The Rest Is Classified - 101. Putin's Secret Army: Wagner's Control Of Africa (Ep 4)

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

From St Petersburg to the Central African Republic, Yevgeny Prigozhin and the infamous Wagner Group are extending their grip across the Global South and leaving death and destruction in their wake. In this episode, David and Gordon explore how the Wagner Group became embedded in the African military landscape and how their influence pervades to this day.  ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets HERE to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 31 January.  ------------------- Try Attio for free at ⁠https://www.attio.com/tric⁠ ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com. December 2020. Former police officer Grisha Dimitrii, arrives in the Central African Republic with a small group of Russian instructors. Grisha's assignment does not seem complicated because the instructor's tasks are only to teach the local army soldiers the basics and methods of fighting. However, everything goes wrong

from the country. The Russian instructors, together with their charges, fight back against the bandits. But for Grisha, who has never taken part in military operations, this business trip turns into a living hell. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And that is the promotional blurb for a film that I'm sure all of our, of our, you know, English speaking and understanding audience will remember.

It is a film called The Tourist. It's not the Johnny Depp, but Angelina Jolie version of The Tourist. It is a film that has financed. by Yvgeny Progoshin to promote, I think really the brand image of the Wagner group, and in particular its exploits in Africa. And we last, Gordon, hung out with Yvgeny Progoshin as he was sort of undergone really an amazing transformation over the course of the first three episodes of this series. He has gone from caterer, government services, sort of contractor, PR, sort of machine,

financier and promoter, and he's now a mercenary warlord, and he is now also financing films. Yeah. He got a blending, I guess, the mercenary warlord with the PR guru. We had described him as kind of like a version of Gordon Ramsey, I think. The chef, cruising tenuous analogy. I feel like this is the episode where he really moves. I mean, perhaps trolling the American election is also not Gordon Ramsey.

Ramsey. Yes. We've hung on too long already. For Gordon Ramsey in his lawyers, we are definitely not making any analogy with Gordon Ramsey at this point as he becomes mercenary warlord in Africa. That is definitely not. It's fully stepped out of his chef's hat out of the kitchen. So the key thing we've seen in the last episode was that he developed a business model for the Wagner group, aimed after this Dimitri Utkin Wagner in Syria and Ukraine. And it's a kind of group which is operating in alliance with the Russian military, but not always a very happy alliance, a kind of tense alliance, but also is trying to make its own money and do its own business deals. But now, Progogian is going to move to try and take that model global effectively and to kind of build it further afield into new conflicts. And Progogian and his private jet will be spotted all over Africa. He often, he often, travel's now under a fake name and wearing disguises and wigs. And we should say that if you

are going to watch this on YouTube or you're on social media, it's worth looking at some of the pictures of Progossian's disguises that he uses in Africa because they're kind of wild. Because Progotion is this balding, heavyset man. It looks like Sasha Baron Cohen and the dictator. It's That is exactly what it is. I mean, they're high comedy. I can't believe he actually used some of these. I mean, like massive big fake beards. Admittedly, especially the one here in the bottom left where he's got those big shades on.

Yeah. You really can't tell it to him. No. He just looks like an old man playing at being a soldier. Yeah, weird. And then there's another one where he's just got these kind of eyes. He's clearly maybe doing a selfie and he's in some weird uniform. I mean, so you think he looks like Alistair?

Campbell in the bottom right one. Not in any way, David. Maybe a little bit. No, not in any way. Just to clarify. We're going to see, we're going to finally determine if Alistair actually listens to this podcast. Yeah, because there will be a response.

There'll be a response to that. So he's going in these kind of crazy disguises, although it's not that low key, but it's kind of semi-low key, because I guess he still remember, we'll come back to this, kind of claiming he doesn't run Bargna, you know, publicly. He's saying, I had nothing to do with the- man does. This strange man with the beard and the glasses does. So that's why I guess he's using these disguises, because he's got to go broker the deals, but he doesn't want to be seen as, you know, prognosion doing it on the whole. And yet his jet is going. Yeah, his jet is being

spotted all over. And he's got a team of kind of media experts, professors, linguists, as well as mercenaries that are looking for business opportunities. And Africa is a continent where, you know, depressingly, there are conflicts, there's violence. There are government. who need help against Providing security, but against, you know, militias, rebels, ISIS is on the rise

in parts of Africa, the Islamic State group. So there's a kind of logic to it. Yeah. You know, a couple are interesting to kind of understand what Progogsion is doing. Central Africa Republic,

one of the kind of early places, landlocked country full of gold and diamonds. So already you can see the attraction for Mr. Progogion, who's learned in Syria, that oil and gas, natural resources are good for business. Some kind of mineral or natural resource concession is a helpful way for him to make the business model work. Exactly.

Islamists, other groups, militias, gangs, foreign powers. France has been there, pulls out, there's a vacuum. Progation of Russia move in. It's a training program where he's saying, we can help protect your regime, we can fight off any opponents and militias, we can secure and guard the natural resources. it's and all you have to give us in return is a cut little concession you make it sound sinister Gordon just give us 25% of the gold and you know in return if you're a leader you get a private army you get Russian weapons to go with them they'll do what you want they'll play by dirtier

rules than many other Western governments and you don't even have to pay them direct because you can just take it from the profits so it's not even like you need to give them cash you know They're just going to take a kind of skim a bit off the top. There's going to be gems, diamonds, golds. They're going to take control of this massive gold mine, chasing away other miners. There's pictures of this huge gold mine, which, you know, at first have been worked by hand, but then they're going to come along and kind of industrialize it, and it's going to bring in massive amounts of income.

Procution is actually going to start negotiating peace deals in the country between different militias, basically so you can get free passage to move some of the gold. and things around. One of the interesting questions is how far is this Moscow and how far is it, you know, progoshan? And the answer is it's as ever with this story. It's quite hard to tell. I think it's more progation.

Yeah. As we've seen, very entrepreneurial. Yeah. Very willing to take action and risk. Yeah. The subtext to a lot of the story in Africa is sort of frankly the retreat of the French. Yeah, we treat the French to the West. And I think Progosion is kind of stepping in and saying, look, Moscow is not going to stop me.

Yeah. You know, there's an overlap of interest here. And he just kind of does it. Yeah. But I think I think that's absolutely right. He's doing it for himself. But I also think, you know, it's useful for the Kremlin. It is useful for the Kremlin.

It's useful for the Kremlin. I think he's doing it for himself and it's useful for the Kremlin. Because often what you see with these African deals is there's a kind of Kremlin diplomatic. deal and then Wagner moves in. And of course, if you're the Kremlin, Wagner is kind of, you want to project Russian power around the world. The whole thing about Putin is you want to be a global power, not just like a regional power. You know, that's the image of Russia and the sense that Russia lost that role and now Putin is restoring it. And of course, Wagner is a kind of low-cost way of projecting power across Africa, of making yourself useful to governments and building

relationships and doing it on the cheap. And there is this way in which it's a kind of modern form of colonialism, you know, resource extraction in war zones, guarded by Wagnermerceries, financed by the profits they extract. The British system, you know, the East India Company in the early days, was a private company, which basically takes over India and has its own armies and militias and eventually gets absorbed into the state. But there's a kind of age-old aspect to this, but just kind of placed into the modern Russian context, I guess. There's also a dark side because, you know, as news starts to emerge about this, people start investigating it.

And in July 2018, three well-known Russian journalists working for a kind of media company linked to the Kremlin critic Kordakovsky, a kind of former oligarch who fell out with Putin, are going to go to the Central African Republic to investigate, you know, the links between Wagner, Progossian's Concord Company and what's happening there. They're trying to go to a gold mine, but instead their car is taken the wrong route. They get ambushed and all three are killed. You know, none of their possessions are taken. It's claimed it's by kind of Islamist rebels.

But investigations will show that the driver had been in touch with officials who are in turn with in touch with Wagner. So you suddenly look like Progogian is kind of killing Russian journalists who are investigating his activities there. So it's a sign of how far he's willing to go to kind of protect to some extent. these businesses. Sudan, another one, Progotion turns up on his private jet, I don't know which disguise he was using, for a kind of deal for gold with President Omar al-Bashir, who's under indictment from the International Criminal Court. Again, Putin is also meeting with Bashir and signing a deal because, you know, the Kremlin's got interests. Russia wants to set up naval bases at Port Sudan on the Red Sea and Wagner doing offering security support.

And what's so interesting here is Vargner is offering security support for Bashir's forces. Omar Abbashear gets booted out of office and then Vargana go and go and work for the people who've taken over. So they don't really care who they work for. It's not, they're not super loyal, I think it's fair to say, to the particular leader who's employed them. Yes. I think progosion has shown throughout the course of his career, I think, a certain pragmatism. A pragmatism. And then I love this fact from 2021 until mid-2020, at least 60s.

Steen planes loaded with gold, departed Sudan, for a Russian-controlled air base. Which, again, when we get to Wagner provides a lot of benefits to Putin, right? As we've said, it's deniable, it's low cost. If it's raising money, there's also, you know, there's a cash flow. Yeah. That, again, we don't know. Yeah. I guarantee you that, you know, progosian cut Putin in.

Yeah, someone will be cut in. Yeah, there's a cut, right? And so, again, you know, I remember speaking with a former chiefest station who worked in Moscow for a long time. And, you know, he told me, think about Russia as a business. It's easier to think about the country as a business. You can use a lot of mental models. But if you use business, you're usually going to be on the money. And here, again, this is another way for the Kremlin to raise money.

Yeah. And not to raise money for the state necessarily. For individuals. But for individuals, right? So I think it's yet another reason why this kind of adventurism would be attracted to Putin. Yeah. Some of the other examples, touch on briefly, are interesting as well. Libya, big civil war since the overthrow of Gaddafi.

It's one of those conflicts, the civil war where you get lots of other countries pile in with proxies to support one group or the other. Interestingly, November 2018, Progogion was filmed at talks between, right? Russia's defence minister and General Haftar will be Russia's proxy in the fight, even though Haftar once lived in Virginia. But hey, but Haftar is now there, man. And it's interesting that progoshin is visible at this meeting, you know, alongside his kind of rival, the defence minister, Shoyugu, Sergei Shou, and Gerasimov, the head of the Russian military.

And Russian officials respond by saying there that he's there in his role as a caterer. Organising an official dinner. We're back to the Gordon-Ramsey comparison now. Exactly. Seems somewhat implausible. But again, you know, Russia wants to back Haftar. It's going to supply, you know, weapons, mercenaries to him. And about 300 Wagnerites set out along with artillery tanks, drones. Some come from Syria as well.

Some come from Sudan. Haftar at one point looks like he's going to take Tripoli. But then the Turks get involved and bring in these new drones and things like that. and actually push them back. So it's not a great success. And it's the same actually in Mozambique they're going to get involved, actually with a insurgency against ISIS, again, a country with lots of gas and resources. One of the interesting things about Mozambique, just briefly, is that there's a quote here from John Lechner's book, Death Is Our Business. Everyone in their uncle were pitching to the Mozambicans, a South African mercenary remembered, and Wagner was clearly one of them. And so you get this

sense that actually there's a kind of... There's a market. There's a market. And, you know, can you front of those books? I wonder what the pitch deck was like. It says that Eric Prince, you know, who is famously Blackwater U.S. guy, is supposedly there pitching to the, you know, the Mozambican's, I've got some mercenaries. The South Africans are there pitching their mercenries to it.

And Progogian wins the deal. He must have had some snazzy PowerPoint slides that he brought with him. I think it's possibly the fact that Russia was going to pay off some debts. bring some tanks. That's like, that's better than a good picture on PowerPoint. We like to think these markets don't exist. Yeah. And we like to think that, oh, they're sort of, sort of naughty, you know.

And we can, but there's a reality that there's, I mean, there's a business opportunity here. Yeah. For entrepreneurial guys and girls, mostly guys, but entrepreneurial people who have sort of, you you know, violent people at their disposal and capacity, right? I mean, it just... And it's been there through history. It is.

And we talked about that previously. You know, you go back to kind of, go back to ancient times and Carthage, but you also go back to Italian, you know, city states, all these kind of conflicts, 1960s in the Congo, you have mercenary. So it's always been there this business, but we kind of like to not look at it that much. What is the difference do you think between a mercenary and a government contractor? Because if we took blackwater in Iraq as an example, we would call that a government contractor, right? In our context and system, it's okay, that's a, is it different? Is it different? Yeah. I don't know. It's a, in my head, there's a slight difference as well where a company is contracting with its own government to provide additional help versus selling its wares to whatever government will pay the highest bidder. I don't know. I'm not sure what the difference is.

Yeah. It's interesting. If there is one, it's a narrower one than we probably like to think. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. So, you know, Mozambique, they win the deal, but it doesn't actually go very well. They find there's a pretty big insurgency, and they struggle with it. Marley is another one. And again, you know, this goes back to our earlier point. Marley's an interesting one because the French were there to help push out on Islamist insurgency and deployed loads of troops there

but eventually it's going to pull them out and so kind of Vargna moves into the gap the French leave, the vacuum in Africa in return for mining concessions but there's some awful I mean you know we shouldn't underplay how awful some of the reports are of massacres including by Wagner troops of civilians

you know there's going to be mass graves in villages you know where unarmed men are just being killed because they're suspected, you know, the village is linked to so-called rebels. And so Barkner's going to get a reputation, kind of real violence and human rights. Is it that Boggart is conducting these on its own, or is it in collaboration with government forces that it's working with or four? That's also the ambiguities, because they're there as trainers or instructors, which we actually know from some of our other episodes, it's including where the U.S. has been training and instructing the Colombians. You're not comparing the training. Instructing of the Colombians to Wagner, are you, Gordon?

You do remember our interview. That is, this is. No, no, no, no. But my point was that the definition of training and instructing is quite elastic, you know. You can, you can get very involved in operations when you're technically only there to train. Yes. That's my comparison, rather than a moral judgment. And I think here, you know, I think it's Wagner who's doing the dirty stuff.

And there's going to be, you know, reports of a massacre of more than 300 civilians and raids on minds and all these kind of awful things associated with Wagner and what it does. But I think just one more fact about Wagner, which I think is really interesting, which is, you know, we focused on the kind of mercenary side of it. But actually, it's more than that because one of the things that we talked about early on was the kind of fusion of security work and information warfare with the way in which progosian operates. And that's also what he's offering to these governments.

So they don't just offer military trainers, instructors, fighters. They also offer political propaganda campaigns. They offer disinformation, social media, campaigns on Facebook to attack enemies and support a government. You know, you get a whole package with Wagner. He hasn't rolled the catering up into that. No, I don't think you also get blinnies and things like that. Blean Donald's.

So you get, you know, it's so interesting because you can imagine when Progossian goes to see one of these presidents in his wig, probably takes the wig off when he meets him. But he says, I'll give you troops. The Russian military will give you weapons. I will give you a propaganda campaign, you know, which will support your regime and will attack your enemies. Also, you get a presidential advisor, security, bodyguards, technical counter-surveillance expertise, even people who can do polygraphs to check staff for any threats. You know, this is, as we've seen all along, Progosion understanding what a leader wants. Yes.

And then offering it to them. The whole package which fuses kind of propaganda, warfare, kind of what now people often call gray zone activities, just this whole spread of activities. And he's just good at that. And so maybe there with Progosion having really, I think, perfected this business model. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll see how he tries to use it to increase. is standing in the Kremlin and how that is going to make him some very powerful enemies.

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Welcome back, the informal motto for Wagner. Gordon has become Death is our business And business is good Wow, wow Put it on the T-shirts Yeah, that's right That's the merch

So Prokotian has perfected This kind of stew, hasn't he? I can't help but think Just to bring it back to the man for a second That he sees all of this As kind of a pitch to Putin For more and more influence Yeah

And prestige In kind of the court Yeah, you know Exactly And one of the things that we, I guess, might be worth reflecting on, too, at this point is just how effective are these services that he's providing? Because there's a sense where progosin, as we've seen, is a pretty effective salesman and PR man. But are his services really changing outcomes on the ground? Or is it more of a way for him?

Again, you know, we went back. We talked in the last episode about his effort to influence the thing. 2016 campaign and a lot of the sort of the trolling, the creation of these online accounts that are used to sort of, you know, stir the pot in the states, it makes a pretty snazzy thing that he could point to with Putin and others to say, look, what I'm doing. But is he kind of over his skis when it comes to selling, you know, his own influence and kind of, I guess, I guess the effectiveness of Wagner? If you look in Africa, it's effective in some countries.

He is building his own brand and the brand of Wagner quite effectively, and I think it is part of him trying to get into the inner circle. If we think of Putin, which I think Mark Galliotti kind of describes as a kind of like a king in a medieval court, there's definitely an inner circle of courtiers who are Putin's friends from his old days in St. Petersburg. And even though Pogosian was from the St. Petersburg days, he was staff. He was the caterer. He wasn't in the inner circle. And so I definitely think there's this effort in which he is building something to try and get into that inner circle and break into that inner circle. And it goes back to him showing his usefulness, you know, to the Kremlin in what he's doing. And that is part of it beyond the kind of effectiveness on the ground. And so he's developed a kind of toolkit and he's going to use it in Africa.

He's going to use it, interestingly enough, the kind of political influence operations as well, closer to home in Belarus, you know, neighbouring Russia, to defend President there Lukashenko. When Lukashenko has some problems with protest, Progogion is going to go in there and use his kind of influence to try and his media campaign to try and support him, because also Belarus has been kind of a hub for equipment going through. So he's busy and he's building, and that's another sign. He's building a relationship with Lukashenko, who's going to be important, actually, when we get to the final act. So we've talked about Progoshchenko. So we've talked about Progocean is the businessman. And yeah, he's about making money. But I think it is much more than

that. It's building a kind of power base. Wagner is growing. By 2018, it's about 4,300 people in the military side. Still not legal, though, under Russian law, to have a run a mercenary group. So he's kind of, it's what's interesting. It's like you can have a kind of private security force guarding a facility, but you're not supposed to have this. So he's kind of still on the edge of the law playing within the world of criminality, smuggling gold and diamonds, he's not quite got the status, you know, the inner circle status that I think he wants. Isn't everyone basically on the edge of the law in Russia, though? I mean, some more than others, I think.

Okay, fair enough. But that also does seem an advantage to Putin, right? Is it an sort of obvious one is even as you're obviously not just tolerating, but encouraging this guy, you make sure that there's a legal source. sort of hanging over him so that you have, you know, leverage. Yeah. But also, I think he's moved heavier into the mercenary period. We've seen here this kind of 2017-18, 19-20 period.

And I think Precaution himself, you see start to change a bit. It's a bit like Joseph Conrad's famous novel, you know, The Harb Darkness in which Kurtz, you know, this kind of colonel goes into Africa and is changed by it. And I think Progotion himself starts to become a little bit wilder. You know, and you can see it in the pictures that we looked at. But he feels more like a kind of international outlaw than he does a straight businessman. So I think that's the problem. And I think there's an element of him which wants to go legit.

He's Michael Corleone, you know, in Godfather, Part 3. Who wants to go legit legit. But he's now found that his thing is being an international mercenary warlord. He can't go back to being a kind of a businessman. I will say, though, that, you know, in my time as a management consultant, I saw plenty of overstretched CEOs or executives. who also looked increasingly deranged. They were just a few steps away from donning the progosian beard, you know?

Progian beard and the combat fatigues. Yes, exactly. We keep calling him a mercenary warlord. Yeah, right? But he's also a CEO. But he's also a CEO. Yeah, he's a very stretched CEO who has a lot of demands on his time.

Yeah. He's running a very large organization. And it's the sort of organization that's brought in at a moment of high stress for its clients, let's say. Yeah. So they're not getting the best, you know, of the Malians, no, Gordon, or the Central African Republic.

It's the worst, you know, they're being brought in the worst possible time. That would stretch anybody. That would stretch anybody. But also, the problem for him, I think, is that he's also becoming famous for this because people are watching Wagner. And particularly in the West, they start freaking out because they can see the way Wagner is extending Russian influence around Africa. And they don't know quite how to deal with it. Because it's moving fast. I mean, that's the thing about Wagner.

It's nimble. It's fast. It's moving into the vacuum in the spaces in Africa. And that's a problem. And I do think it is in this period where the Wagner brand or the lore starts to get out in front of the reality of how effective or influential it is on the ground or even with Putin. Yeah. There's a tendency, I think, to overstate. Yeah, I think that's true.

How influential they really were. How effective they were. Because, again, as we've said. Procution, he's not getting, he's not getting invited into the box at the ice hockey games. No, with Putin. No, that's right. And, you know, 2018 onwards, he's getting sanctioned by the US as well. Heavier sanctions on him personally, many because of the election interference. And so he's also worried about his assets and he's trying to kind of move them around. He's getting his private jets impounded. And I think he is resembled. He's not with the cool kids in Moscow invited to, you know, set the ice hockey games.

He's just that little bit too wild and dangerous to be legit. I think he leans in, which is what, if you're a management consultant, you'd probably tell him to. Lean into the brand. If that's your brand, go for it. Rather than find against them, I don't know what we would tell him, but it would take three to four months and costs a million dollars. And involve some fancy pitch decks. And involve some very fancy pitch decks. Yeah.

But one of the things I love is he starts, he then starts to develop his own film studio and finance films. I mean, action films set in Africa involving Wagner troops, and they always involve these kind of heroic fighters battling, normally Islamists and the CIA often. And, you know, his PR machine will then fluff them with good reviews, but that's the tourists that you read the tourists, that's right. As you've noted here, it only has a 5.3 out of 10 on IMDPs. That's great. Even despite the trolling.

Even despite the PR machine, you put your full PR machine. You put your full PR machine into gear and it doesn't... And it gets 5.3 out of IMDB. That's not great. Some of the dialogue in this film, though, because we've gone down the rabbit hole. Yeah, let's do. You know, Americans say they fight for democracy. Russians fight for justice.

It's good, isn't it? This stuff is very on the nose. It's very on the nose. So I think he's leading into the Wagner brand. It's going to encourage more recruits. He's stepping out of the shadows of. little bit. You know, there's more public references to him on social media and telegram. There's even a website at one point called join vagnar.com looking for far

right sympathizers for the US and Europe who want to fight with them. And, you know, the same English language. It's an English language. Yeah. Interesting enough, a far right, which is back to the kind of specifies far right. That seems to be what they're looking for is, you know, the kind of people who want a bit of adventure in a fight and are kind of attracted to the, I mean, remember, Dmitri Uckin, Vargda himself is got a man with SS tattoos, you know, so you're assuming that someone on the far left wouldn't want to join now. I don't know, I'm guessing, but that's what they seem to be going for, the kind of imperialist nationalist world view. Join PMC Wagner to protect the peace and

tranquility of civilians from terrorists and bandits. It's got a nice ring to it. That's the pitch. Fugosian gives his first interview to the Western press, speaks the Sunday Telegraph. Interestingly, he is still denying any connection between him and Wagner or the Internet Research Agency. I suppose there's no advantage to actually outright admitting it, right? Yeah, he says, you know, I've got no connection to Wagner. I've got no connection to mercenary groups. What worries me greatly that some people think I have such a connection.

I am a pacifist, he says. I think he's still trying to kind of straddle the mercenary warlord, but not publicly, because he doesn't want to be. under sanctions and he's trying to protect his assets, you know, and there's a reward from the US about him. He's still using the dark arts because Bellingat, the private investigative open source investigative group, you know, revealed some of the links between Progogion and people in the Kremlin and the kind of calls he's making between them. And Progogion is also going to launch lawsuits against Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingat, for articles and tweets

are linking him to Wagner and uses, depressingly, London lawyers to go after Elliot Higgins. I mean, why are there so many lawyers in your country that are willing to do these kinds of things, Gordon? Yeah, it's a source of some regret, it's fair to say to me as a journalist, that there are people willing to do that and take precautions money to go after journalists for investigating him. But those are the kind of techniques he and other oligarchs are going to use. But worth saying that still, you know, relations with the Kremlin are not that easy. The Russian Ministry of Defence, which we know is, you know, uneasy about Wagner, is also building up its own nursery groups.

One called Redoubt or Redoubt, which, you know, had been going for a while. And that seems to be like their alternative to Wagner, you know. And it's the classic kind of Putin thing, isn't it? We described it as a court, and he's the king. And his trick is never let anyone get too powerful, always have alternatives, play them off against each of. other, be insecure. So, you know, here you have another mercenary group, which, you know, can, you can play off against Wagner. Don't let anyone get too big. Don't let Progogian get too big. Just keep it in play. So that would be the top down sort of Kremlin political view of it.

The other lens you could take to, you know, this idea of the MOD having its own mercenary group is that Wagner has been this entrepreneurial startup. that has succeeded in these markets. And this would be the equivalent of like the sort of bulking behemoth, which realizes it's missing out on this new high growth opportunity and tries to incubate inside itself its own little version of the startup without much success. Yeah, yeah, which is going to try and build up.

So now we're coming into 2022, and January 2022, Pregosian has a big row with Alexiev, who is the number two of the GRU, military intelligence. The Rower is supposedly in his office. And Alexiev is the kind of guy who has handled Wagner. You know, he's been the kind of contact person. And it's because Prokosia's annoyed, he's getting locked out by the Ministry of Defence. And Putin is not speaking to him that much. He hasn't had a call for him with Putin personally for six months. So you get a sense here that his rise, his growth of the brand has been useful for the Kremlin, but only up to a point.

And it's reached that point. And so as you get to the start of 2022, the Ministry of Defense is kind of like, we're just going to keep you at arm's length. You know, we don't want you to get any bigger or any, or get any more involved. And Putin as well is kind of just keeping him at arm's length a bit, this kind of rough and tough mercenary guy. He's staff. And he doesn't like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that is, he has aspirations for himself that go beyond just being staff. And here's the problem, because just as at this moment, the Progogian seems to be locked out, and he's not getting his calls returned, start of 2022, something big is brewing. Around 175,000 Russian troops, regular military, are building up on the borders of Ukraine. Now, most at the time, think that this is a bluff to put pressure on Ukraine and that there's not going to be a real invasion, and they're going to be wrong. So Gordon, I think that is a good spot to end this episode. When we come back next time, we'll see how this war in Ukraine, this actual proper, massive invasion of Ukraine, is going to totally transform Burgosian's fortunes, bring them to the highest of highs, and ultimately lead to his demise. That's right, but. But just a reminder, if you want to hear those episodes now, you can joining the Declassified Club at the rest of this classified club.

but the rest is classified.com. And you've got access to our special mini-series, won't you? That's right. We will be doing a three-parter. Yep. On sort of the secret world of the KGB and Vladimir Putin, showing his rise, his time in the KGB,

and his ascent to power. I have some special guests for that series. You won't want to miss it. So go and sign up for the Declassified Club to get access. We'll see you next time. See you next time. Thank you.