's a comically low number that makes no sense. The Syrian army, especially at this time, was just about the most inept force fighting in Syria. Almost every single rebel army had higher morale, better fighting ability.

Syrian Arab army fucking sucks. So the idea that they're going to withstand hours of bombardment, like they almost certainly have never withstood before, and then press an attack against a fixed position for hours unsupported no they're not gonna do it absolutely not i do not buy that for a second as americans in fd sdf watch people show up and recover the dead and wounded from the battlefield and it took them hours to do so i imagine to to get them all i am willing to believe that something around the american estimate happened that is 300 fighters were killed and most of them were members of the wagner group jeez i'm willing to bet the number is closer to 200 but hundreds right for sure and most of them were not syrian also like when they did when they lost when they

suffered losses in ukraine the russian government attempted to keep news of people dying in syria in the down low but that did not work they always try to keep everything on the down low yeah mostly because people are people and they're gonna talk for one it was alexander a. Now, he's a Russian businessman and member of the Other Russia Party, a pretty much neo-Nazi nationalist party that said he had heard from sources within Wagner that at least 200 people were killed and most were members of his party. Fuck those guys. On the side note, Other Russia is a legit insane group of people. Their flag is a Nazi flag,

but if you took the red flag with the swastika in the middle, but if you took the swastika off the middle and put a hand grenade in there, it's mostly made up of Nazis, nationalists, and other far-right weirdos that all came from the National Bolshevik Party, which is widely known on cursed edges of the net as the Nazbols.

They're Nazis, which tracks with Utkin's personal beliefs uh i'm willing to buy that also why would he why would he need to lie about that now the reason why alexander was saying that was not to dime them out he was saying because he thought the russian government should honor their sacrifice rather than just like throw their bodies in unmarked ditch somewhere in Syria. I'd imagine that. Yeah. So like,

I hate to say this, but I kind of believe the Nazi. I mean, what does he have to lose by like, why would he lie? Like he has nothing to gain.

No, but the weird controversy doesn't end there. On this, on another note, Der Spiegel conducted an investigation to the battle as well. Nowh Spiegel conducted an investigation into the battle as well. Now, Dersh Spiegel's a pretty

well-reputable investigative journalist. I've used him as a source on this show before. They said no Russians took part in the battle at all. And instead, some were stationed back at the Syrian base and were killed in an airstrike. I do not believe that.

Other PMCs that work with Wagner have put the deaths much, much higher and even added that the families were still waiting for the remains of their loved ones, which does sound very on brand for the Russian government. But the story of Wagner does not end

after hours and hours of being ethered by airstrikes. Wagner continued to, and most likely still does, fight alongside Syrian government troops in regular battles. They advanced the Syrian forces to occupy American bases that had been abandoned during the latest example of the U.S. leaving the Kurdish

people to die at the hands of a bloodthirsty dictator. You may have remembered this hilarious scene as a Russian merc is holding the iconic come and take it flag that he found in an American base. Uh, they've also been, um,

pretty heavily implicated in, uh, repressing Syrian citizens in the case of civil unrest by just firing into crowds, which if you remember all the way back at the beginning of the civil war, that's kind of how it all started. Yeah. Full circle,

baby. We did it. Wagner popped back up in the breakaway luhansk reason of ukraine to referee between various factions who began fighting each other over who would be in charge there are varying accounts of people like within the separatist movement in the region being disappeared in one way or another or mysteriously killed in a car bomb uh mysterious it's not that mysterious it's definitely killed by russia because like they started speaking out against russia or mysteriously killed in a car bomb. Mysterious? It's not that mysterious. It was definitely killed by Russia because they started speaking out against Russia.

Well, they're not helping us. We're still at war and we have no food or money. They're dancing isn't good. Vladimir Putin's mama's one big titty and one little titty and we call her Biggie Smalls. And then they get a car bomb. Yeah, right there.

Vladimir Putin's suit. What more can be said? Said about the Luhansk version of Ukraine. Bombed out and depleted. Putin sucks at hockey. A bitch is a fake black belt in judo. Yeah, we're all getting car bombed now god damn it

my truck will take it it's only a matter of time your truck looked like it already has been car bombed hey that means they won't car bomb it

don't blow up that one looks like it's still recovering from the last IED the Prius on the other hand oh man you're fucked my Prius will take this

shit like a champ yeah uh now the Wagner group is accused of acting like something like an internal police force to ensure that nobody comes to power within those breakaway regions that might challenge Russia. It has also been opined that they're the ones actually in charge, meaning that they might be the first mercenaries to also run a country. Huh. Weird.

So they also popped up in Sudan. Did they? Yeah. To train and advise Omar al-Bashir's forces, because when you're a soulless mercenary army, you almost by definition have to work for the worst people on earth. For people unaware at home, he also committed a genocide.

During the protest that would eventually oust al-Bashir, Wagner Merckx advised Sudanese cops As they fired automatic weapons fire into crowns Of unarmed protesters and mostly women Cool You did it boys We never have good episodes That's not true

Sometimes we're optimistic, sometimes we talk about animals That's true, sometimes we watch good movies Sometimes It is believed that they once again Operated to protect the nation's mineral wealth in exchange for favorable contracts for Russian companies. Kind of like what they probably did

in the Central African Republic. As well as disappearing L.M. journalists. Oh, yeah. But the Wagner Group is not done! Go and hit the fucking hip-hop CIA sirens. They're still riding in the sunset? Oh, God.

Their sunset is mild. Their sunset doesn't happen anytime soon. It's still midday. If anything, the U.S. is rapidly trying to figure out how the fuck they can create their own Wagner Group because all they have is this shitty-ass CIA. They're like, fuck, hey, start taking notes. Because the CIA operatives

get paid a lot. They gotta pay these guys a thousand dollars a month to go do war crimes. Fuck, that's all we gotta do? Yeah, this guy's on a GS scale over here, and they got these dudes

working for vodka and boot leather. These guys working for bread. Yeah. And not the fucking money kind. Their next stop would be the chaotic civil war still going on in Libya.

Remember how I said before that Wagner used Ukrainian and pro-Russian militants to flesh out their large bodies of mercenaries to send overseas for pennies on the dollar? You did say that. They found a new source! Syria, baby! Not only did they take people from the battlefield of Syria, from the Syrian Arab Army, but also jihadist groups. Everywhere they go, there's like recruiting! It's like fucking Bizarro World

French Foreign Legion. You're terrorists? Cool! You're in. Like, they pay these guys a couple hundred bucks. Like, they don't really pay them nearly as much. But like, there's a fair amount of evidence that they've started absorbing people who probably weren't ISIS, but were like isis adjacent uh which isn't great there's no gray zone they're still absolutely

fucking monsters right um and they're they're definitely like terrorist terrorists uh but now they work for wagner or some other shell company they call like Wagner, but in Libya. Not Wagner. We're actually called Bach. That'll be the only time a classical music joke gets told on this podcast. Spread it down. So they could take the battle-hardened fighters of various Syrian factions and pay them

absolute dog shit and then rent them out to Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. That's not a good name. No. He actually just kind of looks like an old math teacher too. And I mean that in the most insulting way possible. Never had a good looking math teacher. No, he's not a pretty man.

He looks like Saddam Hussein if Saddam Hussein injected food. According to the UN, at least a thousand Wagner men have made their way into the country. Holy shit. And so if the UN is aware of it, we can assume the number's like ten times that, because the UN's

dumb as hell. This is actually kind of funny. So think of it this way. Because Turkey is Russia's geopolitical enemy, and Turkey's geopolitical enemy is Syria but

Syria's also supporting Haftar's enemies in Libya, the government of National Accord, by sending Syrian mercenaries meaning that between Russia and Turkey they had actually figured out to export the entire Syrian civil war

into Libya. Yeah. Yeah. out to export the entire syrian civil war into libya the country yeah yeah like because both sides hired mercenaries from the other side's factions and then supported the other side across the ocean it's like a russian nesting doll of horror horrific sectarian violence let's get the big movers and mover on out of here. I do not think I've ever seen or read anything like that before. And it is impressively awful.

Can you call it talent but not good? Yeah, like sometimes you're going to be good at really bad stuff. Yeah. It's Civil War Inception. Yeah.

I don't think Leo is going to be a part of this one. I hope not, at least. He spins his top spin. For the Caliphate. Oh, no! Leo! Oh, fuck!

It stops spinning? It's Leonardo DiCaprio from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with his flamethrower. Yeah. So, Haftar launched a military offensive against Tripoli where the GNA is headquartered. But as Haftar's advance was pushed back, Russia, and by that I mean Wagner, ramped up support. Russia?

Yeah. They shipped fighters and bombers from Russia to Syria where they were repainted and then brought to Libya with what most people assume are just pilots that they bought from Wagner. A shitty paint job too. It's like roller paint.

You can't just hire regular painters to do this. Now, Russia denies ever doing this, but it's incredibly easy to send the jets. But actually, jets could be the worst thing that you can send because it's incredibly easy to track the transit of military aircraft, which just so happens to be what U.S. Africa Command did, tracing them back to Russia. They're not good at this. No, Russia's just bad at everything. When we talked about the assassinations that were suicides,

a building blew up, suicide. the assassinations that were suicides and like a building blew up. Suicide. So this did not help as Haftar's forces were pushed back away from the capital of Tripoli in June of 2020. So like this month, last month.

On topic. Yeah, it happens every once in a while. Now it should be noted I started writing this before that happened. And actually, as I say the script, it's probably out of date and they've done a dozen other awful things. Oh, so we're late. Yeah, we're always late when it comes to this.

They're truly the globetrotters of the worst people on Earth. But Wagner's forces quickly retreated. But other people brought cameras to the areas that they had retaken from the Wagner forces in Tripoli, and that's when they revealed they left behind swastika

graffiti on walls and shit, as well as giant Russian tags. They're not even trying to hide it. It's hard to hide douchiness. You always have to point it out. There's piles of sunflower seeds and cigarettes everywhere. There's also

they left behind countless booby traps and landmines one of which was a legitimate no shit teddy bear that they had stuffed full of explosives. Because they're just checking off blocks and some like super villain type shit. Like watched a movie? How can we be more evil

than ISIS? I don't even think ISIS had exploding teddy bears. That's some anime shit yeah it is after that wagner turned into a gundam and flew to syria as we close out this episode wagner is probably in at least a half dozen countries if not more around the world and in most of those spots they're supporting tyrannical war criminals and despots making them more akin to the CIA than anything Russia has to offer

to include the FSB. Like, I have not seen, and I guess in my defense, if you want to consider it incompetence defense, I'm not a national security guy. I rarely write about current events. You don't really dabble on that. No, I'm a broke-ass historian.

So, like, but when most people hear of, like, Russia doing shady shit, current events. You don't really dabble on that. No, I'm a broke-ass historian. So, like, but when most people hear of, like, Russia doing shady shit across the country, hear of, like, GRU operatives, like the guys who poisoned those people in the UK, where, like, people always try to connect it back to, like, old-school KGB operatives or something.

But, like, Wagner is much better at all of that than they are. But also several parts of Wagner are GRU and FSB probably and who else knows other fucking acronyms I'm leaving out. It's really hard to pin down what they are, but they're not a private

military corporation. They're not like to be a private military corporation. You can't work for the government by definition. It's true. It just makes you another part of the military. Or some kind of security apparatus. They're certainly not Blackwater. And I don't mean to say that. I don't mean to be

defending Blackwater. They're all terrible. They should be in prison for the most part. But Blackwater would never did basic training at Fort Knox. They had to build their own complexes and stuff. They definitely worked hand in hand with the military. That you know of. They definitely worked hand in hand with the military.

That's inarguable, but the kind of close relationship that you see here, if it exists in the US, we've never fucking heard about it. Because they don't want us to hear about it. But people call it the Russian Blackwater. It's just not equal. Wagner is what Blackwater

wishes they could have been. Eric Prince reads about this shit happening and he gets hard because now he's unemployed and has to run concentration camps for China. He wishes he could be fucking Dimitri Yukin. Instead he's doing shit

for other awful people and he should be in prison too. They'd probably be best friends. They probably are. Probably not. They're both nationalists of different caliber. Yukin's probably a Nazi while Eric Prince is part of a really weird

evangelical Christian family from Michigan that has been doing their best to... Michigan doesn't put it out these days. They don't put out the good. No. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I guess we're done talking about that. Nick, we do a thing on the show

called Questions from the Legion. If we had a song for the Question from the Legion, we'd play it. We don't have one because we're hacks and we're frauds. Would it be an upbeat song or metal? Some kind of wind instrument. Flute?

Flute. Some uplifting flute. Skin flute. Doesn't make a noise. Oh, no, it does. I mean, that would support our Brave Factory workers. It would. So this question from the Legion is,

what battle slash war are you interested in uh in covering but haven't found the time or sources that cover um you know it's it's weird uh a lot mostly uh like most modern wars in like africa latin america, Western sourcing, and that's fucking awful. I want to do the Congo War because Africa is a world war. Fuck all for sources on it. Most

of them, if they do exist, they're super weird and focus on a very limited part of the war. Almost everybody wants to talk about blood diamonds and Sierra Leone, but nobody wants to talk about like blood diamonds and like Sierra Leone, but nobody wants to like talk about the actual war itself. Right. Cause it's like,

nobody cares cause the white people weren't involved until they were. It's the world of, of military history is, is one of the most biased you can possibly imagine. It's super regional. A lot of the sources that exist are fucking garbage. And the ones that, the good ones that do exist,

and you're not studying like the English speaking world, good luck. Especially more modern ones. Right. Like, personally, I like studying like African wars, especially like the Toyota war.

Uganda's hilarious attempt to invade Tanzania. You have all the good ingredients to donkeys. You have over-the-top dictators with terrible militaries just getting fucking stomped into the ground. But like, and then you look it up and there's like an article written by some like fucking Colonel for, uh, uh, some military college. And all those essays are terrible. Um,

I don't know if you've ever read them. Don't know. Or like, you know, fuck it. I'll do the old fashioned thing. I'll go to Wikipedia, go to the bottom and see what they use as resources.

And I'll, I'll, you know, reverse trace this until I find something reputable. They don't have shit listed either. Or if they do, it's in some foreign language that I can't read. So I guess what I'm saying is, fuck. I don't know.

What about you? Falklands. That one had some good blunders in it. Falklands is solid because the BBC fucked over the British military. Holy shit. I think Falklands would be great. I would love to do a Falklands War series.

That actually really helps since our producer's in the UK. And I'm sure every Falklands veteran fucking hates his guts. I feel like that'd be a great one. Finally achieved the crossover we've been looking for. So, Nick, thank you for joining us this year.

Our final episode in our room. Damn it. It's been good. In the room's defense, we never expected to make it this far. No. So, I guess everybody, until next time uh don't be a russian journalist who investigates oh yeah no don't do your group just don't do it or maybe you can just don't announce it i'm here looking for this plain fucking ride the valkyries yeah

anyway we will see you next time from my undisclosed location across the Pacific Ocean. Later!