102. Putin's Secret Army: Criminals And Cannibals - Russia's War In Ukraine (Ep 5)

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Speaker 1 Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.
I'm Gordon Carrera.

Speaker 1 And I still, I feel exposed exposed without an opening quote, Gordon. Do you?

Speaker 1 Let's try it. I will say we have a, for those of you who enjoy these opening quotes, we have a phenomenal one, but it's just going to be later in the episode.

Speaker 1 We're saving it as a proper cliffhanger. It's a speech, not a quote.
It's a speech. Yes, exactly.
That's a great point.

Speaker 1 It's a motivational speech

Speaker 1 that I intend to give my children when they're old enough. Yeah, when they're old enough.
When they're old enough. and considering the sort of the potential that joining a mercenary company may offer.

Speaker 1 So if you tune in to the Russians classified for quotes, you don't just get a quote, you get a speech. So hang on the line for that.

Speaker 1 But we are going to the sort of the later chapters of this exceptional story of Yevgeny Progozhin and the Wagner Group. And we have been on this journey with Mr.

Speaker 1 Progozhin through his time as a caterer, as Putin's chef,

Speaker 1 as a PR guru, as a mercenary warlord. Last time, we sort of did a global tour of all of Wagner's sort of business opportunities in Africa, in the Middle East.

Speaker 1 And we're now, I guess, Gordon, in early 2022, February of 2022, the Russians are amassing nearly 200,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. And the Wagner story, which starts in Ukraine,

Speaker 1 is now going to come back full circle on the backs of the Russian invasion. That's right.
So the Russian military have got their plan to topple President Zelensky in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 It's a good plan. It's a good plan, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
And the original Russian plan was that it was all going to be over in 72 hours.

Speaker 1 Just a reminder, we did a series on this earlier in the year. So if you want to know.
Episodes 31 through 34. Well done, David.
The rest is classified. Top marks.

Speaker 1 So if you want to know the plan, what happens, Western intelligence, go back and listen to that.

Speaker 1 But the Russian military, you know, had their dress uniforms and instruments with them, ready for a parade when they got into Kiev, as they think they'll just kind of walk in and then be able to kind of march around.

Speaker 1 And instead they meet fierce Ukrainian resistance, of course, and that plan collapses. But the crucial thing is the signs are that Wagner, this mercenary group, are not part of this original plan.

Speaker 1 Progozin, as we've seen last time, time, had been struggling actually to get his calls returned from military intelligence. He was having rows with them.

Speaker 1 He's getting the cold shoulder from Defence Minister Shoigu. And there were rumors, I remember at the time covering the invasion, you know, that Wagner teams were undercover in Kiev.

Speaker 1 They were assassins who were going to take out Zelensky. But actually, it doesn't look like they were there at all.
You know, it might have been other mercenary groups who might have been there.

Speaker 1 And, you know, of course, the reputation for Wagner means everyone's going to talk about them because they've got this reputation for violence. So Progozhin has been left out of the original plan.

Speaker 1 It's an original plan run by the Russian defense ministry, but now it fails. The Kremlin needs to rethink.
The 72-hour war is suddenly turning into something very different.

Speaker 1 It's an opportunity for a mercy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, you know, finally, on March 19th, nearly a month after the invasion, Pogoshin gets the call. He gets the call from Alexeyev, the number two in the GRU, his contact.
Now they need his help.

Speaker 1 Who are probably like, we got to call this guy.

Speaker 1 yeah we got this guy i hate i i hate having to make this call yeah you know because progoshin really seems to and wagner they seem to do really well in environments where someone else's plan has collapsed

Speaker 1 you know and you're like i guess we need to call progoshin and wagner you know yeah and you consent they didn't want to do it the redut mercenaries have all been wiped out you know which is a redoot is the russian ministry of defense's answer to

Speaker 1 wagner so it's it's the sort of their attempt to recreate this sort of entrepreneurial spirit of this small startup. And

Speaker 1 they've all been killed

Speaker 1 in Ukraine. And of course, you know, 175, maybe more thousand Russian troops for the original invasion plan.
Now they realize that's not going to be enough because the Ukrainians are resisting.

Speaker 1 The Ukrainians have mobilized their population for war.

Speaker 1 Crucially, the Russians haven't mobilized their entire population and army for a war and they don't want to putin is nervous about that because after all it's not a war it's not an invasion it's a special military operation very special very special yeah which means you told your public it's just a special military operation you can't then kind of you know mobilize everyone and kind of conscript your population so where do you turn and the answer of course is wagner and this is going to transform wagner from a kind of smallish mercenary fighting force low thousands mainly fighting far away in Africa, to a really significant army fighting on Russia's borders, which is, of course, something which is inherently dangerous.

Speaker 1 That's called foreshadowing.

Speaker 1 It is. Well done.
A little bit of plot foreshadowing there. So Brigozh is going to pull his existing teams from Africa to come and join the fight.
Massive influx of new recruits.

Speaker 1 By June 2022, thought to be 25,000 Wagner fighters in the east of Ukraine. They're going to get tanks, artillery, aerial support from MOD.
At its peak, Wagner is going to have 85,000 troops.

Speaker 1 Now, that is, it's worth saying, is bigger than the current serving British Army, which tells you something about the state of the British Army.

Speaker 1 That it's that Wagner's fighting force, you know, at its peak was bigger than the entire serving British Army. And it's going to grow from 25,000 maybe at the start of the war up to this 85,000.

Speaker 1 Where are they getting all these

Speaker 1 men, Gordon? Well, David,

Speaker 1 where are they getting all these men from? The answer, of course, is somewhere that Evgeny Progozhin knows incredibly well. Prison.

Speaker 1 Where else would you go to get a mercenary fighting force? Where he came from? And I guess

Speaker 1 there are a lot of advantages to this, right? One is that you don't have to go into the Russian population.

Speaker 1 The second is that to then lose these people, you kind of don't care if you're the Russian state. It probably helps you to some degree to empty out your prisons.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And I would imagine that at least some of these men have experience with violence. Exactly.

Speaker 1 So summer of 2022, Progoshin personally turns up in Russian penal colonies, often flying in by helicopter, gathers the prisoners in the courtyard to address them.

Speaker 1 And of course, he knows how to talk to them. He was one of them.
You know, this is where our story started. You know,

Speaker 1 teenage Progoshin, you know, getting into trouble with the law and ending up in penal colonies.

Speaker 1 He's got that tattoo of the woman on his back, which we don't know exactly what this woman looks like, but it was inked in with Sutanura urine in the prison colony. So he's got the street credit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But he's traveled a long way.
I mean, so he's now 60, I guess. Yeah, he's 60 years old.
He's now the big man. I mean, it must be crazy for him.

Speaker 1 He'd started 40 years ago in the prison colonies, getting beaten up or whatever it was. It's a heartwarming story.
And he's lived the dream.

Speaker 1 Now he's a kind of billionaire or multi-millionaire businessman flying into the prison colonies saying to these guys you could be like me you could live the dream you could escape you could do something and so i think really what he's offering them though is to be cannon fodder in ukraine is that right that's true so there's a great video of him which is maybe secretly filmed maybe leaked no one's quite sure speaking in mudovia which comes to light in september 2022 where he gathers hundreds of inmates in a yard and then offers them a deal.

Speaker 1 And this is where we come to our rather wonderful speech. Yes, from

Speaker 1 not a quote, a speech, which I think is so good. Should I read this garden? I've of course been preparing extensively.
Channel you dirty progosion. Okay.

Speaker 1 You may have heard of it. It's called the PMC Wagner.
The war in Ukraine is hard, not even close to the Chechen Wars and others.

Speaker 1 My ammunition consumption is about twice as high as during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Speaker 1 The first sin is desertion. No one backs out.
No one retreats. No one surrenders.
During your training, you'll be told about two grenades you must have with you in case of imminent surrender.

Speaker 1 The second sin is alcohol and drugs. The third sin is pillaging, including sexual contact with local women, flora, fauna, men, whatever.
The minimum age that we accept is 22.

Speaker 1 If you are younger, we need a paper from your next of kin giving their permission. The maximum age is 50.
But this number is conditional. I repeat, it is conditional.

Speaker 1 If you are strong, we will conduct an interview and basic tests to see how strong you are. Physical fitness is essential.

Speaker 1 We also conduct careful examination of those who are incarcerated for sexual offenses. But we understand that people make mistakes.
Who do we need? We need only stormtroopers.

Speaker 1 60% of my guys are stormtroopers, and you'll be one of them. You won't be any different from us.

Speaker 1 You'll be treated the same, sometimes even even with more loyalty than I showed to my own men who've been fighting for years and have gone through dozens of wars.

Speaker 1 The bodies of those who die are taken to the place you specify in your will to your relatives or will be buried where you specify.

Speaker 1 All those who die are buried in heroes' plots in the towns where these exist. Those who don't know where to be buried are buried next to the Wagner Chapel in Gorachi Klij.

Speaker 1 In Russia, after six months of service, you can come home with a pardon. Those who wish to stay with us can do so.
And there is no option that you would go back to prison.

Speaker 1 Those who join, but on the first day, say that they are in the wrong place, will be considered deserters, and we will shoot them. Guys, do you have any questions?

Speaker 1 That's brilliant. I mean, you channeled it beautifully, David.
Particularly the warning of having sex with Flora or Fauna, which is one of the more bizarre. Or men, whatever.
Whatever. Whatever.

Speaker 1 One of the more bizarre I mean

Speaker 1 it's just like that is progosion isn't it that's the kind of rough tough I you know

Speaker 1 if if you had decided to have sex with the plants yeah then you're the animals that's a no-no that's a no-no I mean and then I love it he ends the speech and he goes decision time is five minutes by the time we leave time's up in other words he gives that speech to these prisoners and he goes five minutes decide think about it you in you out it is wild i mean it also seems like you know if you're in a russian penal colony yeah you might really consider this yeah

Speaker 1 this seems like not a bad deal you take the deal i mean depends on to me it kind of depends just putting myself in the place of a russian penal colonist if that's the right word um i don't know if it is i don't think it is getting prisoner is the right word

Speaker 1 um is is um is i think it would depend on where i was in my sentence like if i'm like about to be released, I'm like, I'll just wait rather than go and, whereas if you're at the start of like a 30-year sentence and you're like, six months fighting, and then maybe I get out, full pardon, then you kind of go, maybe, maybe it's worth a shot.

Speaker 1 There's a few things which I think are fascinating about it. One is it's a big move within the Russian state to be able to offer a pardon to any prisoner who joins up.

Speaker 1 You know, your record is wiped out. I mean, it's a sign you can't do that unless you have the Kremlin's say so.
And from the very top, because you're overriding

Speaker 1 prison sentences, the judicial system, everything.

Speaker 1 The vaunted Russian judicial system is being overwritten. I mean, it is, though, when you get to the guts of it, it is a pretty frightening thing because

Speaker 1 as he says in that speech, you could have a serial rapist. I mean, he says we kind of don't want sexual offenders.

Speaker 1 And essentially, what he says is we don't want them, but kind of we'll check you out and have some conversations that we might accept you. So you could have people who have done some awful things

Speaker 1 who then go fight and then get released loose back into Russia. Yeah, so too.
I mean, you supposedly get whole units of sex offenders. I mean, you know, which is kind of wild.
You get cannibals.

Speaker 1 Is there a cannibal unit? I don't know if there's a cannibal unit, but you get people who never made it there. They just

Speaker 1 hate each other.

Speaker 1 And I mean, if your son, daughter, wife, husband has been killed by someone and they've gone to prison and then suddenly they're getting released. I mean, that's going to cause quite a lot of anger.

Speaker 1 So the families of kind of victims of these murderers are angry. Yeah, they fight for six months, and then you get a pardon.

Speaker 1 So you then get a whole wave of prisoners who are going to get released after six months, who are murderers, and who will then, you know, go on to murder more people.

Speaker 1 Pardon mercenary kind of douses his sister with petrol and burns her alive in Nizhny Novgorod, you know, like kind of having been released under this thing.

Speaker 1 So you're getting nasty people who are taking this deal and then they're going to do nasty things, but needs must, you know. Needs must.
Needs must.

Speaker 1 That's Putin's Russia. That's why Ivan the Cannibal came back home, you know.
Never thought we'd see that guy again. But yeah, he ate somebody.
Yeah. And then he went to Ukraine for six months.
Now

Speaker 1 he's back. And you see him.
Hanging around the Moscow suburbs. Yeah.
Like, yeah. And so close.
He ate somebody.

Speaker 1 Now he's home. Close to 50,000 prisoners sign up.
It's thought. I mean, no one knows.
50,000 prisoners are going to get out this way. So it's not exactly band of brothers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to say, it's kind of

Speaker 1 like the opening of saving private riots and endorses, but it's

Speaker 1 what it is. I mean, they are given what I would assume would be the worst assignments on the front.

Speaker 1 It has to be, right? Because they're just so low value. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They completely cannon fodder. They get a week of training.
And then, then, you know, I've been out to Ukraine a couple of times since the war started.

Speaker 1 And I remember, you know, Ukrainian people on the front line, soldiers who I'd interview, who would talk to me about seeing what they would call meat waves. And I mean, it's a pretty nasty concept.

Speaker 1 But it was basically that the Russians would just throw waves of people at the Ukrainian lines who were cannon fodder.

Speaker 1 knowing they would be killed just to exhaust the Ukrainians, run down their ammo, exhaust them.

Speaker 1 And then when they felt they were exhausted, then you send in your proper troops who are going to try and break through.

Speaker 1 So that is what they're using these kind of Wagner conscripts for and what they'll use them for. It's a kind of brutal, intense warfare where you just don't care about human life.

Speaker 1 And you kill anyone who turns around. Right.
And Progozhin was very clear in that speech. Yeah, you have to deserters be killed.
Deserters are going to be killed.

Speaker 1 And there's one particular case that becomes very famous about the kind of punishment.

Speaker 1 There's a guy who's 55, so already over that 50-year-old barrier that Progozhin had claimed that was there for Pelocru. These barriers are pretty loose.
It's pretty loose.

Speaker 1 A guy called Nevgeny Nuzhin, who was a murderer, and he was serving a 24-year sentence for murder, joins Wagner to get out after seeing Progozhin personally in his prison.

Speaker 1 He had only four years left to serve. So in August, he gets recruited from his prison.
He arrives in occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. He's formed into one of these assault squads.

Speaker 1 At one point, he's being assigned to recover corpses.

Speaker 1 It's a little bit vague, but apparently he surrenders to the Ukrainians, gives an interview in which he talks about this, but then for some reason, it appears he gets swapped back to the Russian side in a prisoner swap.

Speaker 1 Not a good idea. Now, that's the wrong direction to go in.
The wrong direction to go in when you've apparently surrendered to the Ukrainians. Graphic content warning for the kids.

Speaker 1 If you're listening with your kids.

Speaker 1 This is the point in the episode where you're giving the graphic content warning. Is that right? I'm sorry.
After the cannibals. After the cannibals.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 The brigades of meat waves. The meatwaves.
Yeah, okay. The brigades of sexual predators who are thrown at the Ukrainian lines.
Even more graphic warding.

Speaker 1 November 22, a video appears of this Evgeny Nuzhin looking in a bad way into what appears to be a cellar. His head is taped to a concrete block and he confesses to desertion.

Speaker 1 A man then gets a sledgehammer and smashes his head in. Which, as as we've seen before, is the kind of the Wagner way of dealing with this.
The video goes viral on TikTok.

Speaker 1 I mean, it gets like millions, millions, millions of views, which is, again, about the kind of dark fan culture around

Speaker 1 Wagner. And Progozhin himself says, it seems to me that this film should be called A Dog's Death for a Dog.
It was an excellent piece of direction and can be watched in a single sitting.

Speaker 1 You know, again, this is a movie producer thing. I hope no animals were harmed during filming.

Speaker 1 The same month the video comes out, the European Parliament adopts a resolution designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and it's urging for Wagner to be placed on the kind of terrorist list alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Speaker 1 And Progozin or someone sends a sledgehammer engraved with the Wagner logo and smeared with fake blood in a violin case to the European Parliament.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, it's your kind of mafiozo horse's head in the bed. And it's very theatrical, which I think appeals to him too.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I guess he's also getting to a point of no return where, I mean, I don't know if there was ever a point where he was considering going back the other way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he's being asked to take on a role in Ukraine. Yeah.
Or being given the opportunity, I think, to do something that's obviously putting him into a tremendous amount of conflict and tension.

Speaker 1 with the actual Russian military. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that's the problem for him is that he is kind of going for a walk on the dark side now, which is going to be dangerous for him.

Speaker 1 And maybe there, Gordon, with Progozhin having gone full dark side. Let's take a break and we come back.

Speaker 1 We will see how his, I think, incredible ambition for himself and Wagner will ultimately lead to his downfall.

Speaker 1 Well, welcome back. Progoshin's stature, Gordon, I think, has gotten to the point here where he also also seems to finally be sort of open.
Yeah. Or he is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 He can no longer deny, really, that he's, and maybe he doesn't want to deny that he's behind Wagner or even the Internet Research Agency. Yeah.
And the PR firm. Yeah, for years he's been denying it.

Speaker 1 He's been kind of launching lawsuits against those who link him to the Internet Research Agency or to Wagner. And now I think the break is there with the West.
He's got nothing to lose.

Speaker 1 He's going to embrace the kind of the dark side. He's going to say, you've heard of Wagner.
I cleaned the old weapons myself. I sorted out the bulletproof vests myself.

Speaker 1 I found specialists who could help with me. From that moment, on the 1st of May 2014, he kind of gives a date, a group of patriots was born, which later...
came to be called the Wagner Battalion.

Speaker 1 And yeah, he's also going to admit to being behind the Internet Research Agency. He's kind of not going to try and hide anymore.

Speaker 1 And I think what he's doing, he's going full in with the Russian nationalist community, which is obviously growing. It's been there all along, but it's growing with the war, actually.

Speaker 1 There's this world of kind of military bloggers as well who are emerging, who are kind of veterans often, who are on kind of Telegram channels, the social media channels, you know, writing and talking about the war.

Speaker 1 He is going to kind of play up this image. of a bit of an everyman, you know, because

Speaker 1 in some ways, I think. There's a little bit of precosion in all of us,

Speaker 1 but I think what he is smart about is that whereas a lot of the people around Putin have kind of come through the elite and live in the elite, he's he has got a bit more of an ordinary background, and not quite a working-class background, because we saw at the start, it's actually quite middle-class, but you know, he's been through the prison system.

Speaker 1 So, he's going to kind of present himself as the voice of the ordinary stroke nationalist, patriotic Russian.

Speaker 1 And he always knew, of course, we've seen how to play the PR game, how to kind of brand himself.

Speaker 1 And so he's going to go out there and say, I'm the one who is doing what it takes to defend the motherland. I'm an ordinary guy.
I'm not one of the elite.

Speaker 1 I'm not one of those generals or ministers who screwed up this war plan. Because, of course,

Speaker 1 it's the military. It's the advisors around him.
The elite.

Speaker 1 Screwed up this war.

Speaker 1 You know, they screwed up this invasion plan. And now someone's got to come in and sort it out.
And that's going to be me. They're running the war badly.

Speaker 1 So he's starting to kind of associate himself as well with these kind of ultra-nationalist groups. And he's going to go to funerals for some of those ultra-nationalist fighters in Russia.

Speaker 1 They know things are not going well. So they're looking for anyone who can kind of give them a boost.
And there's some early victories for the Wagner forces.

Speaker 1 And of course, his PR machine, his trolls are kind of starting to boost him and Wagner. And of course, then denigrate the Russian military.

Speaker 1 He's going to start featuring on billboards with Wagner fighters. So it's meaning he's getting kind of famous, notorious in the West, thanks to all these kind of videos and appearances, you know,

Speaker 1 but also kind of famous in Russia and the Ukrainians, you know, a rumor to try and kill him. But that also adds to the kind of the image he's building.

Speaker 1 September 2022, Shorigu, the defense minister Grasimov the head of the military, persuade Putin to go for partial mobilization. So, you know, we heard they didn't have enough men.

Speaker 1 They need more men to get to the battlefield. So they're going to mobilize about 300,000.
It is a big deal. It causes kind of anxiety across Russia.

Speaker 1 Conscriptors are hunting people down and kind of giving them their orders. Some people are fleeing the country, young Russians, to kind of avoid being conscripted.

Speaker 1 But still, Putin doesn't want full mobilization.

Speaker 1 So they're slightly less desperate for the Wagner troops than they were in those early months. They still need them, but maybe not quite as much as they did before.

Speaker 1 But Progozhin and the nationalists are like, we need full mobilization. We need to be all in on this war or, you know, we're going to lose it.
Interestingly enough, General Surovikin,

Speaker 1 General Armageddon from Syria, friend of Wagner, is put in charge of the Ukraine war from October 2022. Got that reputation for brutality in Syria.

Speaker 1 And the hope is he'll flatten Ukraine and do what it takes.

Speaker 1 So I think at this point, you can see Progozhin is kind of, I think this is maybe the peak of his power as the kind of leader of this nationalist community, the mythology that he's built around himself.

Speaker 1 Even his allies like General Serovikin are kind of running the war in Ukraine. But at the moment at the peak...
He's going to fly too close to the sun, I guess, is the risk. Yes.
It's very Icarus.

Speaker 1 It's very Icarus-like. It's very Icarus-like.
Well, and he even does a bit of a rebrand as too strong, but he gets a new headquarters in St. Petersburg.
No sledgehammer as the logo. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But a very nice W. A big W.
For Wagner. For Wagner.
Yeah. In St.
Petersburg, you know, kind of glass tech HQ.

Speaker 1 Very bullhanger-esque, I would say.

Speaker 1 I'm not quite sure, Gaz. His rebrand, you know, the rebrand.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it does, but, you know, the fact he's opening official headquarters does make it look like,

Speaker 1 I guess, is he moving into the political space. He's kind of traveling around the country.
He's doing a lot of social media.

Speaker 1 He's, of course, denying having any political ambitions yeah which as we always politicians every politician does you know it's important to deny it yeah yeah it's always the sign that you're thinking about it you're just on a giant bus tour around russia you know yeah meeting your fans yeah and i guess for him though i mean politics in the sense for him must mean

Speaker 1 acceptance into

Speaker 1 an inner circle around Putin. Right.
I mean, that's what it means in the Russian sense. It's not, he's not trying to run for office somewhere so that he can, you know, pass important legislation.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's, he's, this is about currying favor

Speaker 1 with the czar, right? Yeah. Pitching yourself that you are so indispensable, you need to be brought into that inner circle of power.

Speaker 1 Probably what he's got his eye on is being made minister of defense or something like that. You know, that would be the logical.

Speaker 1 thing, you know, let me run the war, let me be in charge of the ministry of defense and all its contracts. And it does go to the kind of Putin system of power.

Speaker 1 And I think Putin has been in power, what, since, you know, 1999, 2000, effectively, prime minister and president.

Speaker 1 But he looks like a dictator who's kind of solidly in power and has been there all that time. But I think the reality is he's a little bit more insecure than the power he projects.

Speaker 1 He's always trying to balance different factions and different groups. and individuals in his court to avoid anyone becoming too powerful and becoming a risk to them.

Speaker 1 And I think that's part of his strategy is to have his friends close, but also have some of his enemies close. But if they get too close, to knock them down.

Speaker 1 If you look at the, I mean, some of the historical sweep of Russian autocracy, you would say that the fear is not

Speaker 1 some kind of mass uprising. Yeah.
Really. The fear is going to be a challenge from within

Speaker 1 the corridors of power, essentially. It's a coup.
Really, it's the thing that starts to bring down the czar. right? It's what was attempted in, what, 1991? Yeah.
Right. Coup.

Speaker 1 So that is the challenge to the Roman office before any challenge would have meant internal sort of politics. Right.

Speaker 1 So Putin's going to be thinking about the system constantly in terms of a balance that's almost invisible and actually is invisible to us and is happening behind closed doors.

Speaker 1 And I guess Progoshin is sort of maybe the system is becoming imbalanced. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
The war in Ukraine. I think that's right.
And Progoshin's rise.

Speaker 1 Because I think in the past, Progoshin had a value to Putin because he could use Wagner and Progoshin to kind of balance against the military.

Speaker 1 He doesn't want either the generals or Progoshin, in a way, to become too powerful. Progoshin was a useful kind of counterweight to this courtier to generals or others who might be too important.

Speaker 1 And especially now you've got a war on. There's a lot at stake.
Yeah, a failed war is not good for a Russian autocrat.

Speaker 1 Failed wars lead to revolutions, but also military heroes who win wars are also kind of dangerous so you're also thinking if you're putin i don't want a general or a you know or a mercenary leader who is going to be able to take credit for winning a war either and so i think there is this sense that as progoshin you know late 2022 reaches his kind of zenith of of power and influence and is kind of building his brand, that this balance that Putin is trying to do is getting out of kilter.

Speaker 1 He is moving into a space that really only the Tsar, only Putin should be in of a kind of individual.

Speaker 1 And of course, almost without meaning to, you know, you've got a mercenary army now on the borders of Russia, which historically is something they would have been quite nervous of.

Speaker 1 And anyone would have been nervous of.

Speaker 1 It's one thing having Wagner out in Africa, a few thousand, but you've got 85,000, maybe a bit less once they're all killed in these meat waves, but on the borders of Russia and a person who is building his brand, you can see the danger.

Speaker 1 And the real tension, though, I think is going to come between Sergei Shoygu, you know, the Minister of Defense, and Gerasimov on one hand, and Progozhin on the other, over the war, over the conduct of the war, which I think is going to come to a head in 2023 in that most dramatic of ways.

Speaker 1 Do you think

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 Progozhin is smart?

Speaker 1 Because he's obviously

Speaker 1 entrepreneurial and

Speaker 1 has a certain appetite for risk and as we might have said in my consultancy days, Corda, a bias for action.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he seems to be maybe running up against the limits of his political savvy because

Speaker 1 he or he's so intoxicated by

Speaker 1 the growth. that Wagner has seen in Ukraine that maybe he's not able to see some of these challenges looming in front of him and negotiate a way around them or through them.

Speaker 1 I think right from the start, we've seen he is ambitious. He is smart entrepreneurial, but he's also hot-headed, isn't he? You know, you can see that from the start.
He does stuff which just

Speaker 1 goes too far. Robbing that woman.
I mean, we talked in episode one of this series. You know, it seemed to be a spur of the moment.
A spur of the moment,

Speaker 1 a level of cruelty and violence, which I think is at the core of his character. We talked about him kind of going into the heart of darkness.
I think

Speaker 1 he's let his wilder side rip even more

Speaker 1 as time has gone on, first in his time in Africa, but now particularly as the war in Ukraine develops, that side of his personality is going to become even stronger. I think you're right.

Speaker 1 He hasn't quite got the kind of political savvy to know what the limits are and to know how to manage the situation and the kind of court politics that you need to survive in Putin the Tsar's court.

Speaker 1 So maybe there, Gordon, with Progozhin having really reached the pinnacle of his power and fame, let's end and we come back next time for the thrilling conclusion of our series on Progozhin.

Speaker 1 We will see

Speaker 1 how his downfall comes about and how a very ill-fated march on Moscow leads to the biggest challenge, I think, to Vladimir Putin's power since assuming the presidency 25 years earlier. That's right.

Speaker 1 And just a reminder: if you want to hear that episode now, join the Declassified Club at the restisclassified.com, and you will get access to our special mini-series, which is going to look at the rise of Putin, Putin as the KGB officer, where that mentality comes from, and how it feeds into some of his decision-making and explains some of what goes on between him and Progoshin.

Speaker 1 So, sign up to listen to that, and we'll see you next time. See you next time.