Shawn Ryan Show - #195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Marat Gabidullin, born in Siberia and raised in Uzbekistan, served in Soviet airborne forces until 1994, then spent three years in prison for shooting a crime boss. After security work in Russia, he joined the Wagner Group in 2015, rose to lead a reconnaissance company, and was badly wounded near Palmyra in 2016. He later advised the ISIS Hunters Battalion and fought at Khasham, but quit Wagner in 2019, briefly ran a Redut detachment in Syria, and left disillusioned. Gabidullin’s 2022 memoir denounced Wagner and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; he now lives in France. Journalist and researcher John Lechner reports from conflict zones and specializes in Russian PMCs. His book Death Is Our Business (Bloomsbury, 2025) charts the rise of Wagner, following earlier work such as Beginner’s Chechen and upcoming Circassian and Sango language texts. A former policy analyst for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and an emerging-markets banker at Deutsche Bank and Lazard, Lechner holds degrees from Harvard (Slavic Languages) and Georgetown (MSFS). Fluent in five languages and conversant in several others, he is a recognized expert on Russian foreign policy and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Washington, DC. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://www.roka.com⁠ - USE CODE SRS https://www.americanfinancing.net/SRS NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://www.expressvpn.com/SRS https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.hillsdale.edu/SRS https://www.shopify.com/SRS https://trueclassic.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Guest Links: Marat Gabidullin FB - https://www.facebook.com/share/15TBVmf2mt/  Book - Moi, Marat, ex-commandant de l'armée Wagner - Les dessous de l'armée secrète de Poutine enfin révélé https://a.co/d/csNMjFH  Book - Ma vérité https://a.co/d/bLZYssf  John Lechner X - https://x.com/JohnLechner1 IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnalechner/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/john.lechner.5 Book - Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare https://a.co/d/7rKXhnI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. The all-new, all-electric Can-Am Pulse Motorcycle is your cheat code for the city. Light, agile and stylish for all you smart commuters. Find your pulse today. Learn more at CanAmMotorcycles.com This is my first ever interview with an enemy combatant, a commander from Russia's infamous Wagner Group. Wagner group It's a little bit of a language barrier with this one so bear with us because there is some very interesting

information in this episode If you can bear with the language barrier, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this and learn a lot about Wagner group how they came about their training And the caliber of men that they had working on. Enjoy the show. Murad Gabbadulin, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's nice to meet you. John, thank you for being here.

I wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier. Sure. Murad Gabbadulin. I wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier. Sure. Barack Gabbadulin. Born in Ural, you grew up in Uzbekistan and joined the Soviet military in 1984, served as a paratrooper officer and commanded a recon company, then joined Russia's Wagner Group starting as a grunt, fighting ISIS in Syria, and rising all the way to commander. You worked closely with Wagner boss, Pergosian, advising the ISIS hunters in Syria and fought in

the battle of Qasham in 2018 against US and Kurdish forces. You then quit Wagner in 2019, authored a book about your time with Wagner. And since then you have moved to France where you are now seeking asylum. This interview has taken place in Paris. Obviously we couldn't get you to the US so we came here to meet you. It's really weird for me to say this, but you are an enemy combatant

and you fought in a skirmish in Syria against 40 US soldiers, special forces soldiers, and I'm friends with a couple of those guys and heard their account of that battle. And then we ran into your friend, John Luttschner, and asked to be connected with you. So I just want to thank John, a freelance journalist, writer, and researcher who's been in conflict zones across the globe. Author of the book, Death is Our Business, Russian Mercenaries in the New Era of Private Warfare, expert on Russia's moves in Africa, their foreign policy, and private military

companies. So thank you again for being here. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I wanted to dive in on a little bit of the history of the Wagner Group. So how did it start? As Marat was telling you, Wagner really began in 2014 and Marat, as he was saying, he joined the company, as they call it, they only on the inside call it the company.

Wagner Group itself as an entity never existed. It was sort of just a nickname that was given to it. Some of my friends told me that in Russia emerged some kind of structure, where I can start my life from the very beginning. Wagner initially came out of the war in eastern Ukraine and its founder was a guy, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who Marat has mentioned a couple of times. This is a guy who was born in the 60s in the Soviet Union and sort of grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He was a petty thief and kind of a small time gangster in his teenage years.

And he goes away to prison at the age of 18, if I remember correctly, for assault and robbery. He and his gang were on a street in Leningrad, which became St. Petersburg. And a foregoer came up behind a woman and strangled her until she'd almost died. And then they robbed her and he was caught and sent away for nine years. And when he gets out, the Soviet Union is collapsing around him, and he returns to his

native St. Petersburg, where first he falls in with some gangsters again in the 90s, which Marat had kind of alluded to previously with these various crime bosses and things. And so he falls in with some crime bosses himself, and they set him up as a manager of some grocery store chains. He eventually turns that into becoming a restaurateur of some very fancy restaurants in St. Petersburg that a younger Vladimir Putin enjoyed. And he leveraged those relationships to eventually get getting the job of providing meals to the whole

Russian military and the Russian school system. So he became close with Putin through his restaurateurs. Well, as you'll see, kind of, as we go through the story, he manages to connect with Putin. Putin likes him, but he's never able, he would always say that he was about one handshake away from Putin. And so Putin gets to know him, he likes him because he's uncouth, he kind of has that sort of rough kind of attitude, which is somewhat refreshing, given kind of the bureaucratic elite that are surrounding Putin. And so Prokofiev eventually gets this job to provide the meals for the Russian military. And so that takes us to around 2014 or so when, well, we have to go back a little bit, a little bit further.

So, you know, while he's doing this work as a contractor, he also is looking for different ways that he can look good and get on Putin's radar. One of the ways he does it is there are massive protests against Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. And so, Progosian puts together this kind of documentary that shows how all the protesters are fake, basically supported by the West. And he finances it himself. It's not like Putin is doing this, but it's a way to virtue signal and show, hey, I'm furthering the cause of Putin's cause and Russia's cause more broadly. As I said, Putin is coming to the presidency again in 2012.

There are massive destabilizing protests against it. And he navigates it and gets back into power, but pretty much fairly quickly thereafter, another revolution is happening, this time on Russia's border in Ukraine, what became the Maidan Revolution in late 2013. And for Putin, he sees these two things as connected, right? It's the West basically trying to overthrow Russia, overthrow his own regime, and they're doing it wherever they can. And so the Kremlin in early 2014 makes a decision to annex Crimea, which is a peninsula on the Black Sea that is part of Ukraine. It had beforehand been part of Russia during the Soviet period, but it went to Ukraine during the Soviet Union, and Russia's Black Sea fleet is there. This is the only warm water port that they have, and it's important. And so amidst

all this chaos, the Kremlin decides to annex Crimea. They use special forces to do it, but then they also rely on these right-wing Russian nationalists, chauvinists, the folks in Russia's own nationalist militant movement to provide some of the security on the peninsula for the annexation. And after its success, the Kremlin thinks everything's done and dusted. But unbeknownst to them at the time, or something that was unexpected, was that amidst this revolution in Ukraine, there's also an anti-Maidan movement, especially in eastern Ukraine, in this region called Donbas, which is economically and culturally closer to Russia. And so as Ukrainians are taking over government buildings to overthrow the government of Yanukovych,

anti-Maidan protesters are taking over these buildings in Donbas, in Donetsk, and in Luhansk. And this puts Putin and the Kremlin into a difficult situation because unlike Crimea, they didn't want to annex Eastern Ukraine, Donbas. It's not that important to Russia. But Putin is kind of boosting his nationalist credentials by annexing Crimea. It gives a big kind of rally around the flag effect. Crucially, this is a rally around the flag from people who, these nationalists, these Russian nationalists and militant guys, who were against Putin's rule in 2012 and were marching against him. He can't be seen as letting these separatists in eastern Ukraine hang out to dry.

But he doesn't want to risk further sanctions from the West, international isolation. And so the Kremlin has to think very quickly, like, how do we support but not support these separatists in eastern Ukraine? And this is where Evgeny Prigozhin, the guy who's providing the meals for the Russian military, becomes acquainted with another guy, Dmitry Utkin, who is a former GRU officer, Russian military intelligence. He fought in Chechnya. He was stationed near Estonia and he had just come back and almost gotten big trouble for this kind of misadventure with a Russian PMC in Syria. These two guys come together and they sign an agreement whereby Utgen will provide the

tactical knowledge, provide the men as contractors, and Purgosian will provide the political backing and the financial support for this mercenary group that is very closely, if not basically, as Murat was saying, a Ministry of Defense project that they send into Eastern Ukraine right across the border to support the separatists. It's interesting because when I interviewed Eric Prince, we had spoken about Eric Prince earlier, they reached out to Eric Prince to try to help build Wagner Group off of Blackwater. Did you know that? To tell the truth, I am not completely agree with this opinion. Firstly Wagner group has nothing to do with the private sector. So what was the recruitment? How do they

recruit their fighters? So as Murat was saying I mean it's word of mouth basically and I think Murat will tell you later as well, the initial group of Wagner, which came out of this PMC that had the year before gone to Syria. So before Wagner, there were a number of kind of what we would think of as like Western style PMCs that had popped up. And largely in response to the Somali piracy crisis, which I'm sure you remember, there was an opportunity for these Russian contractors to protect Russian ships that are going through the Gulf of Aden. A number of Russian contractors were even working in Iraq during the war on terror as well.

The issue is that mercenarism is illegal in Russia, technically. And so these firms would basically establish themselves in Hong Kong or the Bahamas or something along those lines. And then the client would provide them with the weapons when they showed up going through a third country to protect the ship or what have you. And there was this one group called Moran Group where Dmitry Utkin, after he left the service, went to go work for. And one of the founders of Moran got a contract with a Syrian oligarch in 2013 to at least

what the guys thought at the time to basically protect oil and gas assets from ISIS. And when they showed up, it turned out that the Syrians wanted them to actually take those assets from ISIS. And there was almost like a little mutiny among the contractors, but, you know, they went ahead and they got ambushed. And Dmitry Utkin actually got the guys out safely during a sandstorm. They all go back to Russia, kind of with their tail between the legs, and the FSB, the successor to the KGB, arrests and charges the two commanders who went to Syria with mercenarism. Lutkin, who's like one level

below, gets off along with all the rest of the guys. And only a couple of months later, all of a sudden, Russia needs mercenaries. They know who is interested in this type of work, because they almost arrested the guy in Syria. And so those same 50 guys or so formed the core of what was just then called the company. And Dimitri Utkin, who is a fan of the German composer Richard Wagner, takes his call sign Wagner in Donbas. And since he was the main commander, eventually it becomes kind of the catch-all term for the company more generally. Okay. So it sounds like when Marat came in, it was about 600 people. So when Marat first came in in April 2015, I think it was getting close to about 600 guys. You can correct me if I'm wrong. And Marat was coming in in April 2015.

So this is right around the time that Russia is actually trying to sort of get to a ceasefire and take over these separatist republics at the time. And so when Marat joined, Wagner was a bit different at the time. It was one of many different forces that the MoD was using to support these separatists. And no one thought that it was going to become what it became. And so it was one of several units that were kind of figuring out ways to bring volunteers in to support the separatists. And Wagner at that time had this group of 50 guys or so who had been in Syria, but they also had a unit of Serbian volunteers that were coming through. And so when Murat joined, he was initially part of the International Brigade, which was largely Serbian, and he had a Serbian commander.

Eventually the Serbs would be kind of kicked out, kicked by the wayside later on when we got to Syria. But when Marat joined, it was a few months before some of the final big battles, before we saw what was called the Minsk 2 ceasefire between Ukraine and the separatist statelets backed by Russia at the time Oh good, oh good. Is it true that they started recruiting out of the prisons? In a conflict situation with the crime boss. With the crime boss?

With the crime boss. And... What was the situation? The criminal using any opportunity to take some money from anyone. And this situation emerged on the empty place. But as a result, during the meeting, I shot him. You shot him? Shot him. And I was sentenced to three years in prison. Where did you shoot him? Where? In the head? No, in the body.

In the body? In the body. And then in the head. I was in prison in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. At the time I served in Siberia. Our regiment was removed from the Kishinev to Siberia after the Soviet Union collapsed. So they, I think Wagner at the beginning, and I think this is what Murat will tell you, was for the most part guys who had military experience like Marat, guys who had trouble adjusting to civilian life in some shape or form and wanted to experience the adventure and camaraderie again, and largely

through word of mouth were recruited to the company when they found out there was this opportunity in Ukraine or eventually later on in Syria and elsewhere. And so for the most part, it was guys coming out of the military. Maybe they had a brush with the law like Marat had, to put it lightly. But the full convict recruitment program, where if you saw the videos of Progozhin going around to all of the penal colonies and recruiting prisoners, that only happened after 2022 for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Okay.

So there were definitely dudes who had served prison time, got out and then joined Wagner, but they weren't recruiting from the prisons at that time. It was really, I mean, if I remember correctly, it was Marat's buddy from his military times who recruited him just by word of mouth. He said, hey, I'm doing this do you want to do you want to join. What was the what was the test like you said you had to take some type of a test to get into Wagner group? After meeting time and push up 55 times. 55 push ups? A 3 kilometer run. Were there any tactics involved? Like room clearance, entering a building? Oh no, no. No, nothing like that.

No. What are these guys getting paid? They, I mean, I think it depended, but they usually were getting about $2,000 a month during their time on the contract. And so this is pretty good money in Russia for guys. It's definitely a motivating factor. What has it developed into?

I mean, they're in Africa, they're in Ukraine, aren't they doing breweries? They're doing all kinds of stuff. What all are they're in Ukraine. Yeah, aren't they doing breweries? They're doing all kinds of stuff. Yeah, what all are they involved in? So What I think is interesting about this story because marat will it will tell you you know, this was very much a state-supported entity but And you know we can ask marat as well again. I also don't think it could have become what it was if it weren't for the ambition of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as well. And so if we look at what was happening in Ukraine in 2015, a lot of those units that the MoD was supporting after the ceasefire, they just kind of dispersed,

went home, didn't really do much after. But only a few months later, Russia's overtly intervening in Syria. There's nothing covert about it. It's a full air campaign with the Russian military. And Progozhin and Utkin are very much also lobbying to make sure that he gets his guys into there because he has now this kind of force at his disposal and what he's good at is trying to figure out, okay, I have this, now what do I do with it? And it was at this point where I think he saw the Black Waters of the world and he said, okay, I want to do kind of my version of this. And it so happened

that Syria was going to be the next opportunity for him to do so. And so Murat was one of the first guys on the ground in Syria. As he'll tell you, the MoD didn't really know what to do with them. And a couple of guys got killed. And they didn't want casualties right away. So they panicked and sent them home. And it was only until it became clear that Russian air power alone wasn't going to defeat the rebels, rebels against Assad or ISIS, that Wagner was brought back in. This time, you know, on the ground where they take Palmyra, then they get sent home again,

and then they get back in and Murat will tell you all about the Battle of Khashoggi. But it gets to that point where it's this mix, right? They have state backing, but Purgoshen is also out there with his guys basically doing business development, right? If you have a PMC, where are you going to market your services? You have to go to Africa at some point, otherwise you should fire your B&D guy. And so already in 2017, Progozhen is sending his guys out to drum up new business. They first sign a contract with the Sudanese to provide training, and they get access to mining concessions in Sudan. Then they show up in the Central African Republic where there's really no other kind of competition

from other Russians. And so Prokoshen is able to provide training. He offers his information warfare because he has the troll farms, which were kind of very famous in the US during the 2016 elections. And his guys go out and they try to start breweries and they go into gold mining and what have you, they act as Marat was saying, very independently of the Kremlin because these places aren't that important to Russia.

And so in the places that aren't, aren't important, he has to figure out his own ways to finance these, these operations. And so they go from the central African Republic, they're in Libya, back in Haftar in, uh, in his bid to take Tripoli in 2019, then they show up in Mali, uh, where they, they signed a deal with the Malian government to go after various jihadi groups. And then ultimately, they are initially left out of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and only get brought in when the Russian government's in trouble. So these guys are not, they're definitely not just in Russia's best interest.

They're doing their own thing in all these separate parts of the world. Yeah, but I think that it's not, because people are always asked, you know, is this a private thing or a public thing? And the answer is both. And I mean, we're in Paris right now. But when I'm sitting in Washington, DC, I try to explain to people like this is the capital of public private partnerships, right? Lockheed Martin is a profit driven company.

They will frame whatever they're doing as furthering America's national defense and security, but they're also profit driven. And so a lot what Prugosian was very good at was selling back to the Kremlin this dream of kind of Russia's expansion abroad. Gotcha. And he could sell it back to Putin these different initiatives that were also just happened to be potentially profitable to him. Interesting. Interesting. All right, let's move to Syria. You all know what speed dating is, right? Well, if you're the owner of a growing business,

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All right, Marant, let's go to when you got on the ground in Syria. First time in September in 2015. I think Prygurian is looking for the opportunity to implement this completely new concept of using military forces. And he wants to demonstrate the ability, the combat ability of the mercenaries. And we were delivered to Syria by the scheduled civilian flight. The Russian military. Firstly, they looked at us with surprise. They didn't know who we were and what we to do here and how they must treat us. received a weapon, we took a part in several military actions and demonstrated the whole superiority over enemy.

And of course the whole superiority over the Bashar al-Assad army. But I think at that moment Russian military and Syrian military thought that they handled this situation without us. Russian military thought that if they provided the Syrian army with air strike support, Syrian army can achieve the victory in this war. But it turned out that Syrian army degraded to the point of inability to wage offensive action. And so, like Asmara is saying, when Russia first intervenes in Syria, one of the reasons that they're doing it, actually, it's after the annexation of Crimea, and they recognize the importance of Syria at that time for the

US and for the West, because this is, if you look, remember 2015, this is when ISIS is really at its height with the territorial caliphate, and the US has already intervened, gone back in to fight ISIS. And so the Russians think that if we go in backing Assad, we can kind of force the US into a joint counterterrorism operation against ISIS that will force them to kind of basically start talking to us again. And so they come in and they're backing Assad, but as Murat's saying, Assad's government, I mean, the forces that he has are incredibly unmotivated, I mean, for obvious reasons given his rule and the rebels, not just ISIS, but all the other rebels fighting against them

are a lot more motivated. And the Russians initially wanted it to just be an air campaign. But I mean, as you find out pretty quick, air campaigns alone rarely work for anybody. And it was clear that Russian air power with Assad's forces on the ground was not going to work. They were not going to take the territory back from rebels. But they face an issue at the time, which I think you speak to as well, where this is kind of a faraway intervention for Russia. And they haven't figured out yet if they want to have actual Russian troops on

the ground and what Russians will think, the Russian public will think, if Russian soldiers are going home in caskets. And there's a sense that they're going to be against this and say, why are we here in Syria? And so one of the reasons that Murat and Wagner were able to get back in is that the Russian military didn't have to report casualties for Wagner. And using the mercenaries is this war to take to

to take and to resolve the very main, very difficult task. The thing is that Russian generals invented the concept of the war with a little blood They can create some kind of appearances. This concept is working. The loss of the Bersinneris didn't include in the official statistic. Okay, that makes sense. So correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole point of Russia going into Syria to include Wagner was to build some type of an alliance with the United States against ISIS. It was an effort because in part, there's always a lot of reasons why things happen, but the timing of their intervention, because if you remember, Syria started going into

civil war right around the time of the Arab Spring. So this is already like five years before that. The Russians didn't have any particular love for Assad, despite the fact that there was a Russian base in Syria and kind of some history going back to the Soviet Union. What really explains the timing of why they went in was this sense of isolation that they felt after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 in Ukraine. And it was this effort to basically get themselves onto the world stage again in a crisis that they thought was existentially important to the West, which was the defeat of ISIS. Of course, also when they show up and they're on the ground,

Assad also has different ideas for what he wants the Russians to do. And ISIS is less of a concern to him than a lot of the more secular rebels elsewhere as well, and that he wants the Russians to go after those guys. Whereas the Russians want to go try and meet up with the Americans as they're closing in on ISIS as the territorial caliphate is kind of crumbling down. Interesting, interesting.

Well, let's talk about the Battle of Kashashan between Wagner and US Special Forces. So, like I'd mentioned, I have friends that were in that battle. It sounds like there was about 500 Wagner group soldiers on the ground. There were 40 US Special Forces guys along with a couple with what the Kurdish partner force and so let's just start with the beginning what what were you doing that close to American forces from the very beginning. This factory was very important. This factory enclosed all infrastructure of the oilfield nearby Konaka. And Prigozhin wanted to seize this factory during the battle for the Deuzor. But we have no enough resources. We constantly forced our forces to achieve a goal in order to liberate Dezor. Our lives were very undecisively active, very undecisively. And we cannot use our forces in order to advance forward.

Can I put a little bit before, why did Prigozhin want to take these Koniko facilities? And so in 2016, Murat and Wagner, they capture Palmyra from ISIS. And Murat has some of the medals from that and from that time period that they'll show. But after the capture, the Russian military sends Wagner home again. And then a few months later later ISIS recaptures it Palmyra and Wagner comes back in but this time per Goshen has signed a deal with Assad's government and part of the the deal is is that Wagner will participate in the counteroffensive and Purgosian and his companies get a 25% share of the proceeds of the oil and gas assets that are recuperated.

So Purgosian has this massive incentive now to go out against ISIS and capture as much of those assets as he can. And so in 2017, Marat and Wagner are back in Syria. And this is right around the time where ISIS is collapsing. The US is backing the Kurdish SDF. The SDF is coming from the Northeast South. They're heading for the ISIS's capital Raqqa, and Wagner and Assad forces are heading north. And at a certain point, there's this factory that Murad is talking about called Khanaka, which is sort of the crown jewel of all the assets.

It's valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it was at one of ISIS's like most valuable assets for fuel smuggling. The most rich, most profitable oil field in Syria. So Purgosian wants this. And he's sending letters to the Syrian government oil field in Syria. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so as the way to kind of get profitability, get out of the red and into the black. The only issue is that as ISIS is collapsing, everyone is thinking what a post-ISIS world

is going to look like. So the Kurds, with the blessing of the US, start moving away from Raqqa and heading south towards their resort. And there's a rush for who's going to get this conical plan when ISIS is gone. And the SDF, the Kurdish forces backed by special forces, get there first. And then this is where, for Gozhin, he made a mistake. He thought that he could achieve his goal as a result of negotiations with the oldest of the Kurdish tribe.

But at that time, functionaries of the SPS were in charge of the whole thing. The oldest of the tribes, they lied, Perugurian. The Kurdish soldiers. They gave a guarantee that the Kurdish forces retreat as soon as we started to move forward. But they just played. Despite. How many guys did you have gathered to attack Koniko at that time?

I think about 500, two units, Karpaty and the fifth assault units. units and my my group that consists of Syrian fighters 75 that took part in this action. No one else, only Russian mercenaries and this group of Syrian fighters. Only this. I had to advance on the left flank and take over to stronghold. We advanced on the start line of attack, but the American prevented us. They position, the armory. And then they shift the fire on us. Did you guys fire on them? From the sky, American uses, at the beginning, American uses only aviation. They had two Spectre gunships and two Apaches.

Helicopters. Yeah. Combat drones. Spooky. And combat helicopter. So what was going through your head when you knew that US special operations initiated the attack? No, no, no. What you should tell them is start from the beginning of the morning because this happened on February 8th, right?

February 8th. The night. The night of February. Between 7th and 8th February. And you were in the room the day before or a couple of days before where Utgen, he comes in and he says, we're going to take this from the Americans. And you, and someone said, are the Americans going to be there? And he said, yeah, I don't know why, but, uh, pre-gogian decided that American, uh, wanted involved.

And, uh, that the Americans, I don't know. And that the Americans I don't know why. The thing is, the Prigozhin have one future. It's like personality trait. From time to time, his ego rose above the common sense. Maybe it's something it might look cool And no one has done this before We get a piece of paper and Marat can show Where the Americans were and how Wagner came over with the with the arrows and stuff

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This is your position. This is Koniko. And this is the Kurds in the US. No, the Kurds in the US are in here in the Koniko facility. This is Wagner's two positions right here. They're inside the facility? No, no, no. The facility is around like this. Yeah.

And then they go and attack that way. But the US was inside the facility. US was inside the facility. So you, so Wagner initiated an attack. with the signs of the false artillery assault from the Kurdish. And you guys, you knew that US special operations were in the factory? Yes, we know about it. Were you worried? Yeah, about it. Don't worry. Our chief, our commander told us that Americans wanted to involve. That they wouldn't get involved?

Yeah. As I already said, I don't know why, but Prigozhan was convinced that American forces wanted involved. Wow. What's this distance, sir? What's the distance, sir? How many kilometers? Between my units and first stronghold, about 300 meters.

300 meters? We moved very close to this position and we have already been ready to attack but American prevented us from any possibility. What you know too is that what your buddies will say who were there. So the other key thing is this is the Euphrates right here. And so during this kind of counter-ISIS operation, the Russians and the Americans are trying to figure out ways that they can de-conflict, right? So that no one is actually shooting each other. Cause there's a lot of guys running around in this area now. And so they create this kind of line of deconfliction

between US-backed forces in Syria and Russian-backed forces. And the line is pretty much the Euphrates River, which is right here. And that's established. But the issue for pergogion is that the most profitable oil fields are right across on the other side of the deconfliction line and so Marat and and Wagner what they're doing Prior to this is they're building up their forces. They're testing a little bit the line of deconfliction probably forces. They're testing a little bit the line of deconfliction probably because they cross the river and there's this one little spot that is still Russian territory. And so the Americans are watching this on the drones and they're seeing the buildupup, they see it all day. And eventually, in the evening, they start calling the Russians over the deconfliction line

that they have between the US and Russian militaries. And they say, are these your guys? And the Russian military says, no. No. Russian military says no no they denied to the he denied to that is not confirmed help with? I was supported by the artillery. So you were heading to Karnakow with artillery. What they were first doing was they were faking artillery training because they had set themselves up close. Mortal. Yeah mortars. Yeah. Americans very quickly suppressed the activity of any kind of artillery.

And I left without any support. I have an automatic rifle, machine gun, automatic grenade launcher, I guess 17. And some kind, and two, grenade launcher I guess 17 and Some kind and the two two Machine gun Heavily machine gun The fifth unit was in great against the well the fifth unit had tanks, right? There were two tanks? No.

This tank was on the right side from me. I saw the tank only at the last time before this tank was destroyed. I heard the sound of shooting and I came out of the position and I saw our tank. And firstly, I decided this is good for me. But immediately after I glance on him, she was destroyed by the rocket. destroyed by the rocket. There was a big explosion. This tank was completely destroyed. What was going through your head when the Americans retaliated? To save my life. To save the lives of my people I cried to him, run away from here. Run away, in any way, run away, but only small group.

Only the small group. Small groups. Two or three persons, not gathering. Yeah. But... You wanted to do this first. But it was in vain. They unfortunately, in any way gathered together and fall on the fire from the helicopter.

And I lost 23 fighters. 23 fighters were killed. Were you close with them? Were you friends with them? It was a very little time to become a friendship. on this position two and a half week before this event? 23 dead, 28 wounded. Zacharet? In his unit only.

In your unit? Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that is also kind of important for people to realize is, you know, it's getting towards the evening and Wagner, they're feigning drills and then they attack, right? And the US is calling and they call three times over the deconfliction line to the Russian Ministry of Defense and they say, are these your guys? And three times the Ministry of Defense says no.

And so as you know, and your buddies know, that's when the US had the green light to effectively defend themselves against this attack. And I think it's fair to say that the US defended itself in a way that would send a message as well. And the amount of air power that came in was probably disproportionate to the threat and designed to send a message. Because, I mean, the amount of... I think Americans didn't care of the facility of the Russian army. They didn't care.

They were ready to strike in any case. And they, I think they absolutely didn't fear to use their weapons. That's generally the sentiment. I mean these guys are at war, that's what they want to do.

And they did it. And you said, I mean, the US brought in like two Apaches. Two Apaches and two Spectre gunships. And Spectre gunship is? Russian generals. Russian generals was completely confused by this situation. Russian generals didn't have ability, inability to and to make a decision independently. And when he encountered this situation, he was confused absolutely. Because the question is, why did the Russian Ministry of Defense deny that it was Russians who were attacking? And there is an argument, I think, to be made. Progozhin, his gamble in trying to take Conoco was that when the Americans saw that it was

Russians coming, the Americans would want to avoid any direct confrontation World War III, and they would back away and retreat along with the curse. And he was incredibly mistaken in that calculation. And what I think he wasn't counting on and what Murat is saying is that when the Americans were calling into the Ministry of Defense, you have some poor guy on the line who is also not gonna be responsible for World War

3. And so the quickest thing that you're going to do is not say, yeah, those are my guys attacking US soldiers. You're going to say, don't know anything about it. Don't know what you're talking about and try to go to your higher-ups to cover your own butt. And so ultimately it was, you know, it was probably, he probably got, Progosian probably had kind of a wink and a nod from the Ministry of Defense that he was going to try to do this. And if it worked out, it's a great Russian victory for everybody, Assad, the Russians, Progosian. Russian victory for everybody, Assad, the Russians, Prigozhin, and if it doesn't, in the Ministry of Defense's mind, it's just Wagner guys who are getting killed.

Wow. How long did the battle go on for? How long? About six hours. From the midnight to morning. Russian mercenaries were killed in this battle and 23 Syrian fighters from my union were killed. How many wounded? About 200. 200 wounded? Two units. Two units. Two hundred wounded.

Two assault units were completely destroyed. I mean, weapon, technique. It's like 300 casualties total. On the next day, the Russian authority proclaimed that no one russian suffered uh in this event Wow, no one And you are responsible for counting the bodies right and reporting it. No, yes, of course and I I must to bring the Coco the body of the uh, dead Of the kill of the dead, of the kill, of the dead,

the Syrian in the town, in the city, was the headquarter of my battalion. Oh, so he was there for the ceremony of the burial? Ah, burial. Yeah, before we get there, what ended it? Why did they stop? If they didn't kill everybody, what stopped it? After I came back from this battle, I gave an order to send my people to bring a body and a weapon on

the battlefield, brought from this area all body and all weapons that was left on this area during the battle. So eventually in the morning the Ministry of Defense got in touch with the Americans and it was agreed the Americans agreed to a two-hour pause so that the Russians could collect weapons and dead. So if the if the Ministry of Defense of Russia initially denied this three different times, then how do they contact the US to ask to clean up the bodies? They can

they could say that, say so in the very beginning. And if they say, yes, okay, I will give in order to retreat, nothing happened. And everything will be fine. But Russian generals didn't know what to do in this situation. But eventually they, they told the Americans, we need to go collect. So eventually they said there might be some Russians there,

to the Americans. The thing is, this has already happened. Yeah, there's no denying it anymore. We were destroyed. The whole field was covered. Yeah, there's no tying it anymore. We were destroyed. The whole field was covered with corpses and burnt tanks and trucks of our units. Everyone who can move left this area. So there was only bodies left.

And come to the bank of the river. So there were only bodies left. And then the agreement was made that they have two hours to go back to the area to collect the dead. How does that make you feel now, knowing that the Russian military had denied three different times that it was Russians on the ground, and then also told the Russian people that there were no Russians that were killed in that battle? Firstly, I think the American acted as it, according to the situation.

If I were on their place, I will do the same action. It's a rule of war. If you are under attack, you must protect yourself. And wage a counter attack. Secondly, I think it was a bad thing from the side of our chief. from the side of our chief. It was the Prigozhin and Wagner were absolutely wrong in this situation. It was absolutely wrong. By Wagner, he means Utkin. This battle was the offensive, was the defensive action from the outside. was under attack of Kurdish forces and despite of the heavy losses, we can stay, we can stay on our place and to protect and protect our position. But what surprised me very much

is that many of our guys that took part in this battle accepted this version. Wow. Wow. Accepted this version, it's nonsense. Wow. But this is true. No. Accepted this person, that it's nonsense. But this is true. I spoke with some guys and trying to remind him that, do you remember, we are going to assault.

No one attacked us. We was, we was initiated with these events. Only we have responsibility for the circumstances of this battle. I think probably every American that fought that day is going to watch this. Do you have anything personally to say to them? What can I say to them?

They, as I already said, they acted as according to the rule of war. The Rulus war, it was our initiative. Nothing. So, how long after the battle did you leave Syria? One year. One year. But this is when you left Wagner for Redut, right? Yes, when I left Wagner, I joined Redut. It only defended or like did security for. It was a different PMC, but their only job as a PMC was to secure.

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And I left my country. John, what was the mutiny all about? Yeah. So I think, you know, Marat, as he's saying, he goes back, he finishes his work in Syria. But I mean, after the Battle of Qasham, in which Murat participated, I mean, already by this point, we were talking about it earlier, Wagner is in Sudan by this point. By around the same time as the Battle of Khasham, they first start arriving in the Central African Republic and then they're showing up in all sorts of places in Africa,

Libya and in Mali. And over there, Pergosianisham kind of showed, Furgosian himself is not always on the same page as the Ministry of Defense and Minister of Defense Shoigu. And he's sort of a rock in their shoe very often. You have to imagine here's this guy who is kind of technically supposed to with his forces be subordinate, but he also has a mind and ambition of his own and he can occasionally get in front of Putin himself. And you can imagine what he's saying about the people that he doesn't like in front of Putin. So imagine you're the boss of an employee, but the employee's dad is the CEO, right? I mean, you know that there's another channel that goes up if you try to boss them around. And so even though the Ministry of Defense and Wagner are cooperating in Africa quite a bit,

there's still that interpersonal tension. And so when Putin makes a decision to launch the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, he gives the planning of it over to the general staff in the Ministry of Defense, and they want nothing to do with pregosha. And so their thinking at the time is that this is going to be a quick, easy victory, and we can do it kind of in their mind by the book without having to use guys like Progosian. And so in the initial month or so of the invasion, Wagner is actually left out. And Progosian is pissed about it. He's calling up the guys in the GRU, trying to figure out why his guys aren't in it, and then trying to get his guys into it. And meanwhile, the very quick operation to take Kiev

does not go as planned. And the Russian military is suffering setbacks. And so Purgosian now has his opportunity to get his guys into the war. And the thing about Wagner that I think Marat will tell you too is that in the intervening years really since Chechnya and

you know a very brief war with with Georgia not a lot of guys in the Russian military have real battle experience like not a lot of people have been have been shot at and so when when Wagner comes in with its commanders they start delivering some quick battlefield victories. And so this puts Progozhin all of a sudden in this like great position. He's able to come out of the shadows and he becomes a hero of Russia. He declares himself, oh, he denied it always that he was tied to Wagner group. Now he declares, I was always the founder of Wagner and he's on state television.

And as Marat said, this is a guy who already has a big ego, right? And the way that he always gets around his rivals is by gambling big, like at Hacham. And so he starts also promising things that he's going to do, something that the generals would never do. And ultimately, what he ends up promising is that he's going to basically, Wagner is going to take Bakhmut, this kind of middle sized city from Ukrainian forces. And the way that he's going to do it is he gets exclusive permission for a time to go to all of Russia's prisons and recruit prisoners to the front line. And so he shows up and he goes himself. I mean, he's a guy who does a lot of things

himself. Yes, he was deprived for the resources of the mobilization. Yeah, he wasn't allowed to have actual soldiers. And so he gets the convicts. And so he shows up at these Russian penal colonies and they gather all the prisoners into the prison yard. And he comes in and his helicopter, and he comes in and he speaks in front of all of the prisoners and he says, I have an offer for you.

You can come and fight for me for six months. And if you survive, you're a free man and your criminal record is expunged. And he tells them that my losses are worse than Stalingrad, which obviously resonates with Russians. And ultimately, about 50,000 guys sign up. The tactic that Progosian is going to use to take Bakhmut is the human wave tactic. These convicts, they get two weeks training, usually, I think, just inside the border with Ukraine and around Luhansk. And then after that, they're sent

to the front. And basically, they're put in small units. And each small unit, one unit will go out, attack the Ukrainian position. Eight guys might be killed, but two guys get into the trench and they do some damage before getting killed and before the Ukrainians have a chance to recover, another unit of convicts is coming through. So it's a very inefficient way to wage war, but it is effective over time. The main reason for this operation was to attract as many Ukrainian forces as possible in order to prevent from the attack on the other areas of the frontline. Yeah. And as you can imagine, it's a huge front line now, right? In Ukraine.

In the beginning, the first phase of the war in Donbass, you know, it's a little section of the Donbass region. Now it's, you know, like a thousand kilometers long, maybe, or something. And so he's also engaged with the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians are sending some of their best guys to defend Bakhmut, while for the Russian government, they're losing in their mind some of the worst people in society, right, these convicts. And so, you know, it's like a four to one ratio in terms of losses, but it's something that the Russians and Pogozhin are willing to do for the reasons that Marat said. At this point though, Pogozhin is like an internet... We all know who Pogozhin is,

during the Bach mood campaign. He becomes like the face of the war itself. CNN is trying to reach him. The New York Times is trying to reach him for an interview. He's huge back home in Russia. He's like finally everything that he, you know, his ego is matched now by his popularity. Yes, in this term Wagner Group completely faulted his mission in this war. They achieved the goals that would stand before them. attract a lot of Ukrainian forces and give the opportunity for the Russian army to prepare mobilizing a reserve and to build the defensive line in the area of Zaporozhsk district.

But still, I mean, there's still a lot of enmity between the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and Prigozhin. And so at some point, inevitably, especially since Prigozhin is having all of this success, like Marat mentioned, the Ministry of Defense is going to want to check him. And so the first way that they do it is they start cutting off purgosion from convict recruitment. So he's promised to Putin, I'm going to take Bakhmut, but his means of doing so now is disappearing. He needs a lot of bodies to take Bakhmut. The Ministry of Defense is cutting him off of those bodies. Not because they're against prisoner recruitment, they just start doing it themselves. But the difference is, and this is always the issue for Prokofiev, is when he was doing

it, he had the permission by like a wink and a nod from the presidential administration. When the Ministry of Defense does it, Russian parliament officially makes it legal for them to recruit from prison. There's always a way that Progosian can get screwed over in whatever he's doing. He's getting cut off. Now he starts going public with the Ministry of Defense saying, I'm not getting enough ammunition for what we're trying to do. And the Ministry of Defense is screwing over Wagner by not giving us enough ammunition that we need. And so now this spat starts going very public over social media.

And then ultimately Shoigu and Furgoshen at this point hate each other's guts. And the Ministry of Defense then kind of like their final kind of counterattack on Progosian is they get the Kremlin to agree that all soldiers fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia have to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. On those who fight on the front line. Those on the front line. Yeah. And so for Prigozhin, you can imagine, he's this big guy now in Russia. He's got thousands and thousands of men ostensibly under his command. And he recognizes that this is making him political too.

And so all of a, the Ministry of Defense is taking those men out from underneath him, and I think for him, what he saw was the writing on the wall, that at the very least, when I no longer have Wagner Group, it means that I'm going to kind of disappear into obscurity, which he wasn't able to do at that point. He couldn't just retire and be quiet. He was incapable of that. But also without those men, he's no longer, he doesn't have political leverage anymore and it could result in his ultimate demise.

And so he has to figure out a way. How do I convince Putin to choose between me and Shoigu because Putin is choosing Shoigu right now. to choose between me and Shoigu because Putin is choosing Shoigu right now. And so the decision is made that Wagner is going to turn back from Ukraine into southern Russia and they're going to capture and kill the Minister of Defense. Wow. And so on June 23rd, 2023, Wagner crosses back over. Pergosian claims that the Ministry of Defense hit them with a rocket attack, which seems

to be not the case. That is a false attack. False, yeah. But it's a pretext. Absolutely false attack. But the pretext is now that we're going to go capture, we're going to go arrest Shoigu and another General, Gorosimov. And so they go back into Russia and they take over, they surround and take over the Southern

Russian, Russia's Southern Military Command in Rostov. And they're looking for Shoigu, but Shoigu has already escaped. And so the generals who were there, they tried to talk Prigozhin down. Yes, Prigozhin thought that when he proposed to make a choice between him and between Shoigu, Prigozhin will choose, of course, him. Putin will choose Prigozhin. And he also thinks too, or is hoping in the back of his mind, that all of that popularity that he had from being on social media

and being on Russian TV on the front lines of Bachmuth means that the the the soldiers in the Russian military itself are on his side too and And so he goes and they've taken the military command and and the generals who are there are trying to talk him down and They're not able to do it. And so Prokofhen announces that they're going to have a march for justice on Moscow. And the column of Wagner, the Wagner column turns from Southern Russian military command and starts heading up the highway to Moscow. And I mean, this is, I mean,

I think everybody was glued to their TV screens to see like Wagner, uh, call him heading on Moscow and the mayor of Moscow. They started digging up the highway around Moscow to prevent, uh, their, you know, their potential arrival. Uh, Wagner shoots down, I think a number of helicopters and planes, about 13 people are killed. Um, but each time, you know, he's, he's getting, Prokoshen is getting closer and closer to helicopters and planes, about 13 people were killed. But each time, you know, he's getting, Prokofiev is getting closer and closer to Moscow, and he's also kind of going into empty space.

And so now he's trying to communicate to Putin that all he is trying to do is take out his rivals, Shoigu and Gorosimo, if he's not trying to overthrow Putin himself. But the issue is the closer he's getting to Moscow, the more he could accidentally be unleashing a coup because it's gonna be such a destabilizing moment. And so at some point, he's trying to say, I'm not overthrowing the government, but now it's getting close to looking like he might overthrow the government if he gets into Moscow. And behind the scenes, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is negotiating between

Putin's side and Prokofiev. And eventually he, he gets Prokofiev to agree to, to, to halt the March. And I think for Prokofiev himself, he was a little bit relieved because he was realizing that events were going out of his control by, I mean, they were hardly in his control before it, but they were as the closer he was getting to Moscow and they got within 150 miles, things were really starting to get out of control and he backs down. And you could make an argument that the guy who had an insane risk tolerance from going against Americans in the Battle of Kasham and, you know, risking his neck saying he's going to take Bakhmut. Like, this was perhaps the one moment where he should have doubled down and gone all the way to Moscow, but he chose not to. Well, Prigozhin didn't want to take over the power.

Yeah. And I think Prigozhin eventually realized that he didn't take into account one simple thing. Putin don't need the Ministry of Defense, professional Ministry of the Qualifying and Efficiency Minister of Defense. He need a close alliance, supporter. And when Prigozhin realized... alliance supporter and when the soldier himself when precaution realized that in any case he cannot to achieve his goal he gave gave an order to turn around.

And that sealed his fate ultimately three months later. As far as the conflict between the Ministry of Defense and Prigozhin, this conflict was permanent. The main reason from the moment of the creation of the became a sole curator of this project, this conflict began. Yeah. As it works for the system. The main reason, of course, money. Yeah.

money. Yeah, but it wasn't, uh, what your group, uh, uh, was funded by passing the ministry of defense and the show go was deprived from the opportunity to use this money for, use this money to profit from this flow of the money. Because that's how you make big money. Russia is getting off of the state budgets. So everything is a battle over the flow of budget. Because the more budget that comes your way, the more you can find your own. Yes, Of course. Our precaution was Wagner Group was funded directly from the state budget. Bypassing, bypassing.

Yeah, and it went all the way down. And so one of the reasons that, like, one of the ways that people were making money in Donbass in 2014-2015, right, is you're a commander and you tell, you say, you tell the Ministry of Defense, oh, I have 200 guys under my command. The Ministry of Defense pays your salaries, but you actually have 150 or 125 guys under your command. So not the case in the term of the pregogen. Pregogen men don't act.

He was at a bigger level. Some small money laundering. So was he assassinated? Yes. Do you think the state killed Porigozhin? I don't know who exactly was the actual person who did it. He doesn't know. Who was the actual person who did it. Prigozhin had many enemies.

So you're saying it could have been anybody. It might not have been the Ministry of Defense or Putin himself. I think a lot of people would put it on the FSB, which is the Russian successor to the KGB, which handles domestic threats for Putin as... Of course, the indecision. The final decision. Final decision, Putin made a final decision, of course. Putin made the final decision. Only with his permission, that can be happen. Yeah. Who came up with the plan?

Who was the executive? Time will show. So what is Wagner Group today? Right now. Since Prigozhen death, Wagner group, in my opinion, ceased to exist. So everything became subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. But the thing was that, kind of as we were talking about, the relationship between Wagner and the state was also different in each place. And so in Syria, like when Marat was there, you know,

they get everything from the Ministry of Defense, they're probably paid through the Ministry of Defense, they're working very closely, they have Russian air power that's support, I mean, this is like a Ministry of Defense operation. When you get to like the Central African Republic, there's not as much support from the Kremlin. And so, and so some kind of autonomy, there's a degree of independence, they're opening up breweries like Ministry of Defense doesn't want breweries or they have these gold mines. And so when Progression is gone, the Ministry of Defense has to figure out how do we take over all of these things? Because Progozhin wasn't just involved with mercenaries like Marat. He had troll farms, he had like chocolate museums in St. Petersburg, he had mining companies.

The main body of this project was not a Wagner group. Wagner group only part of this project. Wagner group is a military group that was used for the creation of the favorable environment to promote a business project. Of progozhin. So like Wagner, what basically- Wagner group is a part of the project. Wagner was a way for progozhin to overcome his status as an ex-con and try to show his worth

to eventually join Putin's inner circle. He was never really able to do it. But so when he died, it was relatively easy for the Ministry of Defense in places like Syria or Libya just to have guys sign new contracts and to take over. But where they were acting independently in like the Central African Republic... Yes, yes, yes, the Central Defense Republic This isn't the central define the guys special status Yeah, the guys the guys the guys showed up and they were like they couldn't understand it. There's breweries There's all sorts of things going on. And so the decision is made and it's not broke

Let's not fix it and let them just kind of the and the industrial project in Central African Republic kind of the industrial project in Central African Republic this is a resource for benefit of the president of Russia and his inner circle. Yeah so I think some account numbers got changed in terms of the transfers. Okay a little bit different difficult to take over. Yeah, because they don't understand it fully. Only the guys who work there know how it works. But Wagner Group is over. It's over.

Well, guys, thank you. Thank you so much for being here today and for sharing all that information. And I just want to ask you one thing. We had a conversation earlier about your feelings on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And now you're here in France seeking asylum. I'm just curious if you have anything to say to Putin? What would he say to Putin? What would he say to Putin? What would he say to Putin? What would he say to Putin?

Get out. Get out. Get out. You are enemy for my country. You are the main problem for my country. You are the main problem for my country. And you and his inner circle. Thank you both for being there. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Thank you. ["Dreams of a New World"] NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court. You get a chance to dig into my 14 year career in the NBA, but also get the input from the people that will be joining. Charles Barkley. I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor. Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner.

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