The Team House - Death Is Our Business: Inside the Wagner Group | John Lechner | Ep. 331

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

John graduated from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.  At Georgetown, John focused on security issues in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey; Russia, and the former Soviet Union. He is an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic).Get John's book "Death Is Our Business" about the Wagner group here:https://www.amazon.com/Death-Our-Business-Russian-Mercenaries/dp/1639733361-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:American Financing ⬇️https://AmericanFinancing.net/teamhouse or call 866-889-8010DisclaimerNMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.orgGhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!Ridge Wallet ⬇️https://ridge.com/HOUSEfor up to 40% off!!The Perfect Jean ⬇️http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15for 15% off!!____________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

And Progoshan all of a sudden is, you know, in the limelight. He officially is, you know, the founder of Wagner. He's in Putin's good graces. And he starts promising ever bigger things. He eventually promises Bachmut that he's going to take Bachmute. And the MOD, too, is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front. And so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of, you know, cool guys in the Russian context of, you know, to bring in men to recruit. So the billboards are going up across Russia, join PMC Wagner.

So he's recruiting new volunteers. And then he gets access to Russia's prison population. The Project K. Project Ken. The average person today is feeling the financial strain more than ever. Expenses are up, wages aren't keeping pace, and many people are finding it nearly impossible to make ends meet. With little leftover for covering the basics, it's no surprise that many are resorting to credit cards just to get by, often carrying high balances and interest rates in the 20s and even 30s. If you're a homeowner and you're stuck in this cycle of mounting debt, you need to call my friends at American financing.

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Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, everyone. This is episode 331 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. today with journalist and author John Lechner.

He's the author of Death is Our Business, which came out just yesterday. It's probably, it is the most comprehensive biography of the Wagner group, a Russian private military company. I just finished reading this book this week. It's pretty incredible. There's a lot of stuff for us to go through in here. Some very colorful characters. Yeah.

John, thanks for coming on the show. And before we jump into the book, I mean, let's hear a little bit about yourself. Like, you have a pretty extensive background, you know, working in journalism. And also you speak like eight languages, which really explains why you were able to write this book. But tell us a little bit about, like, who you are and what led you into the book project. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think I was telling you, I mean, I love for whatever reason, my primary interest in life is languages, linguistics, and, like, learning new language.

I just love it. And I don't know why. It's been since I was a little kid. And according to this handy little sheet that your publisher's... From the good people of Luzberry, yeah. You speak Russian, French, Sango, Turkish, Georgian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbo-Croat, German, and Chechen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and working on right now Arabic, ancient Greek, Portuguese, and I should be going in April to the Amazon to hang out with an indigenous community to try to learn their language.

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm going to write a piece about it. So I just like, I love this. So, yeah, you're like a linguistic cartographer or something. Yeah, that's what I really love that stuff. That's what I really enjoy. And I mean, like, like, along with that, like if you're into that, you kind of have a, like, a predisposition to being interested in different cultures and history. And so I, you know, how I, you know, came upon this.

I had lived in Russia for a little while. I spoke Russian and then went to college and was a Russian studies guy. And then, like a lot of people who have like super niche interests, I went. into investment banking and worked on Wall Street for like seven years and slowly kind of allowed my soul to be crushed. And then finally, I made the decision I got to do something that is like closer to what I'm passionate about. So I moved down to D.C.

And I had been spending some more time in Africa. And so when Wagner first touched down in the Central African Republic, in 2018. And I remember reading about it. And I mean, there were kind of like two things. Like one was, I thought it would be fascinating to find out, you know, that this was a confluence of my interests. Russia and Africa, this, I wanted to know how these people were interacting and adapting to each other or not adapting to each other. And also I just like wanted to be the person who writes about. I didn't want other people to write about it. So, I mean, did you have a job going over there?

Or did you really just hit the ground and just start filing like wire reports? I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know exactly how like, yeah, basically that. Like, there's a weird thing about like when you get in, I mean, I got into journalism and I still like don't feel like super like I still feel a lot of kind of imposter syndrome calling myself a journalist. because there is this interesting thing about journalism that you can't do an investment banking. You can't just show up in New York and say you're an investment banker and like manifest it that way. Like you have to, but like with journalism, you can kind of show up in a place and say, and kind of declare yourself a journalist and try to figure things out and write articles and pitch them.

and you know they you know over time it takes a lot of effort to get those pitches accepted and then it takes a lot of effort to move up the but you can basically kind of manifest it yourself as far as like the the networking part on the ground in some of these countries is very interesting you know just to you got me thinking about it everything over in a lot of these places is based on personal relationships so like if you know the right people if you have the right like interlocutors and they like you, you can get wild interviews. Like, you can get introduced to people that, like, it just would not happen in the United States, for instance.

Like, you can be a journalist and come fly to America and I want to interview the Delta Force commander. That will never, ever happen. But you can fly into the Philippines or Kurdistan. And if you know the right people, you can interview their equivalent of that, of their intelligence service or their counterterrorism unit or whatever. Yeah. It's interesting how that works.

And I mean, there's kind of a side to it that is both an advantage, you know, and also a negative as well, which is, you know, specifically when it comes to conflict reporting, you see a lot of freelance journalists because, I mean, basically the model that they're doing is going to a place without, you know, a lot of freelance journalists. Because, I mean, basically the model that they're doing is going to a place without, you know, a lot of. lot of security and and and and operating there and because it's so expensive for the big outlets and the risk profiles and everything you can kind of jump ahead and and get kind of those big pitches by basically putting yourself in danger yeah yeah and and so there's always kind of a big risk reward to it too that also makes it easier in a place like yeah like yeah like you said the Central African Republic or, you know, Mali or Libya, these kind of places. So I first started showing up in the Central African Republic in 2019.

And so just a little bit after Wagner had touched out. And I think for me, it was very clear right away that the kind of like overarching narratives about Wagner and Russians in Africa. as these kind of omniscient, hyper. And 10 feet tall. 10 feet tall was just like, was not what was matching what I was seeing. And so I first realized that I had to understand the Central African Republic first before I could understand how Wagner fit into it.

And then kind of the book started rolling from there. We'll get deep into the book, but I mean, since you kind of talked about it a little bit right there, there's something interesting about this book that I thought you teased out sort of like on a more meta level about warfare, which is you point out that, especially in the chapters about Central Africa, that the way these conflicts sort of like coales is in a manner that all the players involved get the benefit in some shape or form. And I saw that. I mean, I think we saw it all over the world with ISIS. So ISIS came in and these little groups of bandits in Mozambique, Philippines, wherever, got to raise the black flag,

try to attract international attention. It brings in press attention. It gives them legitimacy. It gives the government, you know, they get more American funding, counterterrorism funding to come in and fight them. And it gives U.S. military something to do. Like, we're sending our advisors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone kind of gets something out of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hit on the whole book. I mean, like, but I mean, I think it takes, that's why I think it's so interesting talking to you because you have a lot of experience kind of on the other side of it. And so some of these like kind of what we think of like these overall structures of conflict kind of become apparent over time. And the thing that was fascinating to me throughout the book is, and we can get into. to Yvgeny Buryh Ghosin and these guys. But, you know, Wagner was operating in sort of an interesting kind of ambiguous area where it was both a commercial enterprise.

Like commercial and kind of also part of the state. And so where they were especially effective, was where they could sell a narrative back to the Kremlin about, you know, why these initiatives that so happened to also involve gold mining and what have you are like within Russia's national interests and kind of the overarching narrative. Well, the narratives that they used were both the War on Terror, Russia's version of it. Russia has a long history of issues of terrorism at home and, you know, fought a campaign against ISIS as well in Syria.

And so Prozhen, the founder of Wagner, he leveraged that to make sure his guys were in, but also kind of this new great power competition narrative, the competition between the U.S., China, and Russia. And you see how, in the book, how. everybody, like you said, positions themselves vis-a-vis the narrative in a way that is politically expedient or profitable to them. You also get into a little bit about, what was I going to say? Geez, I'm sorry, I totally lost my train of thought already.

Let's jump into the book. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about tonight's sponsor for the show, which is Ridge Wallets. I've been using this for about six months now. Really enjoy it. This wallet is made out of carbon fiber, titanium, and steel, and it really holds up and lasts. So, you know, in the past, I carried a leather wallet.

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My stepfather has one of these. So I've given them away, too. I have one of them. And our producer, Dimitri, has one. So please go and check out Ridge Wallets. So I think there's... Progosion is a great starting point. It's kind of the main character of your book.

Yeah, yeah. Tell us about who Pergoshin. is and sort of who he is in the context of like 1990s, early 2000s Russian politics. Yeah. So, I mean, Progoshin is an endlessly fascinating character. And he was one who I hoped to, I had hoped to actually interview for the book before his sort of epic demise. But, you know, he grows up on the wrong side of the tracks in the Soviet Union.

Union and is sort of a, you know, a thief and a street thug. He goes away to prison, I think at 18, for robbing and strangulating a woman. She nearly died, gets caught, goes away to prison for eight years and gets out. And in the meantime, the Soviet Union is basically collapsing. And so he returns to what became again, St. Petersburg from Leningrad. And it's right in the swing of the wild, chaotic 1990s. And Progousin joins in with a couple of gangsters who set him up as the manager of these grocery stores at first. and then he eventually leverages that to owning several restaurants that cater to the Nouveau Rish in Russia and the Russian elite.

So, you know, it's serving fine as champagne and caviar, like the more expensive, the better. And this is where he most likely comes in touch with kind of a younger Vladimir Putin at the time. he strangely it's only Progogion himself who has claimed that he sold hot dogs Yeah With his mom right With his mom like

Stirring the mustard apparently And that the cash was like It was too much They couldn't even count all the cash they were making from hot dogs Which I mean I could see hot dogs being a good In the 90s in Russia that I mean McDonald's was making money hand over fist So

And I mean maybe one of the great. ironies of your book, if I recall correctly, you point out that progosian probably made a lot more money from food catering than he ever did from his private military. Yeah, no. And so, and this is what's interesting is that like he, so yeah, like you said, he, he, he leverages these, he's a guy of endless ambition and networking. He's always trying to meet the next most important guy. And he, he leverages those connections to getting a job providing,

meals or get the contract for providing meals to the Russian military and the Russian schools. And that was, in the context of Russia, that's where you like managed to skim a lot off the top. Like that's where the serious money is made. And so that's probably always where most of his cash was coming from. And, you know, we can get into like his character later. but the the fact that he was kind of this thug-ish,

uncouth ex-con with a chip on his shoulder goes into play who's not accepted by kind of the buttoned-up Russian bureaucracy and some of the Putin's old friends like really goes like basically as a Gopnik yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, exactly.

And so that will, that will become kind of like increasingly important over time. But he was always trying to overcome that stigma of basically being like a street thug ex-con from the Russian prison system. And so how does he then make that jump from being, you know, known as Putin's caterer to comic book villain? I mean, how does that, how does he make that jump? So, I mean, we have to go to,

and I mean I guess it's particularly timely now we have to understand the context of what is now kind of the first phase of the war in Ukraine and and also kind of how Putin's regime works and so guy like progoshin he rises up he gets these contracts the Russian state is

is one, I mean like any state, but more so than the U.S. is one with a high amount of ambition on what it wants to achieve and a lot less capacity and resources to do it. And one of the ways that they fill these gaps within the system is that oligarchs will kind of go out and fund these patriotic initiatives for the oligarch. They might not always be making money on it, but it is sort of a form of like virtue signaling, like donating to a political party in a way, right, in the hopes that it's going to reap rewards later on. And so if we look at what was happening in Russia at the time, oh, it's going to fix your mic there. You're good. Cool. If we look at what was happening at Russia at the time, oh, you're good.

go. Perfect. In 2012, there are massive protests against Putin's proposed return to the presidency. And this is coming on the back of...

Libya. Yeah, this is coming on the back of Libya, the Arab Spring, the color revolutions. And Putin eventually returns to the presidency, but he's shaken by it. And there are people from all sorts of Russian ideologies are marching against Putin. From liberals like Navalny, you know, who, you know, was killed much later on, but also a particularly worrisome

group, which are like the Russian nationalists. Yeah. And these are, I mean, it's pretty... The night wolves. I mean, the night wolves were kind of always like pro Putin. There were a lot of guys. I talked to a guy a lot who's in the Russian imperial movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And these guys are orthodox and want the return of the Russian empire and they want to restore the Tsar. Third Rome. A third Rome. And to them, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus are the artificial product of the Soviet Union and the Bolsheviks. And so not only is Ukraine illegitimate, but so is the Russian Federation and therefore so is Putin

because he's the head of an entity that is illegitimate to begin with. And the Tsar is really what we want to go back to. And so these guys are marching against Putin. And Putin navigates his

way through it. But he's shaken, progoshin, you know, kind of ever the astute observer puts out like a big documentary that called anatomy of a protest which uh you know paints the protesters as you know like a conspiratorial western you know western yeah yeah yeah exactly um and you know right as kind of Putin is sort of consolidating again uh his his position the revolution in Ukraine breaks out uh that what became known as the Miodes on revolution. And as Ukrainians are overthrowing the current government wanting to go on a pathway

to the EU and towards the West, the Kremlin makes a decision that they're going to seize Crimea in 2014. There are a number of reasons they do it. It was a very top-down decision. I mean, as you remember, probably it was a pretty well-done operation in terms of lack of bloodshed and and effectiveness and uh russia's black sea fleet is there that it's a warm port it's important to russian history in their mind as it's important as a vacation spot russians fondly think of crimea they they they the russians turn to a mix of special forces and also these kind of nationalistic volunteers, like these Cossacks and guys who come in

and kind of provide muscle, security, and like a degree of like, this is a local thing. Yeah, the little green men that they talked about. Like little green men, but then also just these like tough guys who aren't even, who like could be local, might not be local.

And they get through, they take it, they pass a referendum where Crimea votes for to join the Russian Federation. Kremlin thinks it's basically done and dusted. But at the same time, there are these other regions, particularly in eastern Ukraine, the coal mining region of Donbos, where the kind of counter-revolutioner anti-mindon movement is taking place. And these people are taking over administrative buildings, declaring potentially themselves separatists,

and they're expecting the Russian state to come in. just like they did in Crimea, except the Russian state doesn't want to go in. They don't want to annex these territories. It's not the same thing as Crimea. They don't want more sanctions. They don't want more isolation. But Putin also can't, like, be seen as among the Russian public

of letting these guys in eastern Ukraine kind of being hung out to dry. And so the government is, the Kremlin is trying to figure out how do we, like, support these guys while not supporting them. And so they turn to a number of different things. They start letting through volunteers across the border to go in and support the separatists. And then they turn to some of these groups that form these mercenaries, quote unquote, at the time, who formed these units to cross over to support the separatists. And, of course, again, you need a sponsor for these types of things, right, financially and politically.

And so a guy, Yvgeny Progoshin, comes into contact with a GRU, Russian military intelligence, former military intelligence officer, Mitri Udkin, who has a group of about, I think, 50 mercenaries at the time. And that forms the nascent Wagner group, which goes into Lujansk and starts supporting the separatists. And then around the same time, as Ukraine is happening, Syria starts happening. So how does... He then goes from that initial contract in eastern Ukraine and then, you know, the Russians make their presence into Syria.

Yeah. What year was that, 2015? Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting because initially the guys in eastern Ukraine, they provide support. and then the Russians start sending in more just kind of covert actual military guys in. And these are also the little green men. And the idea is they want to get towards some sort of ceasefire.

They want this thing to be over with. The first deal doesn't go through. Minsk won. It was called it was negotiated in Minsk. and so they're trying to get another ceasefire in Minsk too. The issue is, is that especially a lot of these kind of volunteers and separatist leaders who have gone from being like, you know, again, like Gopnik, like mechanic to like owner of a fiefdom. Warlord.

Yeah, warlord. I mean, basically warlord. They're like, why would we stop? And so Wagner becomes the enforcer. and so they start assassinating these kind of wayward separatist leaders as the Kremlin decides we have to take control of these kind of separatist areas and then negotiate and get some sort of ceasefire. And so in 2015, Minsk 2 is signed and the front sort of stabilizes.

And for a lot of these volunteers, right, they just are like, they go home. them hate Putin, actually, and they're disappointed that the Russian state is now in eastern Ukraine. I thought it was interesting that you kind of keyed in on the liquidations on their side, because I remember hearing about at the time, some of people, either they were involved in too many war crimes or they were involved in the shooting down on the Malaysian airlines, that those people got disappeared a lot of them because it was just going to be too much of an embarrassment. Yeah, they got moved. I mean, Strelkov, who was kind of a very famous guy, the guy who, like, shot the first shot of the war,

who was another one of these volunteer guys who was involved in the Malaysia Air Downing. Yeah, they quietly moved him, like into Russia. They couldn't disappear at him. But there were a number of, again, like militia leaders, Kossack leaders, one guy, Batman. was his kind of call sign nickname. He was gunned down. And then a Cossack leader, his car exploded on the way to his wedding. Car bomb went off.

I mean, they were all just disappearing, not really disappearing, disintegrating in mysterious ways. And we know that Wagner was part of at least one from internal documents. But anyways, kind of the opportunity, right, is diminishing in eastern Ukraine as the front is settling. And like you said, luckily enough for Progosion, Russia overtly intervenes in Syria, and I want to say September 2015. And, you know, one of the reasons that they do it is because they're isolated and they want to

force the Americans into sort of a joint counterterror operation against ISIS. And so Progoshan's lobbying to get his guys in. They come in in very late 2015, early 2016. No one really knows what they're doing and why they're there. They do some training of local Assad forces. And then they get hit by, they get hit, I think, by a missile. and a bunch of guys die, and the MOD, the Ministry of Defense panics, and they decide to send them home. And then it became very clear that Russian air power alone was not going to do the job against both the rebels against Assad or ISIS.

And so Wagner comes back in and they partner with a local Syrian PMC and they start an offensive on Latakia. and eventually they take Palmyra. This is the desert hawks. This is the desert hawks, yeah, of the Jabara brothers. Yeah. So I want to take a minute today to tell you guys about the perfect gene. I've been wearing them for a few weeks now and really enjoy them. And I just want to share it with our audience.

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theme. So they take Palmyra and then again, they're sent home. The MOD basically says, thanks for everything. And then they lose the city again. And they lose the city. They take all the credit, which is always an issue in Russia, right? Because credit, credit means like allocation of resources, you know, being on Putin's radar. I mean, it was interesting in a lot of these offens in Syria where it seemed like they'd use the Wagner guys as like shock troops. and then afterwards they'd bring in Spetsnaz dudes to do like the video interviews, you know,

with the Russian press like, oh, yeah, we captured Palmyra. It's all great. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things. And the Wagner guys were even frustrated too that they felt that the Syrians were taking advantage of them. And kind of the Syrians would kind of, you know, slowly disappear, you know, from the action. And so they felt like they were being used, yeah, in all sorts of ways being thrown into it. So this is my point that I forgot earlier that maybe we can come back to here.

This might be a good point, is that we have this perception, I think, a lot of us in America and in the West, that Wagner is the Kremlin's proxy, that they, you know, They issue their orders to this PMC, and they go out there and fulfill the mission in Central Africa or Syria or wherever it is, which is generally true. But you point out that it's a little bit more complicated than that. Wagner is also profit-oriented, and they are rent-seeking. So they're out there looking to do for-profit operations and sometimes just doing their own thing. And that brings us into the Arcady Oil Fields and the Canoco facility specifically. Hell yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think, and I feel like you probably understand, in your audience probably understands this better than the most. Like, you know, like how does any government function? And I mean, especially, you know, how does Russia function? Like, Putin has the same 24 hours as we have, right? The guy is not able to sit in front of a map and just be like, I want us to be in the central African public.

Russia is filled in the same way that America is filled with entrepreneurs who were going out there and kind of lobbying for what they think policy should be. And very often they're lobbying in a way that is kind of politically, you know, beneficial in their self-interest. Or, I mean, like our capacity for rationalization is infinite. And so, you know, what? That's why we think he's making, he's a chess master moving these pieces across the But it's also, you know, like, it's not even, and I try to explain, too, to people, like, you know, Russia is now a version of a capitalist society, right?

And so as Americans, we don't think it's counterintuitive that you can kind of further the well-being of your country and make money at the same time. Like, that is American, you know. Like, Lockheed Martin will never say we're a profit-driven company. They will say, they will say, protecting the homeland. We're protecting the homeland. But they're also profit driven. And so, you know, there are versions of this in Russia that might look a little bit more, you know, in some cases, like a little bit more kind of rough around the edges, I suppose. And not as polished.

But, you know, that is kind of how things are also done at a basic human level. And so you have both the supply and the demand and you have a lot of, you know, you can. have guys like progoshan who are going out there and trying to push things too right right and uh and so yeah like you said they get they get kicked out of palmyra they uh the Assad loses palmyr again the russians lose it again without Wagner uh to ISIS and so Wagner is brought back in but this time progosian it signs a deal directly with the Assad government saying you know we'll go after uh we'll go after but we get 25% of the proceeds from any oil and gas assets that we capture, or that we kind of return.

And, you know, this sounds good. They come in. Yeah, they launch an assault. They retake Palmyra. They're heading straight, you know, straight to the Euphrates. ISIS at this point is falling back. You have at the same time the SDF, the Kurds, backed by the Americans coming in through the Northeast.

Yeah, initially heading towards Raqa at the time, I think, as the Russians and Wagner are moving up. And at a certain point in late 2017, a couple of things are coming together, right? It seems clear that ISIS is collapsing. And it seems also clear from letters progosian was sending to Assad that he wasn't getting paid. for all the money that he was investing in this offensive on ISIS. And he's complaining. He's like, you know, we've recovered X, you know, oil fields and yada yada. And, you know, you're not making us whole.

I'm losing a lot of money here. And there are, everyone knows about, in Syria, everyone knew about these Conoco facilities, which are sort of like the, the big moneymaker. It was ISIS's big money maker for fuel smuggling, sort of the prized asset. And so as it looks like ISIS is collapsing, both groups now are kind of positioning themselves for what the post-ISIS future is going to be. And so the SDF starts getting away from Raqa and down into Derizor. And the Russians are Russian up. and the SDF takes Conoco first.

And you might know better than me, but I mean, there was obviously some, you know, U.S. special forces who are around. And Conoco lies right on the other side of the Euphrates, which also happens to be the deconfliction line between Russia and Assad forces and the SDF and U.S. And so that poses a problem for Progogian who really wants these Conoco facilities. You want to just go into the thing?

He thought that we would just give it up, right? I think so. So I think so. And so what happens is Progosion decides he's going to take a gamble. And I've talked to like a bunch of of people in Wagner about how they think it probably went down. I'm sure you have some good stuff on their area.

Do you think it was like a fate to comply on Progossan's part? He's like, we'll go do this and the Russian government will have to back us up. I think it was part that. I think, I think, and I mean, this is also how Russia works too. I think that he thought that at the time that the Americans would just fall back and he probably got like a wink and a nod from some guys in the Ministry of Defense saying

if it works it works. Yeah, yeah. You know. That's a very Russian. Yeah, like, eh, you know. And if it doesn't, you know, it doesn't work. And so I think he got some sort of signal like that. And, you know, if it does work out, big victory. If it doesn't, you know, it's mercy. Yeah, it's a PMC, it's a PMC, whatever.

And so he decides to take the gamble. He's going to try to take Conoco from the SDF and the Americans. And this is on February 8th, 2018, in the evening, they gear up and they start

rumbling towards closer, I think, to midnight, if I remember, correctly. And the Americans see this whole build-up happening and they're calling over the deconfliction line to the Russian M-O-D being like, are these your guys? And three times the Russians say, no, they're not. And so I think it was on the third time. Again, we probably have people listening in who know the American side much better than I do. But on the third time, the the Americans just got permission to hose them. And I mean, you probably know, I mean, I think it's fair to say that the amount of firepower

that the Americans brought to this force was overwhelming and probably not necessary other than to send a message because, I mean, this was probably like, I would say a force of maybe like 300 guys most. and, you know, there were some tanks, but it was mostly guys, just, you know, and, and I mean, we were flying in. Apache's sort of on overhead, just machine gunned those dudes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was just an absolute, just, they got absolutely destroyed.

And then finally, in the early hours of the morning, they, the Russians, you know, ask for a pause so that they can go, can go collect their dead. and that was that. Progosia never tried to cross the Euphrates again. And he never really talked about it again. Like when I talked with the guys in Wagner, like it wasn't, you know, for them it was like, okay. Another day in the office.

Yeah, moving on. Yeah. And it wasn't really, it was something that was kind of like legendary within the community, the Wagner kind of community. but it was not something that they, you know, that they brought up. And then he starts making the jump into Africa, right? Around. Yes, a little bit before.

Yeah. And so this is where I think we start getting into all the different kind of versions of Wagner, right? And so, and I think probably, I think the way that I think about it, too, is, that the relationship between Wagner and the state depended on the context and the geographies, the theaters in which they were operating. And Ukraine, I mean, obviously then and even more obviously now, is something existential to the Russian state. And so Wagner was working quite closely with the Ministry of Defense.

and there are all other kind of types of security institutions that are there, right? The FSB, the GRU, SVR, and the same in Syria, too. That was an overt, there was nothing covert about Syria. It was an overt Russian military intervention. No one was trying to hide anything. Wagner's usefulness was much more plausible deniability back home that the official statistics of Russian soldiers coming home in caskets was much lower because they were contractors over there.

And so the Russian public wouldn't question too much, why are we in this far-flung location? Do you think that's a lesson that the Russians learned? I mean, and I think you may have pointed out even in the book, it's like the Russians don't need to mimic the West in order to come up with something sneaky. But I mean, do you think they saw the Blackwater model and saw that, oh, that's something we can use to affect Russian foreign policy without as much blowback? I think so. I think so. I mean, especially in Syria, I think.

That I think that was a more conscious decision because that was the first, that was the first time that Russia, the state was really moving outside of what it considers its near abroad of, you know, the former Soviet Union. and I don't think that there was an incredible amount of support at that time for intervention in military adventures. Military adventures. And so Wagner kind of helped. And there's, you know, there's also that very specific kind of Russian experience in the 90s in Chechnya and, you know, the kids coming home. in caskets and the mothers who are a very effective political force in Russia. And so they, you know, I think that they also, you know, probably chance. I mean, they surely were watching what America was doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And they were certainly picking up on how many contractors were over there. We know that because General Gerasimov even mentions the use of Western PMCs in their mind to overthrow these governments and what have you. But I think that they saw, I think that that's how they, that they recognize that as something useful and that was probably worth imitating. And I think that Progosion, too, now that he had this mercenary force underneath him, kind of, envisioned himself as a sort of Eric Prince or, you know, maybe even Barlow or, you know, one of these kind of big entrepreneurs in this space. But to go back to kind of what you're saying, once you get outside of Syria, like Russia's footprint in these other places is very light. And we know that because just the state isn't really there. And so I talked to

with one guy who was the head of progoshin's gold mining operation in Sudan and the way that he told me about how everything went down was that in 2016 a probably a GRU guy goes to Sub Progoshin in St. Petersburg and it's like, hey, I got an opportunity to like dig gold in Sudan.

You interested? And Pergouin, obviously. is like progojin and so he's like yeah hell yeah and so he sends this guy who i talked to micha ptchopitjopkin to go there and this guy again this is like as we get back to like what is like who are these guys and like are they're 10 feet tall like they're kind of just like buddies in st peter's like they're all kind of part of the same like little network and then you know someone is like oh my cousin is like real good at this and okay send them the sudans if he could, like, do a gold feasibility study, you know? And, like, and so, like, he goes down there and he realizes that these guys are all, like, swindlers.

And he goes back to Progrosur, and he's like, it's not going to work. And he's like, you don't know anything about gold, which is, like, true. He did it. And so then they, he's like, go back and figure it out. And so then he goes back and figure it out. And they end up, like, inking this deal between Sudan and Russia that, that, that, that Russia will provide military trainers, not something that is like totally unknown in the West by any stretch,

and would also get these kind of concessions in gold mining. And that's kind of what kicks it off. And then Progoshin starts sending out his associates doing business development in a way. Something I want to get into and maybe a surprising part of your book was you talk about 2018 and Wagner group in Madagascar, which I had not heard about before. And this may be a good point also to point out that Wagner was not just a mercenary organization in the sense that like sending in shooters and fighters, right? That there's a more robust support system there that like he brought in like political

analysts for some things, got information operations, disinformation operations. And like it sounded like some election election. election racketeering going on in Madagascar. Yeah. Like, I think you say something that, like, they try to work with the incumbent. Yeah. But then they see that's not going to work. So they go to, like, his competitor.

Yeah, yeah. They ally with some guy who's named like Dr. Doom or the prophet of doom or something. He was like a cult leader. Yeah, he was a cult leader. It's like this is fucking crazy. Oh my God. Yeah, there's so many. Every story is just like, it's interesting.

They, I mean, they were just always up to just crazy insane stuff. But like, yeah, they, the president of Madagascar shows up in Moscow and he meets with Progoshan. And then the Russian leadership and talks about how he wants, you know, their help. And so Progosian says, oh, I have these like political guys who, political consultants who can go down. and and I mean this is so all of these things like like I think like what we're thinking of when we're thinking about Wagner like these are all I mean I'm sure the audience knows this is kind of like well known but like there wasn't like there was no LLC Wagner LLC registered somewhere in the Cayman Islands right it was it became a collective term for all of the companies that and shell companies and what have you that revolved around

progosian and this guy was like if he had a love in life it was to create shell companies and like and have ever more complex like financial like financial structures and and so he but but a lot of it was born first, like, in Russia, right? And so there's that scene as well with a friend of mine who went undercover at the Internet Research Agency, which became like super famous, obviously, during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections for interference. And the start of this whole, like, troll farm thing was kind of just to go after Progoshan's,

like opponents at home and just like post about them and to like post shit posting yeah just like shit posting and like giving like good comments about like his catering company you know like and then but he's he's he he is to his credit he is incredibly entrepreneurial and he understands and he's always thinking about how can I like create synergies between these various businesses that I'm trying to get into. And so he develops like the slew of services that can be offered. And so in this, in Madagascar, it's political consultants. And they're coming out of that St. Petersburg scene around Progosh.

And so, yeah, they go down and like, I mean, they don't know anything about Madagascar and it's politics. And so like you said, they first start backing. And they make like a lot of mistakes that like, like, I don't even think like deliberately, just like accidentally breaking the law and stuff like that. Like, you know, like starting a newspaper and like that was like illegal. They like give out these pens that like misspell the president's name. And then they end up like realizing that he's going to lose.

And so then they oh. And so then they also like have this new candidate. Just like a lot of guys running in this election. So they're going around and trying. trying to find like the right one and they there's this guy pastor my hole who uh runs the church of the apocalypse and that sounds promising yeah and like 20 years earlier god told him that he would be president of madagascar as one does so that's why he's running and the russians like give him money and like obviously that doesn't like work out um and and and so but in the end one of the guys

who they, you know, ended up winning. But, you know, it wasn't, yeah. I mean, and I think, again, we get back to, like, you know, these guys are often bumbling through. You could write that into a novel and people like, come on, do you can't stop. Like, that's too over the top. Yeah. That would never happen.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they continued to do, like, you know, in Carr, they're opening breweries and, like, vodka distilleries. and then like like attacking the other brewery that's operating there. I mean, they're always up to. So they got in their hooks in pretty good. It sounds like Sudan was sort of like their foothold in Africa. Sudan was initially, but like very quickly after that,

they go on this quick like period of like expansion. And so in Central African Republic, they're, someone in the Central African Republic probably reaches. out to them saying, hey, are you interested in something similar? They get everything put together and they get that through in 2017 too. And so they touched down there in 2018. And then, I mean, probably six months after that, prognosis meeting with Hoftar and Libya.

And so they're like he and, you know, for every one of those, they're like throwing things against the wall, right? Like we should see if there's anything in Zimbabwe. We should see if there's anything in like Congo, South Sudan. And so they're out there trying. And these are the ones that like stuck. C.A.R. I mean, that's where it sounds like, you know,

these guys really became like comic book villains. I mean, you have the quote in there from somebody like, yeah, they told us to kill the women and children because it'll terrorize the rebels and, you know, like, holy shit. tell us about the black Russians these like death squad ops that they went on and they had these commanders with names like zombie and lotus I mean it's yeah I mean Central African Republic was also I mean that's where I spent my most of my time I met a bunch of the guys over there the Wagner guys over there I traveled like throughout the country

and I think it was I think it was the most interesting case just in general right because they they yeah so I mean the first thing that they do when they show up there is the the car government owns just like basically the capital and it's all these predatory armed groups in the countryside and so progoshin and gets his guys together and they decide they're going to like get a peace deal

between the car government and all these armed groups and and there's a fun section about how they go about that. And they do it. And, and, and they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, there's kind of territorial integrity, figure out how to, how to, how to do mining and, and they, I mean, this was also a good, like, peace was good. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, but, you know, the, the, the, the, the elections, uh, are coming up. It's very destabilizing that the agreement can't hold. and six of the armed groups joined together and form a new armed coalition and they start going down to take Bengi and I was in Bangi at the time when this was all going down

and that's when like things really changed and Bogner's mission went from like a training mission like it was in Sudan the decision was made to defend Bangi and so they bring in like 1,500 to 2,000 guys from Syria, and it becomes the Syrian operation, just in car. They defend Bengi, which, like, even, like,

humanitarians and everybody, like, quietly thanks them for doing. And this is the weird things that happen on the ground, right? And then they go on the counteroffensive. And it's very effective. And, like, Central Africans, for the most part, are very happy, unless they're from some of the groups that are perceived to be as supportive of the armed groups. Because like you said, the Russian doctrine around counterinsurgency is not like the same as kind of some of the other models. And so in some of these communities where they perceive them to be as supportive of the armed groups, very often it's ethnic, they, again, they employ these tactics, which are just, you know, scare, you know, create intense pain, scare the shit out of people.

There's a lot of killing in the belief that they won't support armed groups or harbor armed groups again. And in the case of the Central African Republic, it is relatively effective and also relatively popular among the general population that, you know, for them, they've lived in precarity and in conflict for like 20 years. Like this, it's not the idea of people dying is not, it's also the poor. least developed country in the world, like, you know, at least one in five babies doesn't make it to one. I mean, so this is a, you know, and so for most people, it's a question of, you know, is my life better under the armed groups or Wagner? Am I able to go to my field and cultivate and do a little farming and go to the next village without getting killed and robbed?

And for a lot of people, that was better, despite the brutality that was going on at the same time. Let's jump a little bit into Libya. Yeah. There's a lot of interesting stuff. Yeah. With Seif Gaddafi and then Turkish intelligence gets in sending Syrian mercenaries. And this is like also kind of mind-boggling. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think one of my favorite, favorite, I mean, it's always tough. It's like my favorite and tragic moment. Your favorite atrocity in Africa? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, John. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite tragic moment is, yeah, like you said, so prognosion kind of, well, I mean, we can go into, there's that interesting section where kind of progosion is actually muscle.

his way in, likely a little bit, into the Libya portfolio from some guys who were connected to the FSB, some other kind of smaller Russian PMC rivals. But he does get in there. He strikes a deal with Haftar. And the Libya, I always wanted to put Wagner in the overall context. of these conflicts, right? They are a piece of the puzzle. They never are the reason that there was civil war in Libya or the Central African Republic. And so to put them in the context of Libya, I wanted to talk about all of the different

kind of mercenaries who or security entrepreneurs or contractors, what have you, who are operating. And, I mean, when it came to Huffstar's attack on Trump, Tripoli and started in April 2019 I mean he had the armed groups rebel groups from Darfur

there were the ex-John Jaweed guys who had fought the Darfur armed groups who were fighting alongside them there were the Chadian rebel groups you had Torregs yeah you had you had

you had you had Wagner coming in all of this is kind of backed by the UAE financially. Some American security entrepreneurs are around and about. And initially, kind of the offensive is going well. They're on the outskirts of Tripoli, the southern suburbs, called Ain Zara. But as the government in Tripoli is increasingly kind of worried,

they sign a memorandum of understanding with Turkey on maritime boundaries that just so happened to like, I think draw like a straight line from like, you know, Tripoli to Turkey that like, you know, that like puts all of like Cyprus in, you know, all of the East Med is now all of a sudden like Turkish like territory. Oil going out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so. in exchange Erdogan taps the Turkish intelligence, the Turkish military advisors start coming in, the byroktar drones start coming in and then through Turkey's own very close to the state PMC Sadat they start shipping in Syrian mercenaries

from the territories that are under Turkish control in Syria. And then... There's a small street. A small strip that they had moved, yeah, that they had buffered into. A lot of guys from the, from the SNAT and kind of these Al-Hamsat militias who were over there. I mean, that sounds really bad. Like the Italians have the saying, the slaves of the slaves. Yeah.

If you're a Syrian mercenary working for a Turkish PMC in Libya, like that sounds like not a, not a, yeah, your life expectancy. Yeah, and I, you know, there were guys I interviewed for it. And, you know, they, it was always interesting to get people's different perspectives of the different conflicts in which they were in. And for these guys, and were, I mean, they fought in Syria. Like, they were saying, for the most part, like, it's just like a lot of, like, you know, shooting like this. And they were like, yeah, like the artillery was like never accurate. So we didn't have to worry too much. and all of a sudden they're on the Libyan front with like, you know, effectively like Turkey versus Russia and UAE.

And the Libyans have a lot of money. And so, you know, I don't know if you've ever managed to go through Libya, but like it's very different. Like the militias like have a lot of money. And so they have like. Like this is oil money? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like billions of dollars swimming around there.

And so. so it's very different. And so they show up on this front line. There's drones going. And they're like, what the hell did we get ourselves into? And some of them are like, want to go back. And the Turks are like, you're not going back. And then they find out like that they don't really have weapons.

And there's a lot of like captagon and drugs getting smuggled in, which the Libyans don't like, the local Libyans don't want them there. And so it's a total mess. And of course, the Turks had like delegated the recruitment to the Syrian commanders. And so the Syrian commanders, and so it just becomes like a cash scheme. Yeah, yeah. And so the Syrian commanders start sending guys over. they collect the salaries and then the guys aren't getting paid.

It's just a total mess. And then Wagner starts recruiting Syrians from Assad-controlled territory. And so now they're bringing in Syrians. And there's this, this was kind of the tragic moment I'm talking about where you have this situation where Syrians who had fought each other in Syria are now facing off against each other in Tripoli. Surreal. in Libya and it's surreal and it and it and it was one of those things where you're like you're like like like it feels

significant but I can't quite put my finger on on why in you you put your finger on it maybe earlier on on in the book where you talk if I recall correctly I mean I may have read this elsewhere about like the period of Italian history where of mercenary fiefdoms yeah like it feels very much like that sort of like you know early Renaissance era. Yeah, and I think that this is like where I was trying to get out. You know, the subtitle is like the new era, right? And, and that was always tough to try and tease out as well because we've had mercenaries for as long as we know. And so, you know, people always, what is new and what is new is that we're returning to something kind of in a way. Right. But what, what is different is that the, you know,

the technology has changed, the logistics has changed, and the resources that are at these people. It's global. It's global. And so this became kind of, in a way, like the dark underbelly of globalization, right? The same processes that come together that allow Amazon Prime to give me, you know, deliver something same day to me are also making it possible to ship. you know, Syrians relatively easily from Syria to another location to fight.

And the distance is collapsing. Let's jump into, at least I feel like we should touch upon briefly, Mozambique and Mali. Yeah, yeah. Those were two other places that Wagner went into, tried to go into. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Mozambique, again, this is during this period of kind of, kind of, intense expansion, you know, trying to get everywhere

and in one of the places where they successfully managed to get in was in Mozambique. And just immediately the mission is a disaster. And I talked to some Russians about it.

And they said that actually in this case, like progosin was being warned by people in the MOD that it's like not a good idea to go in. The politics at the time were not conducive. There was a big piece deal that was about to kind of come together after like decades of conflict between Frilemo and Renamo. Are those organizations even still around? Yeah, the crazy Cold War relics. and then there's a big division between the police and the the army and they hate each other's guts and then this thing this kind of unknown thing is kicking off in the north in Cabo Delgado

where at the time like no one really knows what's going on but there's there's an insurgency and it's getting close to these massive like LNG fields that are owned, not owned, but being exploited by the French hotel. LNG is light natural gas? Yes, yeah. And so of course, progosin's like, perfect, like, let's go in. And he inks a deal and they show up and like they don't, like no one knows why they're there. Like, it's not clear what the, what the mandate is.

The guys decide that they want to actually go like to Cabo Delgado, where I can't remember if it's like around this time that they declare themselves an ISIS affiliate. And so all of a sudden is like, you know, oh my God, you know, what's going on in Cabo Delgado. And so they show up. They're in, they're in this kind of dense job. jungle that they're not prepared for, they have a bunch of drones that they can't use and and they basically fall into these ambushes, lose a bunch of guys. And, you know, I think, and I put in the book, like, I think the standard kind of story was like,

oh, they lost a couple guys and, or they lost guys. It's a failure, like, and they leave. And I think kind of like tied to like our whole previous. like what we were talking about previously like Prussian was like pretty he had a high tolerance for losing guys if it was worth it right like I mean this is after

Hasham right where he at Hasham the Conoco Fields in Syria and they had lost you know maybe around 10 guys or something like that in Mozambique I think the reason that he pulled out was that the

the the first of all, there was one institution that hated him. And then I don't think that he saw a way that he could sell it back to the Kremlin in a way that would result in kind of meaningful subsidies and support. You point out repeatedly, I think, that for Russia, Africa was just not a priority. Which makes it kind of interesting that he was gallivanting all around North and Central Africa. So like the thing that I wish like I was would have been and like I know the guy and he talked to me for the book and he like saved this whole quote or like after the book gets published. But he likes to think of himself.

He works for a Russian PMC and he likes to think of himself as, you know, and he is a historian and kind of an intellectual as well. And the way that he described it, he told me he was like, John, you have to go back. and look at how Russia conquered Siberia. He said, the way that it happened, you know, this is like the 16th century, is a Cossack leader. He goes to the Tsar and a Yirmak, it's a guy's name. And he says, you know, give me the troops and give me the funds and I'll go conquer Siberia for you. And the czar goes, that's interesting. Prove to me that you're successful and then I'll give you this.

phones. And so Yermak goes to like the boyars, the barons around and he raises up the money from them to go out. And then he starts conquering Siberia. He starts running into issues when he's at the Chinese border. So he goes back to the czar and says, you know, like I need I need your help. And the czar says, sure, we're taking this over. We got it from here. And he gets kicked out. And, you know, the guy, you know, the guy who works at a Russian PMC is like, in this sense, like what he, like, Progogian was working as he was in a very Russian style in Africa is how he put it. And it's sort of the Francis Drake mock, right, where like you go and you plant the flag in the name of the state and you're hoping that the state is then going to like come in. it's interesting with progoshin and also with Eric Prince who sensed that bitterness like neither of them I think really understood at the time that they were

being used as tools by the state apparatus right it was only in retrospect that yeah and I mean I think you know and and Eric is a good example of a guy too who goes out there and is looking you know is looking forward for these opportunities These opportunities that you can then, you know, the primary client is really the, you know, your own government, right? And, you know, for a PMC, what is kind of, you know, what I would think is sort of the sweet spot is you have to find these places that present a threat of some sort of. right or a need of some sort to your home government the threat can't be so high that the government wants to just send in its own troops but it can't be like too low because then why would they fund you it reduces your prestige yeah yeah yeah and so you have to find something that's like kind of

right at that perfect like we should be there but like not too much and that's like the sweet spot low intensity conflict low intensity conflict in africa is and that's why everyone is there And so, you know, you talk to Eric and some of his guys, I mean, they were oscillating around, you know, orbiting the same opportunities. Right. Progogian got in to Mozambique because he was able to underbid those guys so much because he was initially able to. Labor is cheap. Yeah. Labor is cheap, but also he had that preferential access to Putin.

and he had deep pockets himself that he was willing to invest like crazy money in for a long-term investment. And Mozambique, though, he couldn't get it to work for whatever reason, on the economics and on the political. So, Ukraine take two. Yeah. We get into the 2020s.

Tell us a little bit, this was an interesting thing, interesting lead in. Tell us about like Russian imperial myth-making in that period and how it kind of intersects with Wagner. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of the like imperial boomerang effect, right? Where the policies in the periphery kind of come back home in a way. And so over time, I think the, you know, the Kremlin more generally in Putin as well,

like come to kind of believe their own. myth-making about Russia as this powerful state about the West in Ukraine Putin is going to be this next the leader that returns

Ukraine back to the fold and so at least Putin himself becomes also personally obsessed with this especially during COVID-19. He's like a famous germaphobe.

Yeah. He isolated. He's very good at isolating. Anyone who wants to see him even like his best friends, you know, they have to quarantine for like three weeks. And Progosion isn't a best friend. You know, Progosion's a guy who can like get his, he's an acquaintance. And like he can get his ear.

Putin likes him because he's like rough around the edges. You know, he's a little bit different. And he'll do whatever, you know, Putin says. but, you know, he's not, he's not like the closest confid on. And so, and as you can imagine, like, progosin, too, has made a lot of enemies as he's been going around doing all of the crazy stuff that he does. And so, you know, the decision is made that, you know, that the, from the Russian perspective, the Ukrainians are not willing, you know, to come to a final resolution on.

Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they need to be, you know, the regime in Kiev needs to be overthrown. They think that this will be a relatively easy thing. All the guys, all their spies who are basically like not working that much in Ukraine or just sending them back like, yeah, they love Russia over here, you know, what have you. And so they're believing their own kind of, it's a, it's a circular information space, they believe what they're producing, the information that they're producing. And so for the operation, the Ministry of Defense initially does not want to go have progoshin there.

He's a thorn in their side in so many different ways. And so they try to raise their own what they call PMCs. But I mean, they're really kind of just volunteered. But I mean, they thought this was a three-day military special operation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't need to bring in these PMCs. Yeah, they raise their PMCs for their own reason that, you know, they think if we, if we need them, we got them. But they really thought that this was going to be very quick, like you said, like three days.

And it very clearly was not. And so it's already going pretty poorly for the Russians like, I mean, almost immediately and a few weeks in. and Prozhen finally gets a call that he's allowed to get his Wagner guys in and he was pissed about not getting in because this is where you make real money right?

I mean this is the full scale war Central African Republic is nothing to the Kremlin this is everything to Putin too and so he gets his guys in ironically like they're mercenaries, contractors, what have you

but these guys are like have had more experience than, you know, most people in most soldiers in the Russian military, even some of the Special Forces guys, right? They've been, in the interim, they've been fighting on the ground in Syria, throughout Africa. It's not going to be the same thing by any stretch, but they have more experience. And so they start to make a difference. And Progogian all of a sudden is, you know, in the limelight. He officially is, you know, the founder of Wagner.

He's in Putin's good graces. And he starts promising ever bigger things. He eventually promises Bachmut that he's going to take Bachmut. And the MOD, too, is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front. And so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of, you know, cool. guys in the Russian context of, you know, to bring in men to recruit. So the billboards are going up across Russia, join PMC Wagner. So he's recruiting new volunteers.

And then he gets access to Russia's prison population. Project K. Project K. And again, we don't know like exactly. I mean, it was a wink and a nod. from the presidential administration that Progoshin gets this right to do something which is illegal in Russia.

This is always a double-edged sword, right? Because... If it works, you're good to go, but if it fails, you know, you're going to prison. You're going to prison. And this is always the world in which he's operating, right? And you lay out this, like, totally insane scene where, like, a helicopter comes and lands in the prison,

dude gets off, and it's like, we have a special mission for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and it was really... And he knew how to hand him. ham it up. Now his ex-con, his history as an ex-con comes into play because he can speak like the language of prison Russian. Prison Russian. And he shows up at prisons across the country and he gives the deal of, you know, if you fight for me for six months, you go free. your criminal record is expunged.

He is open. He says, you know, my losses are worse than Stalin, Gras. And that any deserters will be shot on site. But, I mean, he taps into this old Soviet history of... We will sacrifice. Sacrifice. And some of the language... And so the Soviet, in the Soviet during Stalin,

during World War II, he swept the gulags for prisoners. And they had penal battalions as well of people who became politically unsavory had their own special units that they would throw into the worst parts of the fight. And the whole idea was that you atone for your sins

with blood. Oh. And literally this language actually shows up again in the contracts that these guys are signed. That it's a chance to atone for their sins you know, with blood for, you know, mother Russia. And so up to, I think, 50,000 guys end up taking the deal.

Holy shit. And Progousin, they go through a very intense two-week training with, like, Russian Special Forces instructors and, like, very kind of experienced Wagner instructors. and then they're thrown into the front. And, you know, they're used as kind of human waves going at first, going first, jumping over and attacking. And, you know, the life expectancy was pretty short,

I think about probably half of them perished. You talk about in the book how they basically used these dudes, as like scouts, like to go out and see where the enemy is. Yeah. And like, they all get wasted and like, oh, okay, we'll send out another group. So you find out a little bit more. Oh, that group gets wasted. And like, okay, so we know they're sort of around that area.

Yeah. And I mean, and it's, and the thing, and I, you know, I was there on the front. And I was talking to the Ukrainians who were dealing with it. And it is obviously incredibly inefficient. But it is an effective method. if you have unlimited access. Meat power. Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, for the Ukrainian, I mean, and, you know, we can get into, you know, should they have even been defending Bakhmut in the first place and not have, you know, pulled back to a more strategic position. But for, you know, the ratio was, you know, probably like one Ukrainian for every four Russians or something like that. was, you know, getting casualtyed out. But in the Russian mindset, they were using an expendable force. And the Ukrainians were losing some of their kind of most talented experienced guys in this fight. Because, again, like you said, they're used to find the positions.

You know, if you send out 10 guys, you know, eight might, but then two of them do jump in the trench. trench they get you know one or two and it's just endless it's just attrition and and uh and this is how progosian is going to to take Bachman and uh but ultimately he his star is

ascending he's everywhere he's known internationally now uh bloomsbury's like wait we have a book about this guy like why it like um And I'm sitting there like, oh my God. But, you know, his ego is getting increasingly, I mean, he's already a narcissist and very egotistical. It's getting, you know, it's reaching all sorts of new heights.

And then the Ministry of Defense cuts off his supply of Russian prisoners, which is effectively cutting off his means of taking Baku. Did they, I mean, did they do that for an actual reason? Like, I have to think it's not because of like on moral grounds, but. It wasn't because the Ministry of Defense was also recruiting prisoners. This was about the time where the Russian MOD starts taking over the private military companies, right? It's pretty soon after that. So they cut off progoshan.

They're continuing, the MOD itself is continuing to recruit from prison. So it was not a moral thing. But it's like MOD's taking control of this. Yes, MOD is taking control of this. And because the MOD has more leverage, they get the Russian parliament to like rubber stamp. Rubber stamp, like the legal backing for them to be doing this. And so Progogion is getting kind of squeezed out. And he's going in, and he can't get to Putin.

So what's the best way for him? He is good at recognizing. the cards that he has and like the advantage that he has over his opponents and and where he has advantage in this situation is on social media posting through it posting through it and and you know he's going out there and he's giving updates from the front like much closer than like the minister of defense shogu is is ever going to go and shoygoo can't post on telegram he's the minister of defense and so he starts going after the minister of defense about how they're kind of them not giving those guys enough ammunition.

Where's my ammunition? Where's my ammunition? Like these decadent bureaucrats in their mahogany offices. They've forgotten like the, you know, the average Russian soldier, you know, like you know. And so I mean, that's kind of his route

to get back onto Putin's radar and it's not working. And then ultimately, you know, the thing that like snaps is the MOD is pushing for all people fighting in Ukraine to now re-sign under contract with the Ministry of Defense. And so for Progosian, who had mentioned in one of those many telegram messages that he's sending,

and he does it in such that way that he's like, you know, some people are saying that that, you know, having all this big mercenary army like makes me political or something. You know, and it's like, oh, really? Like some people are saying. And so he recognizes him. And now what makes him political is about to be taken away from him.

And I think though and if you look at kind of his personality already at this point, like he is not some dude who is going to like fade quietly into the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not going to accept the quiet desk job. Like no... Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no log cabin in Siberia.

That's like waiting for him to like chop wood before the helicopter comes in saying we need you one last mission. So like, and so he, he always, you know, when in doubt, he doubles down. Well, speaking of which was talk about the mutiny. Yeah. I mean, and so this is where he basically decides that the way that he's going to get himself out of this situation with the minister of defense Shoyagu is that he's going to kill him.

And so... Bold move. It's a bold move. And so he turns, you know, his force, they cross, you know, from Ukraine into southern Russia. They take over the southern military headquarters. Rostov. And Rostov, yeah, Rostov-Andan. And he's looking for Shoygu.

And Shoygu, and Shoygu, and Shoyou, isn't there. And so then he's like, they've taken the thing. And I think it's so tough to tell like how much of this was like, at some point he's kind of clearly freewheeling. Yeah, yeah. But so they, you know, they're, yeah, they're, they've taken over the southern military command headquarters. He's not there. Some of the Russian generals are trying to like talk with him. And, and he's just like give me shogu and they're like we can't do that and he's like okay and so then

he declares kind of this march for justice and he turns his guys from from there and they start heading up the highway to Moscow and I talked to one of the participants for the book and

and and and I was like what was your mission they were like yeah it was very simple like we were going to try to take over the ministry of defense and like In the process, Shoygu was going to have been shot, you know, accidentally.

But the whole thing was like, kill the minister of defense and create some sort of fate accompli which sounds crazy that like, oh, because you killed my minister of defense, I now have to name you my minister of defense. And I think, too, that he,

that progosion at that point was also hoping that the Russian military was going to like rise up with him. and that wasn't happening. They're getting closer to Moscow, and it's like closer and closer to the point of no return. And like for the first time, he just like calls something off, which is like not his tendency to do.

He did that on his own. I mean, Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader, brokered some sort of agreement. I think he was probably looking for An exit strategy. An exit strategy. And so he calls it off. And, you know, for the next couple months,

everyone's, like, waiting. Like, what is going to happen? And he's moving around everywhere trying, they're making a move to Belarus because Wagner can't be in Raqa anymore. They've been exiled. They've been exiled. So he's doing this move to Belarus.

But he's also trying to, like, lobby for them to keep the Africa operations. He's trying to prove, you know, that he is still the man to do that. And then ultimately, three months later, he gets on a private jet with Utkin, his number two guy, and a bunch of top lieutenants. And they take off from Moscow, heading to St. Petersburg and midway through. plane explodes and he comes crashing back down to earth. So, yeah. And, yeah, Putin's now famous quote that he was a man with a complicated fate. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, he even said something. I mean, I'm trying to remember exactly. He said he said he did a lot of things. Sometimes he did things for me. Like, yeah, he was a man of like complicated fate. Yeah, it was, yeah. And then, like, I think a little couple weeks later, Putin's like, oh, they did the investigation and, like, someone was drunk with a grenade on the plane. Sounds legit.

And it's, yeah, and that was, you know, that. And that was, I mean, there was no effort to, like, disabuse. Yeah, yeah. They don't want to disableness. Yeah, I don't know. It was, so there was no reason to. I mean, it was an extraordinary. way to do it.

Yeah. I was meant to be. Are you getting my point? Yeah, exactly. I think, I think, though, that progosian, again, this, like, speaks to his ego at the time because people were, like, didn't he, like, expect? And I, like, don't think that he actually did. I think that he somehow thought he had gotten away with it.

That his balls were so big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think because it only, because only that way can you understand how the mutiny could have occurred in the first place because again, how are your balls so big that you like turn on Moscow? Yeah. Like you ought to be already like, you know, pretty out there outside of few, yeah, a few standard deviations outside of like the norm in terms of like, yeah.

And so it's so kind of, yeah, inevitably he thought that he got away with it in a way. And he was the last one to find out, I suppose. Post-progion. What is the present for our. Wagner. I mean, does it still exist? I mean, yes, but it's still very much

I mean, now it is very much under the control of the MOD. And it depends, again, we get back to like each intervention was very different. And so you know, we didn't get a chance to talk too much about Molly, but

you know, if we think about like Africa, right, in Libya after Haftar's failed offensive there's a ceasefire in October 2020 that the Turks on the Russians on either side who are kind of guaranteeing a stalemate

nothing's really moving and so there are Wagner guys who are stationed there the MOD shows up and it's like hey here's a new contract most people sign Sudan at that point had like gone through its own issue of outsourcing like security to paramilitary

and is in like a full-scale civil war with the RSF and the Sudanese military but Wagner is still in in Mali and in the Central Africa and in Carr they they show up and again this is a place where like it wasn't important and so Progogian had the ability to

there was no natural check on him. And so he could expand into whatever opportunity he saw fit. And so they had breweries, vodka distilleries. I mean, they were like logging, mining. They were doing diplomatic activity. I mean, they were doing,

I mean, it was like a kind of a British East India company thing going on. And so the guys in the military like show up. And you can imagine these are like, you know, kind of bureaucratic guys and they look at all of this and they're like, we don't understand what the hell's going on here. Only the guys who are here do.

And like if it's not broke, like let's not, it's like not important enough for us to like do it. You know. So like, I think some bank account numbers shifted in terms of where things are getting transferred and like some people were replaced but it was left largely intact.

And then in In Mali, where you have this kind of mix of MOD advisors and Wagner on the ground going after, only 2,000 guys going after two different kind of jihadist arms, one Al-Qaeda, one ISIS affiliate. And then they decide to also take on four ex-separatives in the north. It's a full deteriorating situation. they don't really know like how to hand it over because resources too are already constrained with everything that's going on in Ukraine and so they're kind of like trying to fix the plane in the air like as we speak and so but again like all of the all of these things still now are you know there's no kind of like independent aspect to

to the legacy Wagner right now. It's all in one way or another kind of subordinate to the state. I mean, that kind of leads us to like a bigger question for Russia, but also for the rest of the world. Like we had these kinds of conversations, I feel like through the war on terror years about many conversations, maybe over philosophizing about it, you know, the state losing the monopoly on violence,

and these private military companies and is the state becoming irrelevant or, you know, subsiding and, you know, giving way to these transnational corporations. There's like this very large, like, conversation to have about that. In the aftermath of Wagner, because Wagner does sound like it's kind of like the press's worst nightmare about Blackwater, which did some bad things, also did some good things, but, you know, but Wagner was really like off the rails and sounds like it became that, well, I mean, geez, the mutiny is the epitome of it, right? That you create this monster that's going to come after you. Yeah.

I mean, what conclusions do you have about the private military company industry and the future of warfare? And, you know, after writing this book? I think, I mean, I think, I mean, to, it's obviously here to stay. And I think it's probably only going to grow from, from here. If not for the only reason that Wagner itself and, and Progelsian and his associates went out there. and they created a market for their product as well. And now that Wagner has existed,

it's like everything, right? It's tough to close Pandora's box once something is out there. Even if Wagner itself goes away, there are going to be other people. And I think what I tried to do with this book as much as humanly possible is make it about like the actual people. because I don't love it when we talk about like, you know, what is Russia doing or like, what is China doing? Like these anthropomorphized, like, you know, China is in Africa because, you know, minerals.

And I want, like, Wagner was a bunch of individuals who go out there and try to do, like, crazy things. And so inevitably, there are going to be others who, now that this market has been created, we'll try to imitate it in some way. And so, you know, the Sadat, who was providing the Syrians is kind of experimenting in that way. There are UAE officials who are thinking about their own foreign legion. Rwanda does kind of a lot of similar things in Africa in terms of the model of kind of providing troops for mineral resources. and I think overall this is existing in a context of ever-increasing outsourcing and privatization under this second Trump administration that that's clearly the direction that I think they want to go.

I'm still kind of for the same reason that we were talking about earlier. I'm still not sure yet if like for some of the top market. for private security like in Africa, they would are interested actually in even funding like American PMCs to be over there or if they're just like not interested at all. And, you know, one, if they're not interested at all, it's, it becomes difficult for, you know, these PMCs to be operating. But I think that it is an increasingly competitive space too. and one that will that will only grow.

I, I, what was I going to say? I think, you know, ultimately to like the supply of guys who will be available for this is probably going to increase as well. You'll, I mean, if there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, I mean, the the the uh you're going to see a lot of uh guys hovering out of work soldiers you're see a lot of out of work soldiers who will be looking uh for something on both sides um who will be looking for things to do so the Ukrainians i think if there's a ceasefire will very much get get involved in this space as well but i mean like i think sometimes the the whole like

is this a threat to the nation state is kind of sometimes overblown because I don't want to our reference point still is very much the nation state and we still very much operate even even though at the edges it might not really exist it's still like the referent for us right

and and the PMC is still the tool of the state rather than the other way around it's going for the most part they're going to this they're going to states looking to like like they're like I think

like the theory of like a I mean it happened I think a couple times in the past but like the theory of like a PMC going into you know like Eastern Congo

and just like setting up like the country of Wagner right like that would be the international system would pretty quickly like seek to destroy that because you know the the the the paradigm is still yeah yeah yeah the system deploys red blood cells yeah yeah yeah very yeah we like or white blood cells yeah yeah they don't like that and so I don't think we're we're at any point where

anything is where any kind of entity like that is in position to replace the nation state either But will things be further and further outsourced? Absolutely. We'll create a world where conflict is just more rife. Like, are we moving back into this sort of medieval system where city-states sponsor mercenary companies and deploy them out against each other? Especially Syria, you know, it seems like a harbinger of that,

I think, in some ways. The way these groups came together, like LLCs. Conflict. I mean, it's an interesting question because, and I think it's important, and we mentioned it earlier, like PMCs are not the source of conflict, right? There are a symptom of conflict. There are some tangential exceptions where, and the fear is that there are exacerbating the conflict. Exactly, exactly.

And so they, they certainly can exacerbate, right? And they, they can. For profit driven reasons. For profit driven reasons. I don't think, and, like, having spent a lot of time in the central, there, there's also this theory that, like, you know, PMCs will, like, are incentivized to keep a low-grade conflict going because that's how they stay hired. But, like, I mean, you know, like anyone, you can't maintain anything.

it. Like anyone who like tries to like anyone like just try managing like three people and you realize that you can't like maintain a low grade conflict at like a perfect. And so like what we attributed to like what people attributed to you know, Wagner like creating, you know, more armed group insurgents because of its methods. You know, they weren't doing that armed. purpose. It was the result of what they were doing. But like you said, it can really exacerbate the war economies. And in a lot of these places, I mean, Carr is one of them, the Sudan border with Chad. I mean, to bear arms is how you live life. That's the political economy. And that might expand

might expand to more areas. But, you know, how these things are solved is ultimately a question of politics and the equitable distribution of political power and resources from, you know,

among the people of the state. It's the only way. So, the book, death is our business it's out now yes sir people can find it wherever they shop for books are sold yeah they're out there um anything that i didn't ask you that you'd like to get into anything that i missed no i mean i think i i think we've covered like quite a bit yeah we've covered pretty pretty much the story yeah it was a pleasure yeah so guys go check out the book um

like i said i read it this week it's definitely worth your time and this guy John speaks like eight languages and he was in that this is really I can say this as a writer and as a researcher like this is one of the stumbling blocks for any type of book like this is like I am not bilingual or trilingual or whatever it is you are so there's a difficulty in like reaching across these cultural lines like I can't talk to Russians and Russian you know I can't talk to Afghans and Pashtun I have this problem. And so you were uniquely positioned, I think, to write this book. Thank you.

Thank you. And I think it comes through. Uniquely stupid, too. And it requires a little bit of that egotism, right? That I can go into CAR and I can write this book. Yeah. It's okay. A little bit of ambition is a good thing.

Of CAA. So, yeah, questions. What do we got, Dimitri? From M. Corvin. Have they ever used Wagner to pull people east of the euros for the Russian military? Have they ever used Wagner to pull people? It's like in Siberia or Central Asia? Yeah, to pull people east of the euros for the Russian military.

Oh, no. I mean, the people within Wagner come from all across Russia. Their recruiting offices were from all across Russia. I'm not sure that there's like a massive geographic distinction in terms of where people are from and fighting on the front. Like a distinction between like it's mostly like European Russians or like, you know, people from Siberia or what have you. One more question, Adam. Have you ever read the book written by a Russian ex-Vagner guy? who fought in Palmia.

It's called The Same River Twice, published in 2022. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know Marat, who wrote that book very well. And Marat also shared his story again. And I cite his book and his story, his books, but also he shared some some, some extra stuff as well for this one. I got a question.

What's the deal with Pavel Progogian now? I don't think. So Pavel Progossan is Yvgeny Progossian's son. I think there are kind of these like rumors that he's like the head of Wagner now. But I mean, again, I mean, if anything, I think the guy's like in a golden cage where the agreement was probably that he can, you know, keep some money and like not do anything

that would be considered a threat and so if he does even have a role I don't think that he I think if anything it would be as like a figurehead but I've never seen anything to show that he even has like a serious

role at the moment so we will see all you guys on Tuesday for our Patreon subscribers. And if you're not subscribed, there's a link down in the description. And you can subscribe for just $5 a month and get access to all of these episodes ad-free. And if you subscribe for $10 a month, we'll send you the patch, the Team House podcast patch. And we'll also have some links down in the description to Death is Our Business.

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