The Rest Is Classified - 103. Putin's Secret Army: The Coup That Almost Brought Down Russia (Ep 6)

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Could this have been the day when Putin fell from power? In June 2023, Prigozhin marched on Moscow, threatening to bring Putin’s authoritarian regime to its knees.  In their final episode on the dramatic rise and fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin, David and Gordon take us back to the coup that almost toppled Putin and how the autocratic leader carried out the ultimate revenge.  ------------------- 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. At Capital One, we're more than just a credit card company. We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes. Yes to new opportunities. Yes to second chances. Yes to a fresh start.

That's why we've helped over 4 million Canadians get access to a credit card because at Capital One, we say yes, so you don't have to hear another no. What will you do with your yes? Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca.combs and conditions apply. You and Santa?

Best rappers out there. But Rees wants to know, what about the best unwrapping moment? Reese's peanut buttercups, Put your unwrapping skills to the test. And with three cups of creamy peanut butter and smooth chocolate per pack, you get your practice in.

Experiencing that sweet and salty satisfaction again and again and again. Santa gets cookies. You get Reesis. Nothing else is Rees. This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the health they need

when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca slash giving Tuesday. It's better if you kill me. I cannot lie. Russia stands on the threshold of a catastrophe. If you don't tighten the bolts, the airplane will crumble in midair. Welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

I'm Gordon Carrara. And that, of course, is the Evgeny Progossian. And we are now wrapping up our six-part series, our deep dive into the life and times and joys of Yevgeny Progossian. And in this very last chapter, we're going to see how Progogian, who's, when we left him last time, his star was on the rise in Ukraine. He's become critical to the war effort. He's building his image and brand back home. And I think aspiring to a role in Russian political life and in Putin's inner circle that he feels. is his due, and he's going to run into some resistance to that, isn't he, in this final chapter in his life.

Yeah, the tension's going to be between Wagner-Pregosian and the regular Russian military leadership, which is going to see effectively Putin's inner circle going to war with itself as well as in Ukraine. And the spark for this is going to be a series of really heavy battles involving Wagner mercenary forces in Ukraine. Wagner is involved in the East Solidar, January 2023, assault mining town. Progoshans poses there with soldiers and tries to take credit for victory. One of the few that Russia's had, so it's a big deal.

And he's saying, I did it. But the Russian Ministry of Defense at first doesn't mention Wagner at all. Prokotion's furious. His narrative is, my boys are doing the fighting and dying, and they're being abandoned by the top brass in the military. Taking on maybe what sounds a little bit less like the role of the aloof businessman, and more of a father figure. I think father figure is stretching it.

It's more the voice of the ordinary person and the ordinary Russian soldier against the elite who are resentful. The battle, as we said, is with Sergei-Gu, the old friend of Putin. And this rivalry between Shoygu and Progoujian goes back to 2014. Shoygu is also going to fire a deputy in the Ministry of Defense who'd been the one handing the kind of contracts to Progosion. So I think Progouin consent that Shoygo is maneuvering against him. February 2023, there's a restriction on Wagner recruiting in prison. Other mercenary groups are appearing. Some under the kind of companies that exist.

Progosion is kind of angry. The new groups that are arriving make it feel like he's being pushed out of business. And these are a rival. Rival mercenary groups. But more under the control of the Ministry of Defense than his group. Suravikin, General Armageddon, the honorary member of Wagner, gets removed as overall commander of forces in Ukraine in January of 2003 and Gerasimov, the kind of head of the overall military,

takes personal charge. So, kind of progosh and can see the pushback. He's trying to kind of use his media machine in turn, picturing himself on the front line, complaining that they're doing all the fighting. He's using the war correspondence, courting them, directing his anger, not just against the top brass, but a kind of corrupt elite is the way he puts it.

Interesting enough, a lot of the focus is on kids. Progotion has made a big deal of saying the kids of ministers are off partying. They're living it up while ordinary Russian boys are dying. Then a video of Progation's own children turns up, singing on holiday and his daughter in Dubai and places like that. I'm kind of shocked that he's not genuine on social media. Yeah, so exactly. It's like revealed the realities does not match the myth. So the kind of PR battle is growing.

and also there's kind of smears against him. One of the interesting smears that comes out which gets spread quite widely is that he'd been sexually abused in prison by other inmates and a tattooed man says he was a crime boss back in the kind of 80s, you know, when Progogion was in prison and Progogion had been what's known as a rooster

and performed various intimate acts weren't getting to the detail back in the day. Now, no idea if it's true, not much sign necessarily. It was true, but it's a kind of sign that the dark arts and the smear campaigns, you know, are being turned against Progoshin himself. And so, I mean, I guess a year after the war in Ukraine has started, he's lost important patrons inside the war effort. General Armageddon's gone. The bureaucratic conflict with Shoygoo at the Ministry of Defense is heating up. There's sparring over contracts and Progogion is losing.

Shoyu is trying to create alternatives, mercenary alternatives. to Wagner. Yeah. And there is a PR campaign that's been unleashed to discredit him. So if you're Progosion, you're thinking, I've provided all of these services to the Russian state. And this is the thanks I get. Yeah.

That's the way he thinks. What he doesn't see is a logical person will go, maybe I need to kind of negotiate, think about my position. But he's come from the prison courtyard culture where you never back down, you always escalate, you always show strength, and that's what he's going to do. And this is all going to kind of come to a head over another really significant battle over a place called Bakhmut. From the winter of 2022 becomes probably one of the most brutal, long-running battles of the Ukraine war. The Russians trying to take this back from the Ukrainians.

Both sides are going to throw everything at this battle, and it becomes absolutely brutal meat grinder in the mud. from late 2022, the Russians are just throwing these kind of meatwaves that we talked about last time of people to take sometimes just 100 meters of land a day, but very heavy losses. And the Wagner group are being used on the front line, and they're going to be the ones taking that heavy casualties. You've written about this, didn't you? Yeah, I wrote about some of these meatwaves because I interviewed some of the Ukrainian commanders. And they just couldn't believe the way that Russians use their troops. And this is one of the kind of great imbalances between Russia and Ukraine, is the Russian side just has a kind of casualness about the loss of life and about throwing troops to die, whereas the Ukrainians have got some of their best troops there. And when they die, it's a kind of tragedy where the Russians are just throwing Wagner and prisoners at them.

And it's one of the kind of challenges for Ukraine, is kind of how you deal with that. And by, I think, February 2023, the U.S. reckon that Wagner have about 30,000 wounded or killed, made. And the stories are just kind of, you know, grim and people who flee get executed. And it becomes interesting here because one theory is that the Russian military is deliberately trying to weaken progoshin and derail Wagner by letting as many of his men fight and die there as possible, which actually does seem kind of plausible. If you're the Russian Ministry of Defense and you don't like this guy who's on the rise, you just go, we're going to kind of. wear him down. Yeah. Some of the kind of maneuverings around here are really interesting and odd.

So there's a U.S. intelligence report which gets leaked something called the Discord leaks, which claims that in January 2023, Progoshin tries to negotiate with the Ukrainians and through a back channel secretly and says to the Ukrainians, if they withdraw from Bermut and let Zvagner take Bermud, he would give Ukraine information on Russian troop positions, so they could attack them. Now, if that's true, it's nuts, isn't it? But is it the big if true category? It is, yeah.

Do you buy it? I don't know. I mean, it could be that Progaution was kind of lying to the, you could imagine him telling that to the Ukrainians. Just let me take that back. And having no intent of following through. But he wants the victory of taking Mahmoud because he knows how much is riding on it.

So he might be kind of lying about it rather than really planning to do it. But, you know, he's stated. his reputation on taking back moot and he promises to take it by may 9th 2023 you know victory day in russia it's not going well he's thinking that he's not getting enough ammo from the russian ministry of defense now it may be that they're restricting ammo it may be that they've not got enough ammo it may be he's looking for an excuse for why he's not winning but this is where the whole thing starts to unravel and go out of control 5th of may there's a video of progosian standing by corpses of his own men. It looks dark and he sounds kind of angry, wild. And he goes,

these guys are Wagner PMCs that die today. The blood is still fresh. Now listen to me, you bitches. These are someone's father, someone's sons. And he's kind of screaming. And those pieces of shit, sorry about the language, that don't send ammunition, those bitches will be eating their entrails in hell. We have 70% ammo shortages. And this is the famous line, Shoygo, Gerasimov, where is the fucking ammunition? He's crossing a line here, right? He's crossing a line here. Because he hasn't done this.

No. Up to this point, complaints would have been private or sort of sent through a third party to leak out. And now he's just doing it directly. And I think it's a sign of desperation. He's not winning, as he'd hoped, he's losing men. He's got to blame someone. And this is a big deal because, of course, you know, this is supposed to be the special military operation. It's not a war.

But this is coming out in Russian kind of media and Russian telegram channels. with pictures of their bodies, which, again, you're not kind of supposed to see. So it's kind of crazy. And then there's another video, 9th of May, complaining about the lack of shells and ammo. He's saying, you know, they're collecting them in warehouses. Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy and save the lives of our soldiers, they let our soldiers die. And the happy grandfather thinks everything is fine.

That's a Putin reference right there, right? Well, this is the thing. Who's he talking about? because there is this kind of talk in Russia that Putin, like his critics call him grandpa in the bunker and it's the way that aging leaders in the Soviet Union

would kind of refer to as kind of grandpa progosian will later say you know that he wasn't talking about Putin he'll kind of give multiple choice answers he will never actually say he was referring to but he kind of tries to point that it's Gerasimov he's talking about the military chief so he'll try and point away from being Putin

but a lot of people will assume it is We'll assume it is. You know, so something's kind of changing. Bacmuth is going to fall. Wagner is going to claim they won it. The Ukraine is going to say it's not true. And this is basically late May of 2023 when Bachmunt falls. Yeah.

And by this time, maybe 20,000 Wagner men have been killed in the battle alone killed. And prior to the war in Ukraine, the entire size of Wagner was like 4 to 5,000 people. Yeah. And then it would grow to 25,000. And now they've done. just lost 20,000 in Bahmoud. I mean, they've grown because of the prisoners. Yeah. But it's brutal. I think this is the moment where he breaks with the Ministry of Defense, partly because it's not going well for him. And he becomes outspoken about the whole war, which is something

no one is supposed to do in Russia, but he's escalating. He says the aim might have been to demilitarize Ukraine, but it's had the opposite effect. So he's now starting to criticize the overall decision-making, the strategic leadership, the kind of ideas behind the war, not just the Ministry of Defense giving him enough ammo. And he's accusing the Russian forces of deliberately killing his people. May 24th, another interview, and this interview is a big one, because he kind of warns, if the toll of dead and coffins for ordinary Russians continues while the elite shake their asses in the sun, then the homes of the elite could be stormed by people with pitchforks. you know, and he singles out the daughter of Shoygu, the defense minister, who'd been spotted vacationing in Dubai with her fiancé, a fitness blogger. And he said, you know, first the soldiers will stand up.

After that, their loved ones will rise up. They're already tens of thousands of them, relatives of those killed, and there'll probably be hundreds of thousands. We cannot avoid that. This divide can end, as in 1917, with a revolution. So this is where, okay, so throughout the series, we have we have used Gordon Ramsey as sort of the you know a comparison point yeah for what happens if a psychopathic chef no no no no no not psychopathic yeah it becomes a mercenary

warlord yeah and how the two you know are not so dissimilar and we actually you know if Gordon Ramsey's lawyers are listening we of course we have a Gordon Ramsey quote that we've used to demonstrate that Gordon Ramsey also believes that chefs are psychopaths. Okay, so we're on solid footing there. But this is where I think the Gordon Ramsey comparison has already broken down. It broke down three episodes ago.

But now it's definitely broken down. But this behavior that we've charted here in the spring of 2023, it would be akin to Eric Prince, who's the head of Blackwater, essentially running a smear campaign against the Bush administration and the Pentagon's handling of the war in Iraq. Yeah. A warning of a revolution.

Warning of a revolution. Yeah. If the course of the war doesn't change. And, oh, by the way, this would all be happening with a relative body count in Iraq several orders of magnitude higher. And so it'd be much more visceral at home than it ever was. That would be kind of the equivalent of here. I think that's...

Which would be very frustrating for the White House. They would not be happy about it. They would not be happy. Because he's warning of a revolution. And it's again, he's trying to position himself as like the voice of the masses against this elite. And he's saying, we must, you know, introduce martial law, must have mobilization. He starts saying, you know, I shouldn't have been called Putin's chef.

I should have been called Putin's butcher. And everything would have been fined. I mean, he... He sounds exasperated. He's exasperated, yeah. And he's pointing his anger to, to... towards kind of Putin and the overall leadership. And this is hard for Putin because Putin's, you know, message to everyone is,

things are fine in Ukraine, special military operation is proceeding, maybe not entirely as planned, but, you know, we're going to get there. Now we get to the kind of final moments where it's really going to kind of descend because the Ministry of Defense, I think, are moving against him. Early June, June 10th, 2023, Shoygu Defense Minister, orders all volunteer groups, mercenaries, had to, assign official contracts with the Ministry of Defence by the 1st of July. So basically saying, we are going to bring all of these groups under our control. Now, that is basically the end for

Wagner. And I think it's also starting to get clearer that Putin is going to have to choose in this increasingly kind of visceral, visible battle between Shoygu and Progoshin. Putin's going to have to choose sides because those two are kind of warring with each other. which is not something you want to do as the autocrat, right? We might think of a dictator as wanting to just be dictating. Yeah. But I think it's better for Putin if these courtiers understand the guardrails and kind of play by the rules. And he can kind of balance them subtly.

Having to weigh in most publicly in favor of one over the other, this is the sort of final failsafe in the autocratic system. You don't want it to get to this point. Yeah. But I think at this point, Putin is. is going to choose. And the problem for Progotion is he's not going to choose him. Maybe there, with this fateful choice looming, let's take a break when we come back. We will see how it all goes horribly wrong for Yivgeny Progoshin. This episode is brought to you by Atio, the CRM for the AI era.

Now, David, people think that SpyCraft is just car chases and see. but an awful lot of it is just idling around, waiting for the action. It's a bit like starting your own business. You think it's going to be as easy as creating and selling a product, but the reality is business owners spend far too long, trying to get their CRM to fit a system, not built for them. Atio's AI-driven CRM enables you to take control of your platform to build something from the ground up that fits your needs.

James Bond had Q's X-ray shades and explosive ones, an explosive watch and a pen grenade. Business owners have Adio's real-time customer insights and platform that grows with them. All tools relevant for your mission to build a company from the ground up. Atio even has something called agent collaboration. Yes, but in this case, that means giving people the ability to let AI work seamlessly in the background for them. Try Atio for free at ATTIO.com slash trick. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

We tend to imagine bad actors in clandestine meetings picking locks or planting bugging devices. However, these days, much of the world's malicious activity really occurs online. And unfortunately, anybody with a bad Wi-Fi connection is now an open target for someone spying on their data. Cyberespionage agents don't need disguises or gadgets to infiltrate your life. just an unprotected device. But David, thankfully, NordVPN encrypts your data and your data, and its threat protection pro blocks malicious links and scans downloads for up to 10 devices or your whole house when installed with your router.

Or your router. NordVPN also protects your wallet. Some online retailers change their prices depending on your location, but with NordVPN, you can do your Christmas shopping safely, knowing that you are not being targeted by algorithmic pricing. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordvPN.com forward slash rest is classified. And our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

The link is in the podcast episode description box. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring. your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us.

And contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. When you're flying Emirates business class, relaxing in an exclusive airport lounge, you'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates. Fly better. Welcome back. It is Friday the 23rd of June, 2023. I'm sure it was a lovely day. And Wagner forces are moving from Ukraine back into Russia. Which is not what you're supposed to do. It's the wrong direction.

It's the wrong direction. They're supposed to be going to fight in Ukraine. But this is the moment where Progogian realizes he is being locked out. His overall plan of, I'm going to force my way into the inner circle. I'm going to kind of get Putin to kind of get rid of Shoyga. He's overplayed his hand. But what he's going to do is going to double down. He's not going to back down. As always.

As always, which is the Progoshan style. Now, he's going to claim his camp was attacked by the Russians, by missiles. and some of his fighters killed. Now, it looks like that was a kind of staged attack or faked, a kind of pretext. One of the interesting things, I think, is that the FSB, Russia's security service, don't seem to spot what's going on, which I think partly suggests that this is quite an impulsive move. There wasn't a lot of advance warning here. There's not a lot of advanced planning.

Which also would be classic progosin. Yeah. Impulsive. Yeah. And I think one of the problems, because the FSB, as the KGB in its time, you know, spent a lot of lot of time actually spying on its own military precisely to prevent coups and mutinies. But in this case, they don't seem to have had the kind of intelligence within Wagner because it's a mercenary group outside of their control. Which is even more astounding because one of the larger

and most important units or departments inside the FSB is the Senate military counterintelligence, right? I mean, to keep tabs on the people with weapons. Yeah. And they failed. And they failed here. And Progogian issues a video which is kind of off the rails now. He says the whole justification for the special military operation, the war in Ukraine, is a lie. He says the idea that the people in the Dombas, the east of Ukraine, was suffering genocide at the hands of Ukraine, and that Russia had to intervene to protect them from an imminent threat, wasn't true. You know, what was the war for, he says? It was needed so that Shoygu could receive a hero star.

the oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war. Now, this is wild stuff, isn't it? Because he's undermining the whole basis for this war. And I guess he's got 25,000 men that in theory could march to Moscow to make a point, let's say. It's thought they've got about 25,000 men then. I mean, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. So he says, the evil carried out by the country's military leadership must be stopped. And so he says he's going to restore justice in the military.

And after that, justice for all of Russia. It's a march for justice, David. Well, I mean, who wouldn't join a march for justice on Moscow, led by a bunch of ex-convicts? Yeah. But he's betrayed, I love the phrase. And cannibals marching back to Moscow to claim justice. He's trying to make it sound like Martin Luther King or something. You know, like we're on a civil rights march.

When in fact, it's, yeah, as you said, it's prisoners and cannibals and Dmitri Uckin with his SS tattoos. It feels like he is improvising. Yeah. And that there's not a plan. Yeah. This is why I don't think we should think about it as a coup attempt. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's part of a negotiation.

Yeah. It's a mutiny. It's a mutiny is a better word. But mutiny as a negotiating tactic. Yes. Yes, we will depart the front and march to Moscow to demonstrate that you need us. Yeah. And in the hopes of getting to a better outcome with the Ministry of Defense, right?

And Shogu. And that seems like the sort of thing that the FSB's military counterintelligence units who would presumably be watching Wagner and have sources inside Wagner, you would think wouldn't really. pick up on until it's happening because there's no high-level plan. Yeah, there is no, yeah, I think that's right. There's maybe not even the concepts of a plan. I do love this fact. His mother, Villetta, who we encountered the start of the story,

will later say that when we saw each other before the march, I told him Senya, that's his nickname, only people on the internet will support you. No one will go with you. People aren't like that now. No one will come out to the square. Her son replied, no, they will support me. Now, I don't know whether she's misremembering that.

But I love it. I love it. Only people on the internet was... Just people on the internet. It's like the Twitter trolls will support me. I'll get loads of likes, but no one's going to come out on March. And then this leads us to Saturday the 24th of June. And that is, I can remember this vividly, because I was in the BBC that day in the newsroom covering this.

And it is one of the more memorable days. It was one of those days where you thought history could... turn. You know, this could be the day. And as the day starts and as it unfolds, where you think this could be the day that Putin is removed from power in which there's a coup in Russia, in which a civil war starts in Russia. As the day was unfolding, you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen or where it was going to end. Because Wagner forces have moved into Russia. They take the military headquarters for the southern command of Russia, which is in Rostov-on-Don. Best guess is there's about 8,000 troops, you know, from

Wagner who have taken this. Now, the public, it's so interesting. They don't know what to make of it in the city because ordinary life is going on. Wagner troops are now occupying the city and people are asking for selfies with progoshin when they see that. They're like, ooh, it's progoshin.

You know, he's the kind of nationalist hero. He appears in Rostov in a number of videos. And it's a weird scene because the kind of police are there as well and also some of the regular Russian military. It would be confusing. It's just confusing. No one seems to know what to do. And one of the soldiers asks,

what are you doing here? And he says, saving Russia, which is his line. But it's interesting. There's no resistance, which also leads to some wonder, is there some collusion? I think this is the key fact. Actually, the regular Russian troops don't want to fight Wagner. Why would you even assume that he's attempting a mutiny at this point? But even if he is, do you want to fight him?

He might be the winning side. And I think what we'll see during this day is lots of people basically, stand on the sidelines. I mean, in a way, his mother is right when she says no one will go with you. But it's also true. They're not with Putin. They're not kind of protesting or fighting him. So they are basically, everyone is standing on the sidelines waiting to see how this plays out.

So the Kremlin, you know, on Saturday, it's trying to work out how to respond. One of the most interesting things, video by General Suravikin, who we've mentioned a number of times, General Armageddon. Now, he is an honorary member of Fagna. The Kremlin get him to do a video in which he says, I urge you to stop. Now, when you look at that video, remember watching it on the day, it looks like a hostage video. He is in a kind of blank room reading to camera going, I urge you to stop. That might just be the natural, sunny, charming personality of General Armageddon.

But I think U.S. intelligence is later going to think he had advance warning. And I think there is a very logical possibility, which is that, Progoshin is thinking, I'm going to end up Ministry of Defence, Suravika, I'll make the head of the armed forces. They're in cahoots, but the Kremlin have got to Suravikin first and said, you're going to make this video. There's no way that's going to happen. Now, crucially, at 10 o'clock in the morning, on the Saturday morning,

Putin comes out, and he denounces those stabbing Russia in the back at a time of war. This is exactly the kind of blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917 when the country was fighting the First World War, he says, warning about civil war. And he says there's going to be a counterterrorism regime. in Moscow, and the organizers of this mutiny have betrayed their own people and their country.

And this is a disaster for precaution, because if the point is negotiation, pressure on Putin to kind of get him to get rid of Shoygu, it's failed. And let me guess, Gordon, for once in his life, you get any precaution, just turns around and backs down, right? He goes, yeah, okay, I'll go back.

No, instead... Just keep on going. He keeps on going, because he sends a convoy, a military convoy of Wagner, up the M4 motorway from Rostov to Moscow, to the capital. He must be hoping that on the way, the Army, the National Guard, maybe will join him. I mean, Moscow seems paralyzed, I think, at this point. Because one of the problems is they don't actually have defenses set up to stop a, you know, mercenary force. Where's Putin?

I mean, you know, he's done this address, but everyone thinks Putin's maybe fled just in case they make it. I mean, there's all these kind of mysterious questions about, you know, are there private jets flying out Moscow, which belong to oligarchs and others, is Putin's presidential jet heading for St. Petersburg? No one knows. Putin, throughout the conflict, has sort of moved, floated around. Yeah. Right, regularly. Yeah. Down at the Black seas in Moscow. He's up, I mean, he has, you know, place in St. Petersburg, too. So could just be Yeah. He's funny. Part of doing business. He often has these identical looking offices. So he can be filmed in an office in Sochi or wherever else. And he won't know where he is.

where he is. You'll think he's in the Kremlin so he can move around because his zoom background is the same. His zoom background is the same. So the convoy is making its way up. There's some half-hearted roadblocks. Now, actual resistance gets to, you know, 200 miles from Moscow. You know, it's only a couple of hours away now. We should say progoshan is not in the conflict. Yeah. Right. I originally thought he was. He stays in Rostop. He stays in Rostov. So he's basically guys. You go on ahead. You go on ahead. The Russian Air Force flies over. And the Vargner team are actually going to shoot down. They've got kind of mobile air defense, at least one, maybe three helicopters and a command aircraft during this.

I mean, that's a big deal because now Wagner Mercery's are killing Russian military. Yeah. This is the moment where you go civil war. My interpretation of, I guess, fence sitting that we're saying on the part of a lot of Russian military security services, elites are kind of just everyone's looking and watching and waiting to see how it goes down. You can kind of look at it through multiple lenses. I mean, one is, is this actually show some of the strength of the system that Putin has built, that no one actually joins Progosion?

Yeah. And they just kind of sit back. I'm not sure if I'd, I don't think I'd see that far as Putin. I'd be like. Or does it reflect maybe some of, I mean, because obviously in an autocratic system like this, there's not a lot of incentive to act to go do things, right? I mean, Progoshin's a little different from a lot of these other kind of Russian elites, right, in that way, because he's very entrepreneurial. He goes out and does stuff. You know, you kind of get the sense that they're hedging.

They're hedging for sure. And that it feels like a double-edged sword to me because it's helpful to Putin here in that nobody quite knows what's going on. So they don't, you know, there's. They don't joining. They're not joining. And yet it's stripped out all of the incentive to go out and actually just take it down. Yeah. You know, know what everyone wants to see how it plays out.

Yeah. So he gets tremendously. He gets close. Yeah. And I mean, you know, the world's holding its breath because this is a nuclear armed country which could descend into civil war. You know, in the White House situation room, they're watching it, but they can't do anything. I remember people asking, you know, Putin is bad.

But Progarsion and his nationalist friends, you know, could this actually be worse for Ukraine for Europe and the world? But the key thing, I guess, is Procution doesn't want to fight. There's some talk that maybe he thinks he's going to take the Ministry of Defense in Moscow and remove Shoygu and, you know, take over. But he's actually on the way. He's still trying to negotiate. This is a negotiating strategy rather than a coup.

So he's calling Putin, or he's trying to call Putin, and Putin's not taking his calls. And then crucially, the person who gets involved is Lukashenko, the president of Belarus. And he's got good contacts with both. So he becomes the kind of intermediary. And Lukashenko tells Bogoshen that Putin will not meet with him nor surrender Gerasimov and Shogu.

And Progoshin supposedly says, but we want justice. They want to strangle us. We will march on Moscow, says Progoshin. Halfway there, you'll be squashed like a bed bug, Lukashenko replies. So finally, Proggeon is being told and being warned. Don't keep escalating, because if you do, you're going to get squashed. Do you think Progosion was on drugs? I think that is entirely plausible, is it?

I mean, it could be, yeah. Like, this seems like a drug-addled fever drink that he's in the middle of. I think that he's going to, afterward, you know, he's going to sober up and going to regret some of these things. So finally, I mean, I guess Lukashenko will talk Progoshin down after a few of these calls and barter agreement. I think Proggeon knows he actually at this point. He can't win. He can't win. So early evening, Progosion halts the convoy, effectively gives up.

Progosion pictured in a black SUV in Rostov, where, as you said, he's been all the time, driven away. And very suddenly, very suddenly. It's over. It's over. I just remember it so vividly that for hours you thought Putin's going to fall. There's going to be a kind of civil war violence in Moscow. And then suddenly it's literally over. It's amazing. And the deal struck. And the deal is essentially that progosion will agree to go with any of his men who want to go to Belarus, where they'll be able to set up camp. I guess on the face of it, it's not a bad deal for a mutineer.

No, I mean, I think it's amazingly good deal, isn't it? No criminal charges at this point. Immunity, I mean, you've led a mutiny, and you're getting immunity for all those involved. You know, I think it's a sign of Putin's weakness at that moment because he just doesn't, you know, Putin's been a bit paralyzed in the day. And I think Putin doesn't want to push things too far and actually have a rebellion. So on the 26th, so just a few days after, Putin gives a public address to explain it, he's angry and he'll say that many men were led astray. He reaffirms they'll now have to sign contracts with the military. Yeah. Still doesn't name Progoshin, though. He still can't quite destroy him. Because after all, I think, you know, he's very popular. He's got a lot of fighters. Got a popular in the nationalist community.

His men are doing kind of important work in Africa. So I think, you know, he can't do anything or at least not yet. I guess it is maybe one of the bigger unanswerable questions around this whole affair is how close they were to some kind of. of civil conflict. Yeah. Because if you look at Prokosin's behavior through the lens of someone who's maybe drug-addled, but certainly making some very impulsive decisions.

Yeah. From Putin's standpoint, it could make sense to just kind of like, okay, this guy kind of burned out, all the steam burned out of this thing. He came to his senses before we had to smash him. Yeah. Take Lukashenko's point. You know, don't make us actually have to smash you because we will and we can. he doesn't get what he wants, right?

He still has to sign a contract with the MOD and Shoygu and Grasimov are still there. You need to give him a deal good enough for him to take so that you can deal with him later. I think that's the key is that I think the Kremlin knows it's got to deal with him, but it's going to deal with him slowly and carefully because I think Progogion has to hand back to the MOD some of his tanks and artillery, some of his men transfer.

I think he knows it's over for him in Ukraine, but he's maybe still hoping he can do the whole Wagner thing around the world because he's still got this base in Belarus but the problem for the Kremlin is that they're going to know that he's got this base and I think they're going to start to discredit him there's this fascinating poll that

so as you get to June 2023 58% of Russians fully or partially approve of progoshin so that's in the run-up to the coup afterwards it's going to drop to 29%. But if you think 58% is really high approval rating but 29% after the coup So after he's led a mutiny against Putin, 29% of Russians still, I mean, polling in Russia, let's be honest. Yeah, a bit wobbly.

Also, 58% doesn't seem high for a Russian leader. No, it seems like the polls would show much higher. But I just think, you know, 29% fully or partially approve after the coup. So I think Putin is kind of calculating. I'm going to put the squeeze on him, but I'm not going to kind of just go after him in one move. So they're kind of starting to dismantle his business empire. They're dismantling the media empire. They're forcing things to be sold.

They're closing down some of the propaganda outlets. So he's only left with his telegram channel. There's going to be a campaign to discredit him. The Russian security service has raided his house on the day of the mutiny, unsurprising, in St. Petersburg. And then photos are going to come out which reveal the luxury he lived in. his private swimming pool, the helipad, the sauna, the gym, the medical office. You know, the man of the people image is kind of being diminished. Yeah, the idea he's the man of the people versus the corrupt elite.

I mean, this is where we get the pictures of him with all the wigs because those get released. But it's also, you know, the great, the Sasha Barron Cohen dictator wigs. Because he had the wigs. One of the pictures is of the wigs in a big kind of cabinet, right? Like his storage, his disguise cabinet. Yeah, which we've all got in our houses. I mean, you must have one, David. And they find stashes of gold bars, a stuffed alligator, and a framed photo which is purported

to show the severed heads of exiled enemies of Progotion. And also, I mean, in his own house, a giant sledgehammer with the inscription for use in important negotiations. You know, it's like, he's almost like a kind of parody of himself when you see the reality. I was going to say he's gotten high out his own supply here. He's going to hide, hasn't it? And it also makes me think how different the Russian approach to diplomacy is because he's got the sledgehammer. And in U.S. embassies, in some U.S. embassies, they'll sell in the store a special bourbon that's called liquid diplomacy.

I think the Russians would also approve of that kind of diplomacy. Yeah. But the progation ways, we don't have sledgehammers going, yeah, for a negotiation. If any American nipelmats are listening, I would heartily approve a sledgehammer as a good machine tool. I think the squeeze is on. He's flying around now, you know, from Belarus to St. Petersburg. It looks like he's just desperate to keep some of his business going around. But he's starting to lose the contracts, including catering, you know, for the Ministry of Defense and schools.

They didn't keep them on the catering contract. Africa is his kind of last hope, I think. So the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, gone around Africa. to reassure leaders that, you know, they'll still get the support from Moscow even after the Bargna thing. But Progogion is still going out to Africa himself to try and get new deals. So he's still, he's still kind of pitching it looks like that he can to Niger, he can send thousands of fighters. Mid-August, looks like he was in Mali, Central African Republic. There's one video of him in the desert with a rifle. But even there now, it looks like he's being kind of shut out of contracts to squeeze his

And I guess he's lost that luster of the, you know, even if Moscow isn't the one directing him to go get these contracts, a lot of his African clients would have signed up because they presume that he's got the end with the Kremlin. And now, they know. They know he's not. Yeah. He sees his mother that summer, Violetta. When I last saw him, he looked doomed, she will say.

I think Mama Pergogian might be filtering a lot of these quotes back through what's happened since. Yeah, I agree. I'm not sure. I think he probably thought he could keep going, or he hoped he could. Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. But then August 23, 23, 546 PM, Executive Jet, tail number RA-2795 lifts off from Moscow's airport, heading for St. Petersburg. Now, there had been an inexplicable delay for some repair work, strangely, David, just before the plane takes off, according to one of the crew, cabin stewardess, Christina Raspopova, in a text message to her family. And there also reports that two potential buyers for the jet had been on board an hour just before it departed. Suspicious, perhaps, some might say in hindsight.

But the plane soon reaches its cruising altitude of about 30,000 feet. Just after 6 o'clock, suddenly goes into a steep dive, eyewitnesses on the ground, say they hear two explosions, see the plane falling, disintegrates in the air losing one wing and part of its tail no time even for a Mayday call crashes nearby a village flames smoke rising from the field now

this is interesting all 10 people die including the pilot the cold pilot the stewardess obviously you know entirely innocent but the passengers of course include progosan himself and Dimitri Utkin are SS loving

friend and they head of security and logistics for Wagner, along with two of Wagner soldiers and two of Progoshin bodyguards. It wipes out basically the leadership. It feels like a mistake to have the entire leadership of Wagner essentially flying together. Yeah. Two months to the day since the mutiny. You know, there's some speculations, you know, a missile ticket out. Putin will suggest the crash was caused by Progression and other commanders drinking and using drugs, back to your point, while handling stroke juggling grenades on board which this gets back to the you know nothing is true and everything is possible yeah he can say that yeah it's just you just bake up something else that's

totally ludicrous yeah and then feed that into the state media and there you go yes but almost everyone thinks it's a bomb i mean there are these theories that was faked there's seem to be a theme in our podcast people think someone's not dead who is dead we've had from everyone from edward he's gone to tupac yeah he's gone with too yeah he's gone with two puck yeah he's gone with he's gone with Tupac. Yeah. He's actually alive and living in Cuba or Venezuela. No, but he's dead.

He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. And I guess it must have been elements of the, or contractors working for the FSB. Yeah. FSP. GRU.

I mean, GRU. I'd guess GRU sabotage squads. I mean, but on the orders of Putin. I think no doubt about that that would have to be a Putin thing. I mean, you know, they gave it a bit of time, a little bit of two month delay. As we said, to kind of bit of time, bit of space, not make it too obvious. Deal with Africa. make sure you've got mercenary groups ready to take over,

wind things up. I think it's also Putin is, you know, trying to work out what are the risks of taking him out? How is it going to play out? And I think the problem as well is Progogsion is still not learned his lesson. He's not gone quietly. He's still trying to kind of do stuff.

He's still got a bit of popularity. And I think the risk is, you know, he could have become the kind of rallying cry again for a kind of nationalist opposition. So I think leaving him around is, you know, is risky for Putin. Yeah. It's got a risk.

you have to send a message to others who might in the future consider a similar path, right? Exactly. That it will be dealt with very directly. That has to be a price. And it's also possible that the delay of a couple months was that, yeah, there's probably some attempt inside the Kremlin or the GRU or the FSB to get a sense of how much support. Yeah. He has inside the military where support or sort of, you know, know, potential aid may have come during the mutiny, but do you also wait a couple months

to get all of these people together in one place? Yeah. You know? There's a moment of opportunity. They're all on the plane. It also says something, I think, about the nature of Putin's payback. And Bill Burns, former CIA director, actual friend of the pod. Like many of the people we reference as friends of the pod, he's a great friend of the show

and was with us for a few episodes for the classified club members. You know, he's referred to Putin as a great apostle of payback. Yeah. And it's so true. And I think the theatrics are important as well because progosian has been traveling inside Russia in this couple month period. He could have been arrested. Yeah. He could have been detained.

Other members of his entourage could have been arrested or detained. There wasn't really any need, was there, to kill innocent flight attendants and civilians. and to do it in this, you know, its performance. Big way, right? He could have been just, he could have been quietly murdered. Yeah. You know, at one of his properties. He could have been killed in Belarus quite easily.

But they chose a very public demonstration of how enemies of Putin and the state are dealt with. I think that's absolutely right. Putin on his death praises him as a talented person who made mistakes. as if launching a coup or a mutiny was like, you know, a mistake, like a poor post on social media like, they made the odd mistake. I agree with Putin's assessment, though, don't you? A talented person who made mistakes, yeah. You know, and Putin was like, I knew Progotion for a long time since the early 90s. He was a man with a difficult fate.

He made serious mistakes in his lives. And he achieved the results he needed both for himself. And when I asked him about it for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented person, a talented businessman. He worked not only in our country, but also abroad in Africa. It's interesting because they also don't want him to become a martyr because makeshift memorials are going to start to go up, you know, in cities on his death, you know, candles, things saying hero of Russia.

The fear is he's going to be a cult. So Wagner is going to get dismantled. Wagner operations in Africa are going to be taken over by a new Africa Corps, slightly unfortunate name, under the military control of the GRU. Shoygo survives only for the moment, actually. He'll go gets moved on from being defense minister, but for the moment, he's safe, and Prokotian himself, buried in St. Petersburg, a few days after the crash, the city where he grew up, where he started, not far from the restaurants where he first met Putin, but it's a private funeral, not much ceremony. They, you know, they try and keep the location quiet. They even seem to kind of do some distractions, so people, you know, think it's somewhere else, and some of the journalists go off to a different site.

Closed casket. It's a closed casket, yeah. And very private in order to prevent that kind of cult of Progoshan from emerging. And after that, Progoshan's name is never mentioned in public again. What do we make of this psychotic caterer-turned mercenary warler? I mean, this whole adventure, I think, does show some of the cracks in the Russian system under the strain of the war, doesn't it? I mean, it reminds me there's, you know, a little. bit of a mirror of what the Syrians had to do in the Civil War where you essentially had to

turn to militias to make up for real weaknesses in your military. These kind of conflicts show the weaknesses of societies, don't they? And Russia needed to turn to mercenaries. And this is a mercenary who sort of wanted to become something much bigger than himself and exposed. Yeah. Really through a system that had kind of been in balance before the war into a tremendous amount of imbalance, at least for a period of time. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. It's a good of wild story about one individual, an ambition and ruthlessness and violence. But it does tell you something about Putin's Russia.

I think it does tell you that the system is creaking. And Putin projects himself as this person who brought stability after the kind of chaos of the 90s. And yet, you know, here he is with kind of mutiny and coups, because partly he failed to manage that court and because people got too big. for their boots like Progoshin. So there's a world of kind of rivalries and power and tussles for power beneath the surface of what looks like a kind of autocratic system, which were revealed by Putin under that pressure

of war and mobilization. Yeah, Progarsion got out of hand and he had to be reined in. But I think he did reveal something. You know, Progotion is a kind of, he's no every man. He's not the ordinary man of the street. He has some man of the people vibes. But he does have some man of the people vibes. He's got the kind of prison background.

But I think what he showed was that there was a part of the Russian population who are angry and who feel like they've been screwed over by the elite, who feel angry, for instance, at the way the war's been run, who are angry over corruption by the elite. You know, he kind of hit on something, which is real and visceral. I mean, it's a Russian nationalism, but also a kind of anti-elite feeling. It's a hatred of the corruption. Now, of course, he was part of the corrupt elite, maybe not the inner circle, but he was part of that too. But I think he became the voice of something quite interesting, which also exposed how kind of remote and fragile the Putin court is, because it's full of kind of rich, corrupt people who are kind of distanced from the population. And I think, you know, that is showing something about Russia, which is which is in. important and potentially dangerous and unstable, I think.

Finding the right words to describe the system is a challenge because it certainly looks stable. This mutiny aside, I mean, when you look at the Putin system from the outside, there are a lot of things we could put together a whole list of factors that make it seem stable. Putin controls the security services. There's, you know, sort of multiple kind of Praetorian units that he can use for his own personal security. He seems to have control over the military, right? I mean, there's all these different kind of elements in an autocracy. It's that you kind of go down a lesson.

He's like a check, check, right? I think what this episode shows with Progotion is that there's an inherent brittleness. Yeah, that's what I. In these autocratic systems where they're stable and. until they're not. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And then a little bit of imbalance in your, in your elites, creates a lot of pressure on the system because the whole thing has been set up in this kind of hub and spoke model.

Putin is right at the middle and everyone else kind of doesn't know what the others are up to and Putin is balancing all of them against each other. In a normal system, you might have expected the military to act to just stop this right away. And instead they hedge. Instead, they hedged. Yeah. And so if you're Putin, I mean, that's kind of the way the system is supposed to work. But when that brittleness is exposed, there's this, there's this moment where an enterprising, you know, psychopath, like Yevgeny Progoshin, can potentially do incredible damage.

Yeah. It shows kind of Putin is a kind of detached figure in a sense, not the master strategist, not all-powerful, but weak requiring kind of ruthless. sometimes to just be able to hold this together against the threats that lie out there. So, yeah, I do think it really does tell you something about the nature of people. I think you're absolutely right. These states look stable until suddenly they're not. Putin will know that a lot of people hedged, you know, on that day, on that Saturday, that the military and everyone didn't come to his aid.

He knows that. And I think he is fundamentally a weaker figure than we give him credit for. And I think it also shows be careful about mercenary groups and, you know, giving nursery groups lots of power. The Russian states privatized all these things and created alternative power centers. And if you create a private power center in the form of mercenary warlords, be careful because it might come back to bite you. See, I agree that Putin would understand that there was a lot of hedging.

I also think that that's kind of what the system is designed to do and that you don't necessarily want, you know, your sort of mid-level military officers. colonels and whatnot, to be acting without orders, direct orders from the top. I mean, it can cut both ways. But I kind of think to some degree, I mean, this is definitely the biggest, the most significant elite challenge to Putin since he took power. And he survived it. The system survived it. He managed through it, Progosian's dead.

And Wagner and his empire has sort of been cut up and parceled out. And Progossian is never mentioned again. And Progosion has never mentioned again. I think that's maybe a good place to leave it. Just a reminder, we've got a special series on the Declassified Club, which you can join at the rest is classified.com, where you can hear us look at the kind of emergence of Putin as a KGB officer. And a lot of the kind of roots of this story in terms of St. Petersburg and Leningrad under the Soviet Union and then transitioning into Russia. That series is there for club members. That's right.

We've done the perpetrator in Progoges, now the victim. Putin, the exploration of the mutinies victim. That's right. But thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.