#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary

Speaker 1 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 2 Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a month.
Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With OfferWatch.
Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 2 So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere.
Restrictions and fee may apply. This is Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch.
Prize Pick is making sports season even more fun.

Speaker 2 On Prize Picks, whether you're a football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be right. And right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5.

Speaker 2 The app is simple to use. Pick two or more players.
Pick more or less on their stat projections. Anything from touchdown to threes.
And if you're right, you can win big.

Speaker 2 Mix and match players from any sport on Prize Prize Picks, America's number one daily fantasy sports app. PrizePicks is available in 40 plus states, including California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia.

Speaker 2 Most importantly, all the transactions on the app are fast, safe, and secure.

Speaker 4 Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

Speaker 4 PrizePicks, it's good to be right. Must be present in certain six.

Speaker 2 Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

Speaker 2 This is my first ever interview with an enemy combatant, a commander from Russia's infamous Wagner Group.

Speaker 2 It's a little bit of a language barrier with this one, so bear with us because there is some very interesting information in this episode.

Speaker 2 And if you can bear with the language barrier, I think you're going to get a lot out of this and learn a lot about Wagner Group, how they came about, their training,

Speaker 2 and the caliber of men that they had working on.

Speaker 2 Enjoy the show.

Speaker 5 Murat Gabadulin, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 Thank you. It's nice to meet you.

Speaker 5 John, thank you for being here. Wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier.
Sure. Murat Gabadulin.

Speaker 5 Born in Ural, you grew up in Uzbekistan and joined the Soviet military in 1984, served as a paratrooper officer and commanded a recon company, then joined Russia's Wagner Group, starting as a grunt fighting ISIS in Syria and rising all the way to commander.

Speaker 5 You worked closely with Wagner boss Pergozhin, advising the ISIS hunters in Syria and fought in the Battle of Kasham in 2018 against U.S. and Kurdish forces.

Speaker 5 You then quit Wagner in in 2019, authored a book about your time with Wagner, and since then you have moved to France where you are now seeking asylum. This interview is taking place in Paris.

Speaker 5 Obviously, we couldn't get you to the U.S., so we came here to meet you. It feels really weird for me to say this, but

Speaker 5 you are an enemy combatant.

Speaker 5 You fought in a skirmish in Syria

Speaker 5 against 40 U.S. soldiers,

Speaker 5 special forces soldiers, and I'm friends with a couple of those guys and heard their account of that battle. And then we ran into your friend John Lechner and

Speaker 5 asked to be connected with you.

Speaker 5 So I just want to thank John, a freelance journalist, writer, and researcher who's been in conflict zones across the globe, author of the book, Death is Our Business, Russian Mercenaries in the New Era of Private Warfare, expert on Russia's moves in Africa, their foreign policy and private military companies so thank you again for being here but thanks for having me i wanted to i want to dive in on a little bit of the history of wagner group yeah and so how how did it how did it start

Speaker 6 well so as murat was telling you wagner really began in in 2014 and murat as he was saying he joined the company as they call it they only on the inside call it the company wagner group itself as an entity never existed.

Speaker 6 It was sort of just a nickname that was given to it.

Speaker 6 Some of my

Speaker 3 friends

Speaker 3 told me that in Russia

Speaker 3 emerged

Speaker 3 some kind of structure

Speaker 3 where I can start

Speaker 5 my life from the very beginning.

Speaker 6 Wagner initially came out of the war in eastern Ukraine. And its founder was a guy, Evgeny Prigozhin, who Murat has mentioned a couple of times.
This is a guy who

Speaker 6 was born in the 60s in the Soviet Union and sort of grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He was

Speaker 6 a petty thief and kind of a...

Speaker 6 small-time gangster in his teenage years and he goes away to prison at the age of 18 if I remember correctly,

Speaker 6 for assault and robbery. He and his gang were on a street in Leningrad, which became St.

Speaker 6 Petersburg, and they, Bergozhin came up behind a woman and strangled her until she almost died, and then they robbed her, and he was caught and sent away for nine years.

Speaker 6 And when he gets out, The Soviet Union is collapsing around him and he returns to his native St.

Speaker 6 Petersburg, where first he falls in with some gangsters again in the 90s, which Murat had kind of alluded to previously with these various crime bosses and things.

Speaker 6 And so he falls in with some crime bosses himself, and they set him up as a manager of some

Speaker 6 grocery store chains.

Speaker 6 He eventually turns that into becoming a restaurateur

Speaker 6 of some very fancy restaurants in St. Petersburg that a younger Vladimir Putin enjoyed.

Speaker 6 And he leveraged those relationships to eventually get getting the job of providing meals to the whole Russian military and the Russian school system.

Speaker 5 So he became close with Putin through his restaurant tours.

Speaker 6 Well, as you'll see, kind of as we go through the story,

Speaker 6 he manages to connect with Putin. Putin likes him.

Speaker 6 But he's never able, he would always say that he was about one handshake away from Putin. And so Putin gets to know him.
He kind of likes him because he's uncouth.

Speaker 6 He kind of has that sort of rough kind of attitude, which is somewhat refreshing given kind of the bureaucratic elite that are surrounding Putin.

Speaker 6 And so Perdozhin eventually gets this job to provide the meals for the Russian military.

Speaker 6 And so that takes us to

Speaker 6 around 2014 or so when,

Speaker 6 well, we have to go back

Speaker 6 uh

Speaker 6 a little bit further so you know while he's doing this work as a contractor he he also is looking for different ways that he can look good and get on putin's radar one of the ways he does it is there are massive protests against putin's return to the presidency in 2012 uh and so progozhin puts together this kind of documentary that that shows how all the protesters are fake,

Speaker 6 basically supported by the West. And he finances it himself.

Speaker 6 It's not like Putin is doing this, but it's a way to virtue signal and show, hey, I'm furthering the cause of Putin's cause and Russia's cause more broadly.

Speaker 6 And so, as I said, Putin is coming to the presidency again in 2012. There are massive

Speaker 6 destabilizing protests against it.

Speaker 6 And he navigates it

Speaker 6 and gets back into power. But pretty much fairly quickly thereafter, another revolution is happening, this time on Russia's border in Ukraine, what became the Maidan Revolution in late 2013.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 for Putin, he sees these two things as connected, right? It's the West basically trying to overthrow Russia, overthrow his own regime, and they're doing it wherever they can.

Speaker 6 And so the Kremlin in early 2014 makes a decision to annex Crimea, which is a peninsula on the Black Sea that is part of Ukraine. It had beforehand been part of Russia

Speaker 6 during the Soviet period, but it went to Ukraine during the Soviet Union and Russia's Black Sea Fleet is there. This is the only warmwater port that they have and it's important.

Speaker 6 And so amidst all this chaos,

Speaker 6 the Kremlin decides to annex Crimea. They use special forces to do it.
But then they also rely on these kind of like right-wing Russian nationalists, chauvinists,

Speaker 6 kind of the folks in sort of Russia's own nationalist militant movement to provide some of the security on the peninsula for the annexation.

Speaker 6 And after

Speaker 6 its success, the Kremlin thinks everything's done and dusted.

Speaker 6 But kind of unbeknownst to them at the time, or kind of something that was unexpected, was that amidst this revolution in Ukraine, there's also an anti-Maidan movement, especially in eastern Ukraine, in this region called Donbass, which is economically and culturally closer to Russia.

Speaker 6 And so as Ukrainians are taking over

Speaker 6 government buildings to overthrow the government of Yanukovych, anti-Maidan protesters are taking over these buildings in Donbass, in Donetsk, and in Luhansk.

Speaker 6 And this puts

Speaker 6 Putin and the Kremlin into a difficult situation because

Speaker 6 unlike Crimea, Crimea, they didn't want to annex eastern Ukraine, Donbass. It's not that important to Russia.
But

Speaker 6 Putin is kind of boosting his nationalist credentials by annexing Crimea, gives a big kind of rally around the flag effect.

Speaker 6 And crucially, this is a rally around the flag from people who, these nationalists, these Russian nationalists and militant guys who were against Putin's rule in 2012 and were marching against him.

Speaker 6 And so he can't be seen as letting these separatists in eastern Ukraine hang out to dry. But he doesn't want to risk further sanctions from the West, international isolation.

Speaker 6 And so the Kremlin has to think very quickly, like, how do we support but not support these separatists in eastern Ukraine?

Speaker 6 And this is where Yevgeny Prigozhin, the guy who's providing the meals for the Russian military, becomes acquainted with another guy, Dmitry Utkin, who is a former GRU officer, Russian military intelligence.

Speaker 6 He fought in Chechnya.

Speaker 6 He was stationed near Estonia, and he had just come back

Speaker 6 and almost gotten in big trouble for this kind of misadventure with a Russian PMC in Syria.

Speaker 6 These two guys come together. and they sign an agreement

Speaker 6 whereby Utkin will provide the tactical knowledge, provide the men as contractors, and Progozhin will provide the political backing and the financial support for this mercenary group that is very closely, if not basically, as Murat was saying, a Ministry of Defense project that they send into eastern Ukraine right across the border to support the separatists.

Speaker 5 It's interesting because

Speaker 5 when I interviewed Eric Prince, we had spoken about Eric Prince earlier,

Speaker 5 they reached out to Eric Prince to try to help build Wagner Group off of Blackwater.

Speaker 5 Did you know that?

Speaker 3 To tell the truth, I am not completely agree with this opinion. Firstly, Wagner Group

Speaker 3 has nothing to do with

Speaker 3 the private sector.

Speaker 5 So what was the recruitment? How do they recruit their fighters?

Speaker 6 So as Murat was saying, I mean, it's word of mouth, basically.

Speaker 6 And I think Murat will tell you

Speaker 6 later as well. The initial group of Wagner,

Speaker 6 which

Speaker 6 came out of this

Speaker 6 PMC that had the year before gone to Syria. So before Wagner, there were a number of

Speaker 6 kind of what we would think of as like Western-style PMCs that had popped up.

Speaker 6 And largely in response to the Somali piracy crisis, which I'm sure you remember,

Speaker 6 there was an opportunity for these Russian contractors to protect Russian ships that are going through the Gulf of Aden.

Speaker 6 A number of Russian contractors were even working in Iraq during the war on terror as well.

Speaker 6 The issue is that mercenarism is illegal in Russia, technically. And so these firms firms would

Speaker 6 basically establish themselves in like Hong Kong or the Bahamas or something along those lines. And then

Speaker 6 the client would provide them with the weapons when they showed up going through

Speaker 6 a third country to protect the ship or what have you.

Speaker 6 And there was this one group called Moran Group where Dmitry Utkin, after he left the service, went to go work for.

Speaker 6 And one of the founders of Moran

Speaker 6 got a contract with a Syrian oligarch in 2013

Speaker 6 to, at least what the guys thought at the time, to basically protect oil and gas assets from ISIS.

Speaker 6 And when they showed up, it turned out that the Syrians wanted them to actually take those assets from ISIS.

Speaker 6 And there was almost like a little mutiny among the contractors, but they went ahead and they got ambushed. And Dmitry Utkin

Speaker 6 actually

Speaker 6 got the guys out safely during a sandstorm they all go back to Russia kind of with their tail between the legs and the FSB the successor to the KGB arrests and charges the the the two commanders who went to Syria with mercenarism Udkin who's like one level below gets off along with all the rest of the guys And only a couple of months later, all of a sudden, Russia needs mercenaries.

Speaker 3 They know who

Speaker 6 is interested in this type of work because they almost arrested the guy in Syria. And so those same 50 guys or so formed the core

Speaker 6 of what was just then called the company. And Dmitri Utkin,

Speaker 3 who

Speaker 6 is a fan of

Speaker 6 the German composer Richard Wagner, takes his call sign,

Speaker 6 Wagner, in Donbas. And since he was the the main commander, eventually it becomes kind of the catch-all term for

Speaker 6 the company more generally.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 it sounds like when Murat came in, it was about 600 people.

Speaker 6 So when Murat first came in in April 2015,

Speaker 6 I think it was getting close to about 600 guys. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
And Murat

Speaker 6 was coming in

Speaker 6 in April 2015. So this is right around the time

Speaker 6 that Russia is actually trying to

Speaker 6 sort of get to a ceasefire

Speaker 6 and take over

Speaker 6 these separatist republics at the time. And so

Speaker 6 when Marat joined,

Speaker 6 Wagner was a bit different at the time. It was one of many different forces that the MOD was using to support these separatists.
And no one thought

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 it was going to become what it became.

Speaker 6 And so it was one of several units that were kind of figuring out ways to bring volunteers in to support the separatists. And Wagner at that time had

Speaker 6 this group of 50 guys or so

Speaker 6 who had been in Syria, but they also

Speaker 6 had a unit of Serbian volunteers that were coming through. And so when Murat joined,

Speaker 6 he was initially part of the international brigade, which was largely Serbian and he had a Serbian commander.

Speaker 6 Eventually the Serbs would be kind of kicked out, kicked by the wayside later on when we got to Syria. But

Speaker 6 when Murat joined,

Speaker 6 it was a few months before some of the final big battles, before we saw what was called the Minsk-2 ceasefire between Ukraine and the separatist statelets backed by Russia over time.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 What is it true that they started recruiting out of the prisons?

Speaker 3 Conflict situation with the crime boss.

Speaker 5 With a crime boss.

Speaker 3 With a crime boss.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 what was the situation? Is a criminal

Speaker 3 using any opportunity to

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 to take some money from from anyone

Speaker 3 and this situation emerged on the empty place

Speaker 3 but as a result

Speaker 3 during

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 during one

Speaker 3 during the meeting

Speaker 3 I shoot him.

Speaker 5 You shot him.

Speaker 3 Shot him.

Speaker 3 And I was sentenced to

Speaker 3 three years in prison.

Speaker 5 Where did you shoot him?

Speaker 3 Where?

Speaker 3 In the head?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 In the body. In the body.
Bound.

Speaker 3 And then in the head.

Speaker 3 I was in prison in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.

Speaker 3 At the time I served in Siberia

Speaker 3 our regiment was removed from the Chisinov to Siberia

Speaker 3 after

Speaker 3 Soviet Union collapsed.

Speaker 6 So they

Speaker 6 the I think Wagner at the beginning, and I think this what Murat will tell you was

Speaker 6 for the most part

Speaker 6 guys who had military experience like Murat,

Speaker 6 guys who had trouble adjusting to civilian life in some shape or form and wanted to experience the adventure and camaraderie again,

Speaker 6 and largely through word of mouth, were recruited to the company when they found out there was this opportunity in Ukraine or eventually later on in Syria and elsewhere.

Speaker 6 And so for the most part, it was guys coming out of the military. Maybe they had a brush with the law, like Murat had, to put it lightly.

Speaker 6 But the full convict recruitment program, where if you saw the videos of Progozhin going around to all of the penal colonies and recruiting prisoners, that only happened

Speaker 6 after 2022 for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Okay.

Speaker 6 So there were definitely dudes who had served prison time got out and then joined wagner but they they weren't recruiting from from the prisons at that time it was really i mean if i remember correctly murat's uh it was murat's buddy from his military times who who recruited him uh

Speaker 6 just by word of mouth he said hey i'm doing this do you want to do you want to join

Speaker 3 what was the

Speaker 5 what was the test like you said you had to take some type of a test to get into Wagner Group.

Speaker 3 Have to meet the time.

Speaker 3 And to

Speaker 3 push up

Speaker 6 55 time.

Speaker 5 55 push-ups. Push-ups.
A three-kilometer run.

Speaker 5 Were there any tactics involved? Like room clearance,

Speaker 5 entering a building?

Speaker 3 Oh, no. No.
No, nothing like that.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 3 What are these guys getting paid?

Speaker 6 They, I mean, I think it depended, but they usually were getting about $2,000 a month during their time on the contract.

Speaker 6 And so this is pretty good money

Speaker 3 in Russia for guys.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it's definitely a motivating factor.

Speaker 5 What is it developed into? I mean, they're in Africa. Yeah.
They're in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 Aren't they doing breweries? They're doing all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 5 What all are they involved in?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 what I think is interesting about this story, because Murat

Speaker 6 will tell you, you know, this was very much a state-supported entity.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 and you know, we can ask Murat as well. Again, I also don't think it could have become what it was if it weren't for the ambition of its founder, Evgeny Prigozhin, as well.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 kind of if we look at what was happening in Ukraine in 2015, a lot of those units that the MOD was supporting after the ceasefire, they just kind of dispersed, went home,

Speaker 6 didn't really do much after.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 only a few months later, Russia's overtly intervening in Syria. There's nothing covert about it, right? It's a full

Speaker 6 air campaign with the Russian military.

Speaker 6 And Progozhin

Speaker 6 and Utkin are very much also lobbying to make sure that he gets his guys into there because he has

Speaker 6 now this kind of force at his disposal. And what he's good at is trying to figure out, okay, I have this.
Now what do I do with it?

Speaker 6 And it was at this point where I think

Speaker 6 he saw the black waters of the world and he said, okay, I want to do kind of my version of this. And it so happened that Syria was going to be the next opportunity for him to do so.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 Murat was one of the first guys on the ground in Syria.

Speaker 6 As he'll tell you,

Speaker 6 the MOD didn't really know what to do with him. And a couple of guys got killed

Speaker 6 and they didn't want casualties right away. So they panicked and sent them home.
And it was only until

Speaker 6 it became clear that Russian air power alone wasn't going to defeat the rebels, the rebels against Assad or ISIS,

Speaker 6 that Wagner was brought back in. This time, you know, on the ground where they take Palmyra,

Speaker 6 then they get sent home again, then they get back in, and Murat will tell you all about the Battle of Kasham.

Speaker 6 But it gets to that point where it's this mix, right? They have state backing, but Progozhin is also out there with his guys.

Speaker 6 basically doing business development, right?

Speaker 6 If you have a PMC,

Speaker 6 where are you going to market your services you have to go to africa at some point otherwise you you should fire your your b and d guy and and and so already in 2017 progozhin is uh sending his guys out to to drum up new business they they first uh signed a contract with the the sudanese to provide training and they get access to uh mining concessions in sudan uh then they show up in the central african republic where there's really no other kind of competition from other Russians.

Speaker 6 And so Progozhin is able to provide training. He offers his

Speaker 6 information warfare because he has the troll farms, which were kind of very famous in the U.S. during the 2016 elections.

Speaker 6 And his guys go out and they try to start breweries and they go into gold mining and what have you. They act, as Murat was saying, very independently of the Kremlin because

Speaker 6 these places aren't that important to Russia. And so in the places that aren't important, he has to figure out his own ways to finance

Speaker 6 these operations. And so they go from the Central African Republic, they're in Libya, backing Haftar

Speaker 6 in his bid to take Tripoli in 2019.

Speaker 6 Then they show up in Mali.

Speaker 6 where they sign a deal with the Malian government to go after various jihadi groups.

Speaker 6 And then ultimately, they

Speaker 6 are initially left out of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and only get brought in

Speaker 6 when the Russian government's in trouble.

Speaker 5 So these guys are not,

Speaker 5 they're definitely not just in Russia's best interest.

Speaker 5 They're doing their own thing in all these separate parts of the world.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 it's not,

Speaker 6 because people are always asked, is this a private thing or a public thing? And the answer is both.

Speaker 6 And I mean, we're in Paris right now, but when I'm sitting in Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 6 I try to explain to people, like, this is the capital of public-private partnerships, right? Lockheed Martin

Speaker 6 is a profit-driven company.

Speaker 6 They will frame whatever they're doing as furthering America's national defense and security, but they're also a

Speaker 6 profit-driven. And so, a lot, what Purgozhin was very good at was selling back to the Kremlin this dream of kind of Russia's expansion abroad.
Gotcha.

Speaker 6 And he could sell it back to Putin, these different initiatives that were also just happened to be, you know, potentially profitable to him.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Interesting.

Speaker 5 All right, let's

Speaker 5 move to Syria.

Speaker 2 Sore arches, pinched toes, and aching knees? Does that sound familiar? Brunt's boots were designed to end all of that. These aren't sneakers pretending to be work boots.

Speaker 2 They're built tough with real protection that stands up to the demands of the job. Brunt lets you try the boots on the job with free shipping on every product.
And it's not just boots.

Speaker 2 Brunt also makes high-performance workwear like durable pants and weather-resistant jackets that keep you protected and productive in any conditions.

Speaker 2 Join over 500,000 hardworking people who've already made the switch. With temps dropping and the holidays coming up, it's time to treat yourself or the hard-working man in your life to real comfort.

Speaker 2 Skip the throwaway gifts and get him something built to last. Brunt Workwear.
Our listeners get $10 off their entire order with code SRS at checkout. That's bruntworkwear.com and use code SRS.

Speaker 2 Order today and let them know you heard it here on the show.

Speaker 2 My days don't slow down. Between work, the gym, and time with the kids, I need eyewear that can keep up with everything I've got going on.
And that's why I trust Roka.

Speaker 2 I've tried plenty of shades before, but these stand out. They're built for performance without sacrificing sacrificing style.

Speaker 2 I've put them through it all, on the range, out on the water, and off-road. They don't quit.
They're lightweight, stay locked in place, and are tough enough to handle whatever I throw at them.

Speaker 2 And the best part, they don't just perform, they look incredible. Sleek, modern, and designed for people who expect more from their eyewear.
No fluff.

Speaker 2 no gimmicks, just premium frames that deliver every single time. And that's why why Roka is what I grab when I'm heading out the door.

Speaker 2 Born in Austin, Texas, they're American designed with zero shortcuts, razor-sharp optics, no glare, and all-day comfort that doesn't quit.

Speaker 2 And if you need prescription lenses, they've got you covered with both sunglasses and eyeglasses. One brand, all your bases.
ROCA isn't just eyewear. It's confidence you can wear every day.

Speaker 2 They're the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at Roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off site-wide at checkout.
That's R-O-K-A.com.

Speaker 2 Buckle up because the biggest Black Ops ever is available now. Call of Duty Black Ops 7.

Speaker 2 With three epic game modes across co-op, campaign, multiplayer, and zombies, it's pushing the franchise into bold new territory.

Speaker 2 The all-new co-op campaign lets you play solo or with friends as you infiltrate Avalon, a high-tech stronghold on the brink.

Speaker 2 At launch, jump into 18 explosive multiplayer maps with exciting, fast-paced movement. If you're looking for some undead action, the round-based zombies mode is back again with a twist.

Speaker 2 You'll fight through hordes of zombies as you drive the new wonder vehicle named Old Tessie and wield a brand new wonder weapon. Black Ops 7 doesn't just evolve, it reinvents.

Speaker 2 If you thought you knew Call of Duty, get ready for something even bigger. Call of Duty Black Ops 7, available now.
Rated M for mature.

Speaker 5 All right, Marant, let's go to when you got on the ground in Syria.

Speaker 3 First time in September in 2015,

Speaker 3 I think Preguin

Speaker 3 is looking for the opportunity to implement this completely new concept of

Speaker 3 using

Speaker 3 military forces.

Speaker 3 And he wants to demonstrate

Speaker 3 the ability, compatibility of the mercenaries.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we

Speaker 3 were delivered

Speaker 3 to Syria

Speaker 3 by the scheduled

Speaker 3 civilian

Speaker 3 flight of

Speaker 3 civilian

Speaker 3 to tell the truth

Speaker 3 military, Russian military.

Speaker 3 Firstly,

Speaker 3 look at

Speaker 3 looked at us with surprise.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 don't know, didn't know who we are and

Speaker 3 what we

Speaker 3 to do here and

Speaker 3 how they

Speaker 3 must to treat us.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we after we received a weapon

Speaker 3 we take

Speaker 3 take a part in several several military actions and demonstrated

Speaker 3 the whole superiority on the

Speaker 3 superiority over the enemy

Speaker 3 and of course the whole superiority of the Bashar Assad army.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 at that moment Russian military

Speaker 3 and Syrian military

Speaker 3 thought that

Speaker 3 they

Speaker 3 handle this situation without us.

Speaker 3 Russian military thought that if they provided

Speaker 3 Syrian army with air-strike support,

Speaker 3 Syrian army can achieve the victory in this war.

Speaker 3 But it turned out that

Speaker 3 Syrian army

Speaker 3 degraded to the point of

Speaker 3 inability

Speaker 3 to wage

Speaker 3 offensive

Speaker 3 action.

Speaker 6 And so, like as Murat is saying, when Russia first intervenes in Syria,

Speaker 6 one of the reasons that they're doing it, actually, it's after the the annexation of Crimea,

Speaker 6 and they recognize the importance of Syria at that time for the U.S.

Speaker 6 and for the West, because this is, if you remember 2015, this is when ISIS is really at its height with the territorial caliphate, and the U.S. has already intervened, gone back in.
to fight ISIS.

Speaker 6 And so the Russians think that

Speaker 6 if we go in backing Assad, we can kind of force the U.S. into a joint counter-terrorism operation against ISIS that will force them to kind of basically start talking to us again.

Speaker 6 And so they come in and they're backing Assad,

Speaker 6 but as Murat's saying, Assad's government, I mean, the forces that he has are incredibly

Speaker 6 unmotivated. I mean, for obvious reasons given his rule.

Speaker 6 And the rebels, not just ISIS, but all the other rebels fighting against them are a lot more motivated and the Russians initially wanted it to just be an air campaign but I mean as you find out pretty quick like air just air campaigns alone rarely work for anybody

Speaker 6 and it was clear that Russian air power with Assad's forces on on the ground were not going to was not going to work. They were not going to take the territory back from rebels.
And so

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 they face an issue at the time, which I think you speak to as well, where

Speaker 6 this is kind of a faraway intervention for Russia.

Speaker 6 And they haven't figured out yet if they want to have actual Russian troops on the ground and what Russians will think, the Russian public will think, if Russian soldiers are going home in caskets.

Speaker 6 And there's a sense that they're going to be against this and say, why are we we here in Syria?

Speaker 6 And so one of the reasons that Murat and Wagner were able to get back in is that the Russian military didn't have to report casualties for Wagner.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 using the mercenaries in this war

Speaker 3 to take an to to

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 3 could uh resolve

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 very

Speaker 3 main,

Speaker 3 very difficult

Speaker 3 task.

Speaker 3 The thing is that Russian generals invented the concept of the

Speaker 3 war with a little bloodshed

Speaker 3 and using the mercenaries,

Speaker 3 they can

Speaker 3 create you

Speaker 3 know some kind of

Speaker 3 appearances that this

Speaker 3 concept is working

Speaker 3 lost

Speaker 3 of the mercenaries

Speaker 3 didn't it include in the official statistic

Speaker 5 okay that makes sense so so

Speaker 5 correct me if i'm wrong but the whole point of Russia going into Syria to include Wagner was to build some type of an alliance with the United States

Speaker 5 against ISIS.

Speaker 6 It was an effort because,

Speaker 6 in part, there's always a lot of reasons why things happen, but

Speaker 6 the timing of their intervention, because if you remember,

Speaker 6 you know, Syria started going into civil war right around the time of the Arab Spring. So this is already already like five years before that.

Speaker 6 The Russians didn't have any particular love for Assad, despite the fact that there was a Russian base in Syria and kind of some history going back to the Soviet Union.

Speaker 6 What really explains the timing of why they went in was this sense of isolation that they felt after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 in Ukraine.

Speaker 6 And it was this effort to basically get themselves onto the world stage again in a crisis that they thought was

Speaker 6 existentially important to the West, which was the defeat of ISIS. Of course, also when they show up and they're on the ground, Assad also has different ideas for what he wants the Russians to do.

Speaker 6 And ISIS is less of a concern to him. than a lot of the more secular

Speaker 6 rebels elsewhere as well. And that he wants the Russians to go after those guys.

Speaker 6 Whereas the Russians want to go try and meet up with the Americans as they're closing in

Speaker 6 on ISIS as the territorial caliphate is

Speaker 6 kind of crumbling down.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Interesting.
Well,

Speaker 5 let's talk about the Battle of Kashan between Wagner and U.S. Social Forces.
So

Speaker 5 like I had mentioned, I have friends that were in that battle.

Speaker 5 It sounds like there was around 500

Speaker 3 Wagner Group

Speaker 5 soldiers on the ground. There were 40 U.S.

Speaker 5 Special Forces guys, along with a couple with

Speaker 5 the Kurdish partner force. And so,

Speaker 5 let's just start with the beginning.

Speaker 5 What were you doing that close to American forces?

Speaker 3 From the very beginning,

Speaker 3 this

Speaker 3 factory

Speaker 3 was very important.

Speaker 3 This factory enclosed all infrastructure

Speaker 3 of the oil field nearby,

Speaker 5 around nearby Konoka.

Speaker 3 And Pregozhan wanted to seize this factory

Speaker 3 during the battle for the Derzor.

Speaker 3 But we have no enough

Speaker 3 resources.

Speaker 3 We constantly

Speaker 3 forced to

Speaker 6 attract

Speaker 3 our forces

Speaker 3 in order to

Speaker 3 achieve a goal

Speaker 3 in order to take

Speaker 3 a liberate deserve,

Speaker 3 our lives

Speaker 3 was very undecisively acted, very undecisively.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we cannot

Speaker 3 use

Speaker 3 our forces in order to advance forward.

Speaker 6 Can I put like a little bit before where,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 like what was like why did Pergozhin want to take the these Conoco facilities

Speaker 6 and so

Speaker 6 in in 2016 Murat and Wagner they capture Palmyra from from ISIS and and Murat has I think some of the medals from that and from that time period that that they'll show

Speaker 6 but after the capture the Russian military sends Wagner home again

Speaker 6 And then a few months later, ISIS recaptures it, Palmyra,

Speaker 6 and Wagner comes back in. But this time, Progozhin has signed a deal with Assad's government.

Speaker 6 And part of the deal is that Wagner will

Speaker 6 participate in the counteroffensive.

Speaker 6 And Progozhin and his companies get a 25% share of the proceeds of the oil and gas assets that are recuperated.

Speaker 6 And so Pergozhin has this massive incentive now to go out against ISIS and capture as much of those assets as he can.

Speaker 6 And so in 2017, Murat and Wagner are back in Syria. And this is right around the time where

Speaker 6 ISIS is collapsing. The U.S.

Speaker 6 is backing the Kurdish SDF. The SDF is coming from the northeast south.
They're heading for

Speaker 3 the ISIS's capital, Raqqa.

Speaker 6 And Wagner and Assad forces are heading north.

Speaker 6 And at a certain point, there's this factory that Murat is talking about called Konaka,

Speaker 6 which is sort of the crown jewel. of all the assets.
It's valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it was one of ISIS's most valuable assets for fuel smuggling.

Speaker 3 The most rich,

Speaker 3 most profitable oil field in Syria.

Speaker 6 So Pergozhin wants this.

Speaker 6 And he's sending letters to the Syrian government saying that they're not upholding their end of the bargain, that he's spending all of this money on the offensive. and the Syrians aren't paying him.

Speaker 6 So he sees Conoco

Speaker 6 as the way to kind of get profit, get profitability,

Speaker 6 get out of the red and into the black. The only issue is that as ISIS is collapsing, everyone is thinking what a post-ISIS world

Speaker 6 is going to look like. So the Kurds, with the blessing of the U.S., start moving away from Raqqa and heading south towards their resort.

Speaker 6 And there's a rush for who's going to get this conical plant when ISIS is gone. And the SDF, the Kurdish forces backed by special forces, get there first.

Speaker 6 And then this is where

Speaker 6 Fergozhin

Speaker 3 made a mistake.

Speaker 3 He

Speaker 3 thought that

Speaker 3 he can

Speaker 3 achieve

Speaker 3 his goal

Speaker 3 as a result in negotiation with the olders of the Kurdish tribe.

Speaker 3 But at that time,

Speaker 3 functioners of the SPS

Speaker 3 was in charge of

Speaker 3 the whole thing.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the oldest

Speaker 3 of the tribes,

Speaker 3 they lied

Speaker 3 Perguzhan.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 guarantee

Speaker 3 they gave a guarantee that

Speaker 3 Kurdish forces retreat

Speaker 3 as soon as we started to move forward.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 they

Speaker 3 just died.

Speaker 6 How many guys did you have gathered to attack Connecto at that time?

Speaker 3 I think about 500 two units, Karpati and Fifth

Speaker 3 Assault

Speaker 3 Units.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 my

Speaker 3 group

Speaker 3 that consists of Syrian fighters.

Speaker 3 75.

Speaker 5 75.

Speaker 3 75.

Speaker 3 This was

Speaker 3 only

Speaker 3 unit

Speaker 3 of Syrian

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 took part in this action.

Speaker 3 No one else.

Speaker 3 Only Russian mercenaries and this group of Syrian fighters.

Speaker 3 Only this.

Speaker 3 I had to

Speaker 3 advance on the left flank

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 to take over two strongholds.

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 3 advanced on the

Speaker 3 start line of attack,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 Americans prevented us.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 striked

Speaker 3 on the second echelon

Speaker 3 headquarter

Speaker 3 artillery position

Speaker 3 squady

Speaker 3 armor

Speaker 3 and then

Speaker 3 they

Speaker 3 shift

Speaker 3 the fire on us. us.

Speaker 5 Did you guys fire on them?

Speaker 3 From the sky,

Speaker 3 American uses for

Speaker 3 at the beginning, American uses only aviation

Speaker 5 and two Spectre gunships and two Apaches

Speaker 5 helicopters.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Combat

Speaker 3 combat drones.

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 3 spooky

Speaker 3 and uh

Speaker 3 combat uh helicopter

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 5 so will be

Speaker 5 what was what was going through your head when you knew that

Speaker 6 so US special operations initiated the attack no no no you should what you should you should what you should tell them is start from

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 6 the

Speaker 6 the beginning of the morning because this happened on February 8th, right?

Speaker 3 February.

Speaker 6 The night. The night of February 8th.

Speaker 3 Between 7th and 7th and 8th

Speaker 6 February.

Speaker 6 And you were in the room

Speaker 6 the day before or a couple of days before

Speaker 3 where Utkin

Speaker 6 comes in and he says, we're going to take this from the Americans.

Speaker 6 And someone said, are the Americans going to be there? And he said, yeah.

Speaker 3 Yes,

Speaker 3 I don't know why.

Speaker 3 But Prigoshan decided that Americans

Speaker 3 were not involved.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 6 the Americans

Speaker 3 back.

Speaker 3 The thing is, the

Speaker 3 Prigoshan

Speaker 3 have

Speaker 3 one

Speaker 3 feature that Chiptakaraptor

Speaker 3 from time to time

Speaker 3 his ego his ego

Speaker 3 rose

Speaker 3 above the common sense

Speaker 6 maybe something that it might be it might look cool

Speaker 6 and no one has done this before

Speaker 6 if we get a piece of paper and Murat, it can show where the Americans were and how Wagner came over with

Speaker 6 the arrows and stuff.

Speaker 6 That way people can get...

Speaker 6 No one's done this before.

Speaker 2 You maintain your gear so it lasts, and your skin's no different. It's the first thing exposed to the elements every single day.

Speaker 2 Caldera Lab is built to help repair and protect your skin so you can look and feel your best every day.

Speaker 2 Caldera Lab creates high-performance skincare for men by combining cutting-edge science with powerful natural ingredients. It absorbs quickly with no greasy mess.

Speaker 2 You guys know I'm a stickler for clean ingredients and Caldera Lab really delivers on that. Each product is backed by science, built for impact, and thoughtfully formulated.

Speaker 2 with safety and sustainability at the forefront. I know, I know.
Guys don't have time for a skincare routine, but Caldera Lab makes it easy with four simple steps that actually work.

Speaker 2 There's the clean slate balancing cleanser, the eye serum that helps reduce dark circles and fine lines, the base layer that's a deep hydrating moisturizer, and then there's the good,

Speaker 2 a powerhouse serum that has over 3.4 million antioxidant units per drop to help reduce signs of aging. Take care of your skin like you take care of your gear.

Speaker 2 Go to calderalab.com slash SRS and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab.com slash SRS.
These statements and products have not been evaluated by the FDA.

Speaker 2 These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition.

Speaker 2 For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider, and they stand by their values.

Speaker 2 Patriot Mobile has been a great supporter of this show, which is why I am proud to partner with them.

Speaker 2 Patriot Mobile offers dependable nationwide coverage, giving you the ability to access all three major networks, which means you get the same coverage you've been accustomed to without the compromise.

Speaker 2 When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you're choosing more than a wireless provider. You're supporting a company that stands for American values and that proudly honors our veterans and first responders.

Speaker 2 Their 100% U.S.-based customer service team makes switching easy. Keep your number, keep your phone, or upgrade.
Their team will help you find the best plan for your needs.

Speaker 2 Just go to patriotmobile.com/slash SRS or call 972-Patriot. Get free activation when you use the offer code SRS.
Make the switch today. PatriotMobile.com/slash SRS.

Speaker 2 That's patriotmobile.com slash SRS or call 972 Patriot.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 6 do you want to show

Speaker 6 you have the river, Euphrates?

Speaker 6 Then you want to show where Konako is, and then where Wagner in the US was.

Speaker 3 Eufrat,

Speaker 6 Konica,

Speaker 3 Konica,

Speaker 3 Ham.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 5 we were completely destroyed.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 this is our position.

Speaker 5 This is your position.

Speaker 5 Factories is Kwanoco.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And this is the Kurds in the US.

Speaker 6 No. The Kurds and the US are in here in the Conoco facility.

Speaker 6 This is Wagner's two positions right here.

Speaker 5 They're inside the facility.

Speaker 6 No, no, no. Facility is around like this.

Speaker 6 And then they go and attack that.

Speaker 5 But the U.S. was inside the facility.

Speaker 5 So you so Wagner initiated an attack.

Speaker 3 Initiate.

Speaker 3 It's what planned

Speaker 3 action the

Speaker 3 signs of the force uh

Speaker 3 artillery assault from the Kurdish.

Speaker 5 And you guys, you knew that US

Speaker 5 special operations were in the factory?

Speaker 3 Yes, you know about it. Were you worried? We knew about it.
Don't worry.

Speaker 3 Uh our chief uh

Speaker 3 our commander uh uh told us that uh Americans

Speaker 3 were not involved.

Speaker 6 But they wouldn't get involved.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 as I

Speaker 3 already said,

Speaker 3 I don't know why.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 Pregozhan was convinced that American forces

Speaker 3 were not involved. Wow.

Speaker 5 What's this distancer?

Speaker 5 What's the distance here? How many kilometers?

Speaker 3 Between

Speaker 3 my

Speaker 3 units and first stronghold,

Speaker 3 about

Speaker 3 300 meters.

Speaker 5 300 meters?

Speaker 3 That's it.

Speaker 3 We moved

Speaker 3 very close to this

Speaker 3 position and we

Speaker 3 we have already ready

Speaker 3 to attack

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 American

Speaker 3 prevented us from the any

Speaker 3 but what you said

Speaker 6 too is that what your buddies will will say who are there

Speaker 6 is so

Speaker 6 the the other key thing is this is the Euphrates right here

Speaker 6 And so during this

Speaker 6 kind of

Speaker 6 counter-ISIS operation, the Russians and the Americans are trying to figure out ways that they can de-conflict, right? So that no one is actually shooting each other. Because

Speaker 6 there's a lot of guys running around in this area now.

Speaker 6 they create this kind of line of deconfliction between U.S.-backed forces in Syria and Russian backed forces.

Speaker 6 And the line is pretty much the Euphrates River, which is right here.

Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 And that's established.

Speaker 6 But the issue for Pergosian is that the most profitable oil fields are right across on the other side of the deconfliction line.

Speaker 6 And so Murat and Wagner, what they're doing prior to this is they're building up their forces. They're testing a little bit the line of deconfliction probably.

Speaker 6 Because they cross the river and there's this one little spot that is still Russian territory.

Speaker 6 And so the Americans are watching this on the drones

Speaker 6 and they're seeing the buildup. They see it all day.

Speaker 6 And eventually

Speaker 6 they at in the evening

Speaker 6 they they start calling the Russi Russians over the deconfliction line that they have between the US and Russian militaries. And they say, Are these your guys?

Speaker 6 And the Russian military says, No.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 denied

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 6 confirm, yeah.

Speaker 3 Confirm.

Speaker 5 Yeah. What did you initiate the assault with?

Speaker 3 Well, I was supported firstly by the artillery.

Speaker 5 So you were hitting Connecticut with artillery.

Speaker 3 What they were first doing

Speaker 6 was

Speaker 6 they were faking artillery training

Speaker 6 because they had set themselves up close.

Speaker 3 Mortal.

Speaker 3 mortars. Mortal.
Yeah. Mortal artillery.

Speaker 3 Americans

Speaker 3 very quickly

Speaker 3 suppressed the activity of

Speaker 3 any kind of artillery.

Speaker 3 And I left without any support.

Speaker 3 I have

Speaker 3 an automatic rifle, machine gun,

Speaker 3 automatic grenade launcher,

Speaker 3 Agas 17,

Speaker 3 and some kind

Speaker 3 and two

Speaker 3 machine gun,

Speaker 3 heavily machine gun.

Speaker 6 Well, the fifth unit had tanks, right? There were two tanks.

Speaker 3 This tank was

Speaker 3 on the right side from me.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 saw

Speaker 3 the tank only

Speaker 3 at the last time

Speaker 3 before

Speaker 3 this tank was destroyed.

Speaker 3 I heard the

Speaker 3 shoot,

Speaker 3 I heard the sound of shooting,

Speaker 3 and I

Speaker 3 come out of the position and I saw it out tank.

Speaker 3 And firstly, I decided this is

Speaker 3 good for me.

Speaker 3 But immediately after I

Speaker 3 glanced on him,

Speaker 3 he was

Speaker 3 destroyed by the rocket.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 there was absolutely no, and

Speaker 3 there there was a big explosion.

Speaker 3 This tank was completely destroyed.

Speaker 3 What was going through your head when the

Speaker 5 Americans retaliated?

Speaker 3 To save my life.

Speaker 3 Save

Speaker 3 the lives of my people.

Speaker 3 I cried him:

Speaker 3 Run away from here.

Speaker 3 Run away in any way, run away, but

Speaker 3 only

Speaker 3 small group.

Speaker 3 Only with a small group. Small group.
Two, three person,

Speaker 3 not

Speaker 3 gathering.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But you wanted to disperse.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it was

Speaker 3 in vain.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 unfortunately

Speaker 3 in any way gather it together and

Speaker 3 fall

Speaker 3 on the fire from the

Speaker 3 helicopter.

Speaker 3 And I lost 23

Speaker 3 fighters.

Speaker 3 23 fighters was killed.

Speaker 5 Were you close with them?

Speaker 3 low.

Speaker 5 Were you friends with them?

Speaker 6 Titrojon certainly would make a trip.

Speaker 3 Titrojeon, this would make a trick.

Speaker 3 It was

Speaker 3 very little time

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 become a friendship.

Speaker 3 I was appointed on this position

Speaker 3 two and a half weeks

Speaker 3 before this event.

Speaker 5 Twenty-three dead, 28 wounded. Is that correct?

Speaker 6 In his unit only.

Speaker 3 In your unit. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, I think the thing that is also kind of important for people to

Speaker 6 realize is, you know, it's getting towards the evening

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 Wagner, they're feigning drills, and then they attack, right? And

Speaker 6 the U.S. is calling, and they call three times over the deconfliction line to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and they say, Are these your guys?

Speaker 6 And three times, the Ministry of Defense says no. And so, as you know, and your buddies know,

Speaker 6 that's when the U.S. had the green light to effectively defend themselves against this attack.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I think it's fair to say that

Speaker 6 the U.S.

Speaker 6 defended itself in a way that would send a message as well.

Speaker 6 And the amount of air power

Speaker 6 that came in

Speaker 6 was

Speaker 6 probably disproportionate to the threat and designed to send a message because,

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 the amount of

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 Americans

Speaker 3 didn't care of

Speaker 3 didn't care of of the

Speaker 3 facility of the Russian army.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 were ready

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 strike in any case.

Speaker 3 And they

Speaker 3 were ready. I think they absolutely didn't fear to use

Speaker 3 their weapons.

Speaker 5 That's generally the

Speaker 5 sentiment. I mean, these guys are at war.
That's what they want to do.

Speaker 5 And they did it.

Speaker 6 And you said, I mean, the U.S. brought in like two Apaches.

Speaker 5 Two Apaches and two Spectre gunships.

Speaker 6 Two Spectre gunship and Spectre gunship is...

Speaker 3 Russian generals. Russian generals

Speaker 3 was completely confused by this situation. Russian generals

Speaker 3 didn't have

Speaker 3 ability,

Speaker 3 an ability to

Speaker 3 take a responsibility and to make a decision

Speaker 3 independently. Independently.

Speaker 3 And when he

Speaker 3 encountered

Speaker 3 this situation,

Speaker 3 he

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 confused, absolutely.

Speaker 6 Because the question is, right? Why did the Russian Ministry of Defense deny

Speaker 6 that it was Russians who were attacking? And

Speaker 6 there is an argument, I think, to be made. Like Pergozhin, his gamble in trying to take Conako

Speaker 6 was that

Speaker 6 when the Americans saw that it was Russians coming,

Speaker 6 the Americans would want to avoid any direct confrontation,

Speaker 6 World War III,

Speaker 6 and they would back away and retreat along with the Kurds. And he was incredibly mistaken

Speaker 6 in that calculation.

Speaker 6 And what I think he wasn't counting on and what Murat is saying is that when the Americans were calling into the Ministry of Defense, you have some poor guy on the line who is also not going to be responsible for World War III.

Speaker 6 And so the quickest thing that you're going to do is not say, yeah, those are my guys attacking U.S. soldiers.

Speaker 6 You're going to say, don't know anything about it, don't know what you're talking about, and try to go to your higher ups to cover your own butt.

Speaker 6 And so ultimately, it was, you know, it was probably

Speaker 3 he probably got, Progozhin probably had

Speaker 6 kind of a wink and a nod from the Ministry of Defense that he was going to try to do this. And if it worked out, it's a great Russian victory for everybody.
Assad, the Russians, Progozhin.

Speaker 6 And if it doesn't, in the Ministry of Defense's mind, it's just Wagner guys who are getting killed.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 5 How long did the battle go on for?

Speaker 3 How long?

Speaker 3 About six hours. Six hours.

Speaker 3 From the midnight to

Speaker 3 morning. About midnight to morning.

Speaker 3 189

Speaker 3 Russian machineries were killed in this battle, and 23 Syrian fighters

Speaker 5 from my union was killed.

Speaker 3 How many

Speaker 3 about 200.

Speaker 3 Two units

Speaker 3 two assault units was completely destroyed.

Speaker 3 I mean weapon

Speaker 3 technique

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 300 casualties in total.

Speaker 3 On the next day,

Speaker 3 Russian authority

Speaker 3 proclaimed that no one Russian suffered

Speaker 3 in this event.

Speaker 3 Wow. No one.

Speaker 6 And you were responsible for counting the bodies, right? And reporting it.

Speaker 3 No, yes, of course.

Speaker 3 And I

Speaker 3 must

Speaker 3 to bring the

Speaker 5 body of the dead

Speaker 3 of the kill of the dead death

Speaker 3 Surian in

Speaker 3 the town, in the city.

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 3 was headquarters of

Speaker 3 my battalion.

Speaker 6 Oh, so you were there for the ceremony of the burial? Ah, burial.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 before we get there,

Speaker 5 what ended it? Why did they stop? If they didn't kill everybody,

Speaker 5 what stopped it?

Speaker 3 After I

Speaker 3 came back

Speaker 3 from this battle,

Speaker 3 I gave an order to send my people to bring a body and a weapon on the battlefield, brought from this area all

Speaker 3 body and all weapons that we

Speaker 3 that was

Speaker 6 left on this area during the battle so eventually in the morning the ministry of defense got in touch with the americans

Speaker 6 and it was agreed the americans agree to a two-hour pause so that the russians could collect weapons and and dead

Speaker 3 so if the

Speaker 5 if the ministry of defense of russia initially denied this three different times then how do they contact the US to ask to clean up the bodies?

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 could

Speaker 3 say thus,

Speaker 3 say

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 in the very beginning.

Speaker 3 And if they

Speaker 3 say, yes, okay,

Speaker 3 I will give an order to retreat. And

Speaker 3 Russian generals

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 give an order to retreat nothing happened

Speaker 3 everything will be fine but Russian generals

Speaker 3 didn't know what to do in this situation

Speaker 6 but eventually they they told the Americans

Speaker 6 we need to we need to go collect

Speaker 6 so eventually they said there might be some Russians there to to the Americans.

Speaker 3 The thing is,

Speaker 3 it has already happened.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's no denying it anymore.

Speaker 3 We were destroyed.

Speaker 3 The whole field was covered with

Speaker 3 corpses and

Speaker 3 burnt

Speaker 3 tanks

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 trucks of our units.

Speaker 3 Everyone who can move

Speaker 3 left this area.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 so there was only bodies left.

Speaker 3 And come to the bank of the river.

Speaker 5 So there were only bodies left.

Speaker 6 And then the agreement was made that they have two hours to go back to the area

Speaker 6 to collect the dead.

Speaker 5 How does that make you feel now, knowing that the Russian military had denied three different times that it was Russians on the ground, and then also

Speaker 5 told the Russian people that there were no Russians that were killed in that battle?

Speaker 3 Firstly,

Speaker 3 I think the American acted as it

Speaker 3 according to the situation.

Speaker 3 If I were

Speaker 3 on their place,

Speaker 3 I will do the same action.

Speaker 3 It's a rules of war. If you under attack, you

Speaker 3 must protect themselves

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 wage and counterattack.

Speaker 3 Secondly, I think

Speaker 3 it was a bad thing

Speaker 3 from the side of our

Speaker 3 chief.

Speaker 3 It was

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 pregauchen and Wagner was

Speaker 3 absolutely

Speaker 3 wrong

Speaker 3 in this situation. It's absolutely wrong.
But

Speaker 6 by Wagner, he means Gutgen.

Speaker 3 This battle was

Speaker 3 offensive,

Speaker 3 was a defensive action from the outside.

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 3 were

Speaker 3 under attack of Kurdish forces,

Speaker 3 and despite of the

Speaker 3 heavy losses, we can stay,

Speaker 3 we can stay on our place and

Speaker 3 to protect and protect our position.

Speaker 3 But what surprised me very much

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 many

Speaker 3 of

Speaker 3 our guys

Speaker 3 that took part in this battle accepted this version. Wow,

Speaker 3 wow.

Speaker 3 Accepted this version, version, but it's nonsense.

Speaker 3 But this is true.

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 3 spoke

Speaker 3 with some guys

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 trying to remind him

Speaker 3 that:

Speaker 3 do you remember,

Speaker 3 we

Speaker 3 are going to assault.

Speaker 3 No one

Speaker 3 attacked us.

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 initiated this

Speaker 3 event.

Speaker 3 Only we have responsibility for the circumstances of this battle.

Speaker 5 I think probably

Speaker 5 every American that fought that day is going to watch this.

Speaker 5 Do you have anything personally to say to them?

Speaker 3 What can I say to them?

Speaker 3 As I already said,

Speaker 3 they acted

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 according to the

Speaker 3 rulers' war.

Speaker 3 It was our

Speaker 3 initiative.

Speaker 3 Nothing.

Speaker 5 So how long after the battle did you leave Syria?

Speaker 3 One year.

Speaker 2 One year.

Speaker 6 But this is when you left Wagner for Redut, right?

Speaker 3 Yes, when I left Wagner,

Speaker 3 I joined Redut

Speaker 3 Tulka Akhranyal.

Speaker 6 It only

Speaker 5 defended or like did security for.

Speaker 6 It was a different PMC,

Speaker 6 but their only job as a PMC was to secure

Speaker 6 static security, exactly.

Speaker 3 It was not

Speaker 3 for me.

Speaker 5 Let's take a quick break.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Speaker 1 Well, with the name Your Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com.

Speaker 1 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.
Not available in all states.

Speaker 5 All right, Murat.

Speaker 3 So you get back to

Speaker 5 Russia.

Speaker 5 How much longer was it until the Ukraine war kicked off?

Speaker 3 After this event,

Speaker 3 this war began

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 I left my country.

Speaker 3 John, what was with the...

Speaker 5 What was the mutiny all about?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I think,

Speaker 6 you know, Murat, as he's saying, he goes back, he finishes his

Speaker 6 work in Syria. But I mean, after the Battle of Kasham,

Speaker 6 in which Murat participated, I mean, already by this point,

Speaker 6 we were talking about it earlier. Wagner is in Sudan by this point.

Speaker 6 By

Speaker 6 around the same time as the Battle of Hasham, they first started arriving in the Central African Republic, and then they're showing up in all sorts of places in Africa, Libya, and in Mali.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 over there, Pergoshin is acting kind of independently, like we were talking about.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 as the Battle of Hasham kind of

Speaker 6 showed,

Speaker 6 Progozhin himself is not always on the same page. as the Ministry of Defense and Minister of Defense Shoigu.

Speaker 6 And he's sort of a rock in their shoe very often.

Speaker 6 You have to imagine, here's this guy who is kind of technically supposed to, with his forces, be subordinate, but he also has a mind and ambition of his own.

Speaker 6 And he can

Speaker 6 occasionally get in front of Putin himself. And you can imagine what he's saying about the people that he doesn't like in front of Putin.
So, you know, imagine, you know,

Speaker 6 you're the boss of an employee, but the employee's dad is the CEO, right? I mean, you know that there's another channel that goes up if you try to, you know, if you try to boss them around.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 even though the Ministry of Defense and Wagner are cooperating in Africa quite a bit, there's still that interpersonal tension.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so when

Speaker 6 Putin makes the decision to launch the full-scale war

Speaker 6 in Ukraine in February 2022, he gives the planning of it over to the general staff and the Ministry of Defense. And they want nothing to do with Progozhin.

Speaker 6 And so their thinking at the time is that this is going to be a quick, easy victory. And we can do it kind of in their mind by the book without having to use guys like Progozhin.

Speaker 6 And so in the initial month or so of the invasion,

Speaker 6 Wagner is actually left out.

Speaker 6 And Progozhin is pissed about it. He's calling up the guys in the GRU,

Speaker 6 trying to figure out why his guys aren't in it, and then trying to get his guys into it.

Speaker 3 And meanwhile,

Speaker 6 the very quick operation to take Kiev does not go as planned. And the Russian military is suffering setbacks.
And so Progozhin now has his opportunity to get his guys into

Speaker 6 the war. And,

Speaker 6 you know, the thing about Wagner that I think Murat

Speaker 6 will tell you too is that

Speaker 6 in the intervening years,

Speaker 6 really since Chechnya and, you know, a very brief war with Georgia, not a lot of guys in the Russian military have real battle experience.

Speaker 6 not a lot of people have been have been shot at. And so

Speaker 6 when Wagner comes in with its commanders, they start delivering some quick battlefield victories. And so this puts Pergozhin all of a sudden in this great position.

Speaker 6 He's able to come out of the shadows and he becomes a hero of Russia. He declares himself, oh, he denied it always that he was tied to Wagner group.

Speaker 6 Now he declares, I was always the founder of Wagner. And he's on state television.
And as Murat said, this is a guy who already has a big ego, right?

Speaker 6 And the way that he always gets around his rivals is by gambling big,

Speaker 6 like at Hasham.

Speaker 6 And so he starts also promising things that he's going to do, something that the generals would never do.

Speaker 6 And ultimately, what he ends up promising is that he's going to, basically Wagner is going to take Bakhmut. this kind of middle-sized city

Speaker 6 from Ukrainian forces. And the way that he's going to do it is he gets exclusive permission for a time to go to all of Russia's prisons and recruit prisoners to the front line.
And so he shows up

Speaker 6 and he goes himself. I mean,

Speaker 6 he's a guy who does a lot of things himself.

Speaker 3 Yes, he was deprived for the resources also of the mobilization. Yeah.

Speaker 6 He wasn't allowed to have actual soldiers. And so he gets the convicts.

Speaker 6 And so he shows up at these Russian penal colonies and he they gather all the prisoners into the the prison yard and he comes in in his helicopter and he he comes in and and he speaks in front of all of the prisoners and he says you know I have an offer for you

Speaker 6 you you can come and fight for me for for six months and if you survive

Speaker 6 You're a free man and your criminal record is expunged.

Speaker 6 And he tells them

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 my losses are worse than Stalingrad,

Speaker 6 which obviously resonates with

Speaker 6 Russians. And

Speaker 6 ultimately, about 50,000 guys sign up.

Speaker 6 And the tactic that Progozhin is going to use to take Bakhmut is the human wave tactic. And so

Speaker 6 these convicts, they get two weeks training,

Speaker 6 usually, I I think, just inside kind of

Speaker 6 the border with Ukraine and

Speaker 6 around Luhansk. And then after that, they're sent to the front.
And

Speaker 6 basically, they're put in small units. And

Speaker 6 each small unit,

Speaker 6 one unit will go out, attack the Ukrainian position.

Speaker 6 Eight guys might be killed, but two guys get into the trench and they do some damage before getting killed. And before the Ukrainians have a chance to recover, another

Speaker 6 unit of convicts is coming through.

Speaker 6 And so it's a very

Speaker 6 inefficient

Speaker 6 way to wage war, but it is effective over time.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 3 the thing is that

Speaker 3 the main reason for this operation was to attract

Speaker 3 as many

Speaker 3 Ukraine forces

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 possible in order to prevent from the attack

Speaker 3 on the other

Speaker 3 areas of the front line.

Speaker 6 As you can imagine, it's a huge front line now, right,

Speaker 6 in Ukraine. In the beginning, the first phase of the war on Donbass,

Speaker 6 it's a little section of the Donbass region. Now it's

Speaker 6 like a thousand kilometers long maybe or something. And so he's also engaged with the Ukrainians,

Speaker 6 and the Ukrainians are sending some of their best guys to defend Bakhmut.

Speaker 6 While for the Russian government,

Speaker 6 they're losing, in their mind,

Speaker 6 some of the worst people in society, right? These convicts.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, it's like a four to one ratio in terms of losses, but it's something that the Russians and Progozhin are willing to do for the reasons that Murat said.

Speaker 6 But, you know, at this point, though, Progozhin is like an internet, like we all know who Progozhan is, right?

Speaker 6 During the Bakhmut campaign, he becomes like the face of the war. itself.
CNN is trying to reach him. The New York Times is trying to reach him for an interview.

Speaker 6 He's, you know, he's huge back home in Russia. He's like finally everything that he,

Speaker 6 you know, his ego is matched now by

Speaker 6 his popularity.

Speaker 3 Yes, in this term, the

Speaker 3 Wagner Group completely false it is

Speaker 5 war.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 achieve his the goals that would

Speaker 3 stand before him, before them.

Speaker 3 They

Speaker 3 attract

Speaker 3 many

Speaker 3 a lot of Ukraine forces

Speaker 3 and give the opportunity for the Russian army to

Speaker 3 prepare

Speaker 3 mobilizing a reserve

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 to build the

Speaker 3 defensive line

Speaker 3 in the area of

Speaker 3 Zaporoshke district.

Speaker 6 But still, I mean, there's still a lot of enmity between the Minister of Defense,

Speaker 6 Sergei Shoygu, and Prigozhin.

Speaker 6 And so at some point, inevitably, especially since Prgozhin is having all of this success, like Murat mentioned, the Ministry of Defense is going going to want to check him.

Speaker 6 And so the first way that they do it is they start cutting off Pergogen from convict recruitment. So he's promised to Putin, I'm going to take Bakhmut, but his means of doing so now is disappearing.

Speaker 3 He needs a lot of bodies to take Bakhmut.

Speaker 6 The Ministry of Defense is cutting him off of those bodies. Not because they're against prisoner recruitment, they just start doing it themselves.

Speaker 6 But the difference difference is, and this is always the issue for Progozhin,

Speaker 6 is when he was doing it, he had the permission by like a wink and a nod from the presidential administration.

Speaker 6 When the Ministry of Defense does it, Russian parliament officially makes it legal for them to recruit from prison. So there's always a way that Progozhin can get screwed over in whatever he's doing.

Speaker 6 So he's getting cut off, and so now he starts going public with the Ministry of Defense saying I'm not getting enough ammunition

Speaker 6 for what we're trying to do and the the Ministry of Defense is screwing over Wagner by not giving by not giving us enough ammunition the ammunition that we need

Speaker 6 and so now this spat starts going very public over social media and then ultimately Shoigo and Progozhin at this point hate each other's guts.

Speaker 6 And the Ministry of Defense then, kind of like their final

Speaker 6 kind of counter-attack on Progozhin, is they get the Kremlin to agree that all soldiers fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia have to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense.

Speaker 3 Only those who fight on the front line. Those on the front line.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 And so for Progozhin, you can imagine he's this big guy now in Russia. He's got thousands and thousands of men ostensibly under his command.
And he recognizes that this is making him political, too.

Speaker 6 And so all of a sudden, the Ministry of Defense is taking those men out from underneath him. And I think for him,

Speaker 6 what he saw was the writing on the wall, that at the very least, when I no longer have Wagner group, it means that I'm going to kind of disappear into obscurity, which he wasn't able to do at that point.

Speaker 6 He couldn't just retire and be quiet.

Speaker 6 He was incapable of that. But also, without those men, he's no longer, he doesn't have political leverage anymore, and it could result in his ultimate demise.
And so he has to figure out a way:

Speaker 6 how do I convince Putin to choose between me and Shoigu? Because Putin is choosing Shoigu right now. And so the decision is made that

Speaker 6 Wagner is going to turn back from Ukraine into southern Russia and they're going to capture and kill the Minister of Defense.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 6 and so uh on june 23rd uh 2023 wagner crosses back over progozhin claims that that the ministry of defense hit them with a rocket attack which seems to be not the case false

Speaker 6 attack but it's the pretext

Speaker 6 but the pretext is now that we're going to go capture we're going to go arrest Shoigu and

Speaker 6 another general, Gorasimov. And so they go back into Russia and

Speaker 6 they surround and take over the southern Russian,

Speaker 6 Russia's southern military command in Rostov.

Speaker 6 And they're looking for Shoygu. But Shoygu has already escaped.
And so the generals who are there try to talk Progozhin down.

Speaker 3 Yes, Progozhin

Speaker 3 thought that

Speaker 3 when

Speaker 3 he proposed

Speaker 3 to make a choice that uh between him and uh between Troyu, uh

Speaker 3 Progozhin uh

Speaker 3 will uh choose, of course, him.

Speaker 6 Putin will choose Progozhan.

Speaker 3 Yes,

Speaker 6 and he also he also thinks too,

Speaker 6 or is hoping in the back of his mind that all of that popularity that he had from being on social media and being on Russian TV, on the front lines of Bakhmut, means that the the the soldiers and the Russian military military itself are on his side too.

Speaker 6 And so he goes and they've taken the military command and the generals who are there are trying to talk him down and they're not able to do it.

Speaker 6 And so Progozhin announces that they're going to have a march for justice on Moscow.

Speaker 6 And the column of Wagner, the Wagner column turns from southern Russian military command and starts heading up the highway to Moscow.

Speaker 6 And I mean this is, I mean, I think everybody was glued to their TV screens to see like Wagner

Speaker 6 column heading on Moscow and the mayor of Moscow.

Speaker 6 They started digging up the highway around Moscow to prevent

Speaker 6 their, you know, their potential arrival.

Speaker 6 Wagner shoots down, I think, a number of helicopters and planes. About 13 people are killed.

Speaker 6 But each time, you know,

Speaker 6 Progojin is getting closer and closer to Moscow, and he's also kind of going into empty space.

Speaker 6 And so now he's trying to communicate

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 3 Putin that

Speaker 6 all he is trying to do is take out his rivals, Shoygu and Gorasimov. He's not trying to overthrow

Speaker 6 Putin himself.

Speaker 6 But the issue is, the closer he's getting to Moscow,

Speaker 6 The more he could accidentally be unleashing a coup because it's going to be such a destabilizing moment and so

Speaker 6 at some point he's trying to say I'm not overthrowing the government but now it's getting close to looking like he might overthrow the government if he gets into Moscow

Speaker 6 and and behind the scenes

Speaker 6 the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko is negotiating between Putin's side and Progozhin

Speaker 6 and and eventually he he gets Progozhin to agree

Speaker 6 to halt the march. And I think for Progozhin himself, he was a little bit relieved because he was realizing that events were

Speaker 6 going out of his control by, I mean, they were hardly in his control beforehand, but they were, as the closer he was getting to Moscow and they got within 150 miles,

Speaker 6 things were really starting to get out of control and he backs down.

Speaker 6 And you could make an argument that the guy who had

Speaker 6 an an insane risk tolerance

Speaker 6 from

Speaker 6 going against Americans in the Battle of Kasham and

Speaker 6 risking his neck saying he's going to take Bakhmut, like this was perhaps the one moment where he should have doubled down

Speaker 6 and gone all the way to Moscow, but he chose not to.

Speaker 3 Prigozhin

Speaker 3 didn't want to take all the power.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I think Prigozhin eventually realized that

Speaker 3 he

Speaker 3 didn't take into account one simple thing.

Speaker 3 Putin don't need

Speaker 3 the Ministry of Defense,

Speaker 6 professional minister of

Speaker 3 qualifying and

Speaker 3 efficiency minister for defense.

Speaker 3 He need

Speaker 3 a close alliance,

Speaker 3 supporter.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 3 when Prikozhin realized

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 in any case

Speaker 3 he

Speaker 3 cannot achieve his goal,

Speaker 3 he gave an order to

Speaker 3 turn around.

Speaker 6 And that sealed his fate, ultimately, three weeks later.

Speaker 3 As for us, a conflict between the Ministry of Defense and Pregozhan,

Speaker 3 this conflict was permanent.

Speaker 3 The main reason

Speaker 3 from the moment of the creation of the

Speaker 3 Brigade of Mercenaries brigade,

Speaker 3 and from the moment when Pregozhin

Speaker 3 became a sole co-author of this project, this

Speaker 3 conflict began.

Speaker 3 The main reason, of course, money.

Speaker 3 Pregozhin

Speaker 3 Wagner Group

Speaker 3 was funded

Speaker 3 by passing the Ministry of Defense.

Speaker 3 And Shoigo was deprived of the opportunity to

Speaker 3 use this money

Speaker 3 to profit from this flow of the money.

Speaker 6 Because that's how you make big money in Russia is

Speaker 6 money off of the state budgets. So everything is a battle over the flow of budget.
Because the more budget that comes your way, the more you can line your own budget.

Speaker 3 Of course, of course. Precaution

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 the Wagner Group was funded directly from the state budget.

Speaker 3 By passing all the way down.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and it went all the way down. And so one of the reasons that

Speaker 6 one of the ways that people were making money in Donbass in 2014-2015, right,

Speaker 6 is you're a commander

Speaker 6 and you tell you say, you tell the Ministry of Defense, oh, I have 200 guys under my command. The Ministry of Defense pays your salaries, but you actually have 150 or 125 guys under your command.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 not the case

Speaker 3 in the term of the pregausion, pregausion don't uh he was at embarrassment.

Speaker 6 That's small money laundering, though.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 5 was he assassinated?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 And do you think the Gasudarsva will be a pregojinonda?

Speaker 3 I don't know what exact uh who exactly uh

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 what who exactly was uh

Speaker 6 ispalnitil uh who is who who was the actual person who did it he doesn't know

Speaker 3 who is actual person uh who did it uh uh pregozhan uh had a many enemies

Speaker 6 so you're saying it could have been anybody it might not have been the ministry of defense or putin himself i think a lot of people uh would put it on uh the FSB, which is the kind of the Russian successor to the KJB which handles domestic threats for

Speaker 3 Putin as of course the

Speaker 3 in the decision

Speaker 3 the final decision final decision Putin made a final decision of course of course

Speaker 3 only with his permission

Speaker 3 that can be happened yeah

Speaker 6 but who came up with the exact plan who was

Speaker 3 Who was

Speaker 3 executive?

Speaker 3 Time will show.

Speaker 5 So what is Wagner Group today?

Speaker 3 Right now,

Speaker 3 since

Speaker 3 Prigozendez,

Speaker 3 Wagner Group,

Speaker 3 in my opinion, ceased to exist.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 everything became... subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.

Speaker 6 But the thing was, is that,

Speaker 6 kind of as we were talking about

Speaker 6 like the relationship between Wagner and the state was also different in each place. And so in Syria, like when Marat was there,

Speaker 6 you know, they get everything from the Ministry of Defense. They're probably paid through the Ministry of Defense.
They're working very closely. They have Russian air power that support.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is like a Ministry of Defense operation.

Speaker 6 When you get to like the Central African Republic, there's not as much support from the Kremlin. And so, and so

Speaker 6 there's a degree of independence. They're opening up breweries.
Like, the Ministry of Defense doesn't want breweries, or they have these gold mines.

Speaker 6 And so, when Progoshin is gone,

Speaker 6 the Ministry of Defense has to figure out how do we take over all of these things? Because Progozhin wasn't just involved with mercenaries like Murat.

Speaker 6 He had troll farms, he had like chocolate museums in St.

Speaker 3 Petersburg, he had mining companies. The main body of

Speaker 3 this project

Speaker 3 was not a Wagner Group. Wagner Group, only part of this project.
Wagner Group is a military group that

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 used

Speaker 3 for

Speaker 3 the creation of the favorable environment to promote a business project. Of promotion.

Speaker 6 So So like Wagner, what basically

Speaker 6 Wagner was a way for Progozhin to overcome his status as an ex-con and try to show his worth to eventually join Putin's inner circle.

Speaker 6 And he was never really able to do it. But so

Speaker 6 when he died,

Speaker 6 it was relatively easy for the Ministry of Defense in places like Syria or Libya just to have guys sign new contracts and to take over.

Speaker 6 But where they were acting independently in, like the Central African Republic,

Speaker 6 the guys showed.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the guys, the guys,

Speaker 6 the guys showed up and they were like, they couldn't understand it. There's breweries, there's all sorts of things going on.
And so the decision is made: if it's not broke, let's not fix it.

Speaker 6 Let them just kind of keep doing their thing.

Speaker 3 The industrial project in Central African Republic

Speaker 3 This is a resource for the benefit

Speaker 3 of the

Speaker 3 president of Russia and his inner circle.

Speaker 6 So I think some account numbers got changed in terms of the transfers.

Speaker 3 But it's a little bit

Speaker 3 difficult to take over. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Because they don't understand it fully. Only the guys who work there know how it goes.

Speaker 5 Wagner Group is over. It's over.

Speaker 5 Well, guys, thank you. Thank you for so much for being here today and for sharing all that information.
And I just want to ask you one thing.

Speaker 5 You know, we had a conversation earlier about your feelings on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now you're here in France seeking asylum. I'm just curious if you have anything

Speaker 5 to say to Putin.

Speaker 3 Get out

Speaker 5 get out

Speaker 3 get out

Speaker 3 you are enemy for my country

Speaker 3 you

Speaker 3 you are the main problem for my country

Speaker 3 and you and his inner circle

Speaker 5 thank you both for being there

Speaker 6 Thank you, sir.

Speaker 5 Appreciate it.

Speaker 5 Thank you.