John Lechner
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So they, uh, the, I think Wagner at the beginning, and I think this, what Murat will tell you was, uh, for the most part, uh, guys who had military experience like Murat, uh, guys who had trouble adjusting to civilian life and in some shape or form and, and wanted to experience the adventure and camaraderie again, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. And so for the most part, it was guys coming out of the military. Maybe they had a brush with the law, like Murad had, to put it lightly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But the full convict recruitment program, where if you saw the videos of Prigozhin going around to all of the penal colonies and recruiting prisoners, that only happened after 2022 for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Okay. So there were definitely dudes who had served prison time, got out, and then joined Wagner. But they weren't recruiting from the prisons at that time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
It was really, I mean, if I remember correctly, Marat's, it was Marat's buddy from his military times who recruited him just by word of mouth. He said, hey, I'm doing this. Do you want to join? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
No. What are these guys getting paid? I mean, I think it depended, but they usually were getting about $2,000 a month during their time on the contract. And so this is pretty good money in Russia for guys. Yeah. it's definitely a motivating factor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
What all are they involved in? So, what I think is interesting about this story, because Murat will tell you, you know, this was very much a state-supported entity, but And 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, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as well. And so, if we look at what was happening in Ukraine in 2015,
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
a lot of those units that the MOD was supporting, after the ceasefire, they just kind of dispersed, went home, didn't really do much after. But only a few months later, Russia's overtly intervening in Syria. There's nothing covert about it, right? It's a full air campaign with the Russian military. And Progozhin
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And Utkin are very much also lobbying to make sure that he gets his guys into there, because he has 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? And it was at this point where I think he saw the black waters of the world and he said, okay, I want to do kind of my version of this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And it so happened that Syria was going to be the next opportunity for him to do so. And so Murad was one of the first guys on the ground in Syria. As he'll tell you, the MOD didn't really know what to do with him. And a couple of guys got killed. And they didn't want casualties right away. So they panicked and sent them home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And it was only until it became clear that Russian air power alone wasn't going to defeat the rebels, the rebels against Assad or ISIS, that Wagner was brought back in. This time, you know, on the ground where they take Palmyra. Then they get sent home again. Then they get back in, and Murat will tell you all about the Battle of Khashoggi. But it gets to that point where it's this mix, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
They have state backing, but Pergosian is also out there with his guys basically doing business development, right? If you have a PMC, where are you going to market your services? You have to go to Africa at some point. Otherwise, you should fire your B&D guy. And so already in 2017, Progozhin is sending his guys out to drum up new business.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
They first sign a contract with the Sudanese to provide training and they get access to mining concessions in Sudan. Then they show up in the Central African Republic where There's really no other kind of competition from other Russians. And so Progozhin is able to provide training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
He offers his like information warfare because he has the troll farms, which were kind of very famous in the US during the 2016 elections. 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... These places aren't that important to Russia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so in the places that aren't important, he has to figure out his own ways to finance these operations. And so they go from the Central African Republic, they're in Libya, back in Haftar in his bid to take Tripoli in 2019. Then they show up in Mali, where they sign a deal with the Malian government to go after various jihadi groups.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And then ultimately, they are initially left out of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and only get brought in when the Russian government's in trouble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Yeah, but I think that it's not... Because people always ask, you know, is this a private thing or a public thing? And the answer is both. And I mean, we're in Paris right now, but when I'm sitting in Washington, D.C., I try to explain to people, like, this is the capital of public-private partnerships, right? Lockheed Martin is a profit-driven company.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
They will frame whatever they're doing as furthering America's national defense and security, but they're also profit-driven. And so what Prigozhin was very good at was selling back to the Kremlin this dream of kind of Russia's expansion abroad. And he could sell it back to Putin, these different initiatives that were also just happened to be, you know, potentially profitable to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Well, so as Murat was telling you, Wagner really began 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 Group. itself as an entity never existed. It was sort of just a nickname that was given to it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so, as Murat is saying, when Russia first intervenes in Syria, One of the reasons that they're doing it, actually, it's after the annexation of Crimea, and they recognize the importance of Syria at that time for the U.S. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
has already intervened, gone back in to fight ISIS. And so the Russians think that If we go in backing Assad, we can kind of force the U.S. into a joint counterterrorism operation against ISIS that will force them to kind of basically start talking to us again. And so they come in and they're backing Assad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But as Murad's saying, Assad's government, I mean, the forces that he has are incredibly powerful. unmotivated, I mean, for obvious reasons, given his rule 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 campaigns alone rarely
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Wagner initially came out of the war in eastern Ukraine. And its founder was a guy, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who Murat has mentioned a couple of times. This is a guy who was born in the 60s in the Soviet Union and sort of grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He was a petty thief and kind of a small-time gangster in his teenage years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
work for anybody. And it was clear that Russian air power with Assad's forces on the ground was not going to work. They were not going to take the territory back from rebels. But they face an issue at the time, which I think you speak to as well, where this is kind of a faraway intervention for Russia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. And there's a sense that they're going to be against this and say, why are we here in Syria? And so one of the reasons that Murat and Wagner were able to get back in
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
is that the Russian military didn't have to report casualties for Wagner.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Yeah, it was an effort.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
It was an effort because, in part, there's always a lot of reasons why things happen, but the timing of their intervention, because if you remember, Syria started going into civil war right around the time of the Arab Spring. So this is already like five years before that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. 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. And it was this effort
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
to basically get themselves onto the world stage again in a crisis that they thought was 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, and ISIS is less of a concern to him. than a lot of the more secular rebels elsewhere as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And that he wants the Russians to go after those guys. Whereas the Russians want to go try and meet up with the Americans as they're closing in on ISIS, as the territorial caliphate is kind of crumbling down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And he goes away to prison at the age of 18, if I remember correctly, for assault and robbery. He and his gang were on a street in Leningrad, which became St. Petersburg. And they, Prokofiev 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Like, why did Progozhin want to take these Conoco facilities? And so in 2016, Murat and Wagner, they capture Palmyra from ISIS. And Murat has, I think, some of the medals from that time period that they'll show. But after the capture, the Russian military sends Wagner home again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And then a few months later, ISIS recaptures it, Palmyra, and Wagner comes back in. But this time, Prigozhin has signed a deal with Assad's government. And part of the deal is that Wagner will participate in the counteroffensive. And Prigozhin and his companies get a 25% share of the proceeds of the oil and gas assets that are recuperated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so Prigozhin has this massive incentive now to go out against ISIS and capture as much of those assets as he can. And so in 2017, Murad and Wagner are back in Syria. And this is right around the time where ISIS is collapsing. The U.S. is backing the Kurdish SDF. The SDF is coming from the northeast south. They're heading for ISIS's capital, Raqqa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And Wagner and Assad forces are heading north. And at a certain point, there's this factory that Murad is talking about called Conoco, 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So, Progozhin wants this. And he's sending letters, too, 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. So, he sees Conoco as the way to kind of get profitability, get out of the red and into the black.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
The only issue is that as ISIS is collapsing, everyone is thinking what a post-ISIS world is going to look like. So the Kurds, with the blessing of the US, start moving away from Raqqa and heading south towards Deir ez-Zor. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And when he gets out, the Soviet Union is collapsing around him, and he returns to his native St. 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. And so he falls in with some crime bosses himself, and they set him up as a manager of some grocery store chains.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
How many guys did you have gathered to attack Konnikovo at that time?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
He eventually turns that into becoming a restaurateur of some very fancy restaurants in St. Petersburg that a younger Vladimir Putin enjoyed. And he leveraged those relationships to eventually getting the job of providing meals to the whole Russian military and the Russian school system.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
beginning of the morning because this happened on February 8th, right? February.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And you were in the room the day before or a couple of days before where Utkin He comes in and he says, we're going to take this from the Americans. And someone said, are the Americans going to be there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
It's like a personality trait.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Maybe it's something that it might look cool and no one has done this before. If we get a piece of paper and Murat can show where the Americans were and how Wagner came over with the arrows and stuff. That way people can get... No one's done this before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Well, as you'll see, kind of... As we go through the story, he manages to connect with Putin. Putin likes him. 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. He kind of has that sort of rough personality.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So, do you want to show, you have the river, Euphrates, then you want to show where Conoco is, and then where Wagner in the U.S. was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
No. The Kurds in the U.S. are in here in the Quantico facility. And this is Wagner's two positions right here. They're inside the facility. No, no, no. Facility is around like this. And they go and attack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
The U.S. was inside the facility.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
That they wouldn't get involved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
What you know, too, is that what your buddies will say who were there. So the other key thing is this is the Euphrates right here. And so during this kind of 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 there's a lot of guys running around in this area now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so they create this kind of line of de-confliction between U.S.-backed forces in Syria and Russian-backed forces. And the line... is pretty much the Euphrates River, which is right here. And that's established. And so, but the issue for Progozhin is that the most profitable oil fields are right across on the other side of the deconfliction line.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
kind of attitude, which is somewhat refreshing given kind of the bureaucratic elite that are surrounding Putin. And so Prodozhin eventually gets this job to provide the meals for the Russian military. And so that takes us to around 2014 or so, when Well, we have to go back a little bit further.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. Because they cross the river and there's this one little spot that is still Russian territory. And so the Americans are watching this on the drones and they're seeing the build-up, they see it all day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And eventually, in the evening, they start calling the Russians over the deconfliction line that they have between the U.S. and Russian militaries. And they say, are these your guys? And the Russian military says, no. No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
What they were first doing was they were faking artillery training. Because they had set themselves up close.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
This tank was on the right side from me. I saw the tank only at the last time before
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So while he's doing this work as a contractor, 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. And so Prigozhin puts together this kind of documentary that shows how all the protesters are fake, basically supported by the West. And he finances it himself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
In his unit only. In your unit. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that is also kind of important for people to realize is, you know, it's getting towards the evening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
and and and wagner they're feigning drills and then they attack right and uh the us is calling and they call three times over the deconfliction line to the russian ministry of defense and they say are these your guys and three times the ministry of defense says no and so as you know and and your buddies know uh that's when uh the us had the green light
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
to effectively defend themselves against this attack. And I think it's fair to say that the US defended itself in a way that would send a message as well. And the amount of air power that came in
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And they did it. And you said, I mean, the U.S. brought in like two Apaches.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And Spectre gunship is?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Because the question is, right, why did the Russian Ministry of Defense deny that it was Russians who were attacking? And their... There is an argument, I think, to be made. Like, Prigozhin, his gamble in trying to take Conoco was that when the Americans saw that it was Russians coming, the Americans would want to avoid any direct confrontation, World War III.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. And so Prigozhin, As I said, Putin is coming to the presidency again in 2012. There are massive destabilizing protests against it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And they would back away and retreat along with the Kurds. And he was incredibly mistaken in that calculation. And what I think he wasn't counting on and what Murad 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so the quickest thing that you're going to do is not say, yeah, those are my guys attacking U.S. soldiers. They'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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so ultimately it was probably, he probably got, Provozhin probably had 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, Prigozhin. And if it doesn't, in the Ministry of Defense's mind, it's just Wagner guys who are getting killed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Wow. No one. And you were responsible for counting the bodies, right? And reporting it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Oh, so he was there for the ceremony of the burial. Ah, burial.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
He navigates it 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. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So eventually in the morning, the Ministry of Defense got in touch with the Americans and it was agreed, the Americans agreed to a two hour pause so that the Russians could collect weapons and dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But eventually they told the Americans, we need to go collect. So eventually they said there might be some Russians there, to the Americans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Yeah, there's no denying it anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And then the agreement was made that they have two hours to go back to the area to collect the dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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 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 warm water port that they have and it's important. And so amidst all of this chaos,
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
One year. But this is when you left Wagner for Radut, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
It only defended or did security for. It was a different PMC, but their only job as a PMC was to secure.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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 nationalist chauvinists, 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. And after its success, the Kremlin thinks everything's done and dusted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
work in Syria. But, I mean, after the Battle of Khashoggi, in which Murad participated, I mean, already by this point, we were talking about it earlier, Wagner is in Sudan by this point. By around the same time as the Battle of Khashoggi, they first start arriving in the Central African Republic, and then they're showing up in all sorts of places in Africa, Libya, and in Mali. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Over there, Purgozhin is acting kind of independently, like we were talking about. But as the Battle of Khashoggi kind of showed, Purgozhin himself is not always on the same page as the Ministry of Defense and Minister of Defense Shoigu. And he's sort of a rock in their shoe very often. You have to imagine, here's this guy who
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
is kind of technically supposed to with his forces be subordinate but he also has a mind and ambition of his own and he can occasionally uh 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 you're uh you're the boss of an employee but the employees that is the ceo right i mean you know that there's another channel
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
that goes up if you try to boss them around. And so even though the Ministry of Defense and Wagner are cooperating in Africa quite a bit, there's still that interpersonal tension. And so when Putin makes a decision to launch the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, he gives you know, the planning of it over to the general staff in the Ministry of Defense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And they want nothing to do with Progozhin. 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. And so, in the initial month or so of the invasion, Wagner is actually left out. And Progozhin is pissed about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
He's calling up the guys in the GRU, trying to figure out why his guys aren't in it, and then trying to get his guys into it. And meanwhile, the very quick operation to take Kyiv does not go as planned. And the Russian military is suffering setbacks. And so Progozhin now has his opportunity to get his guys into the war.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
The thing about Wagner that I think Murat would tell you too is that in the intervening years, really since Chechnya and a very brief war with Georgia, not a lot of guys in the Russian military have real battle experience. Not a lot of people have been shot at. when Wagner comes in with its commanders, they start delivering some quick battlefield victories.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so this puts Progozhin all of a sudden in this great position. 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, 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?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But unbeknownst to them at the time, or 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 Donbas, which is economically and culturally closer to Russia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And the way that he always gets around his rivals is by gambling big, like at Hacham. And so he starts also promising things that he's going to do, something that the generals would never do. 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, from Ukrainian forces.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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, and he goes himself. I mean, he's a guy who does a lot of things himself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Yeah, he wasn't allowed to have actual soldiers and so he gets the convicts. And so he shows up at these Russian penal colonies and they gather all the prisoners into the prison yard and he comes in in his helicopter and he comes in and he speaks in front of all of the prisoners and he says, you know, I have an offer for you. You can come and fight for me for six months.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And if you survive, you're a free man and your criminal record is expunged." And he tells them that my losses are worse than Stalingrad, which obviously resonates with Russians. And ultimately, about 50,000 guys sign up. And the tactic that Progozhin is going to use to take Bakhmut is the human wave tactic. And so these convicts, they get two weeks training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Usually, I think, just inside the border with Ukraine and around Luhansk. And then after that, they're sent to the front. And basically, they're put in small units. And... Each small unit, one unit will go out, attack the Ukrainian position. Eight guys might be killed, but two guys get into the trench, and they do some damage before getting killed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And before the Ukrainians have a chance to recover, another unit of convicts is coming through. And so it's a very inefficient way to wage war, but it is effective over time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so as Ukrainians are taking over government buildings to overthrow the government of Yanukovych, anti-Maidan protesters are taking over these buildings in Donbas, in Donetsk, and in Luhansk. And this puts Putin and the Kremlin into a difficult situation because unlike Crimea, they didn't want to annex eastern Ukraine, Donbas. It's not that important to Russia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
As you can imagine, it's a huge front line now, right, in Ukraine. In the beginning, the first phase of the war in Donbas, you know, it's a little section of the Donbas region. Now it's... you know, like a thousand kilometers long maybe or something. And so he's also engaged with the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians are sending some of their best guys to defend Bakhmut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
While for the Russian government, they're losing, in their mind, some of the worst people in society, right? These convicts. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But, you know, at this point, though, Progozhin is like an internet... Like, we all know who Progozhin is, right? 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. He's, you know, he's huge back home in Russia. He's, like, finally everything that he...
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
you know, his ego is matched now by his popularity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But still, I mean, there's still a lot of enmity between the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and Prigozhin. And so at some point, inevitably, especially since Prigozhin is having all of this success like Murat mentioned, the Ministry of Defense is going to want to check him. And so the first way that they do it is they start cutting off Prigozhin from convict recruitment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So he's promised to Putin, I'm gonna take Bakhmut, but his means of doing so now is disappearing. He needs a lot of bodies to take Bakhmut. The Ministry of Defense is cutting him off of those bodies. Not because they're against prisoner recruitment, they just start doing it themselves.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But the difference is, and this is always the issue for Prigozhin, is when he was doing it, he had the permission by like a wink and a nod from the presidential administration. 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 Prokhorin can get screwed over in whatever he's doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. for what we're trying to do. And the Ministry of Defense is screwing over Wagner by not giving us enough ammunition that we need. And so, now this spat starts going very public over social media.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And then, ultimately, Shoigu and Ferguson, at this point, hate each other's guts. And the Ministry of Defense then, kind of like their final...
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
of counter-attack on progosion 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 on those who fight on the front line those on the front line yeah and so for progosion you can imagine he's this big guy now in Russia, he's got thousands and thousands of men ostensibly under his command.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But Putin is kind of boosting his nationalist credentials by annexing Crimea. It gives a big kind of rally around the flag effect. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And he recognizes that this is making him political, too. And so all of a sudden, the Ministry of Defense is taking those men out from underneath him. And I think for him, 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
He couldn't just retire and be quiet. He was incapable of that. But also without those men, he doesn't have political leverage anymore, and it could result in his ultimate demise. And so he has to figure out a way, how do I convince Putin to choose between me and Shoigu, because Putin is choosing Shoigu right now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so the decision is made that Wagner is going to turn back from Ukraine into southern Russia. And they're going to capture and kill the Minister of Defense. Wow. And so on June 23rd, 2023, Wagner crosses back over. Prokofiev claims that the Ministry of Defense hit them with a rocket attack. which seems to be out of the case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But it's the pretext. Absolutely false attack. But the pretext is now that we're going to go arrest Shoigu and another general, Gerasimov. And so they go back into Russia and they surround and take over Russia's southern military command in Rostov. And they're looking for Shoigu. But Shoigu has already escaped. And so the generals who were there, they tried to talk Prigozhin down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And he also thinks too 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 soldiers in the Russian military itself are on his side too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. And so Progozhin announces that they're going to have a march for justice on Moscow. And the column of Wagner, the Wagner column turns from southern Russian military command and starts heading up the highway to Moscow. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
mean this is i mean i think everybody was glued to their tv screens to see like wagner uh a column heading on moscow and the mayor of moscow they started digging up the highway around moscow to prevent uh their you know their potential arrival uh wagner shoots down i think a number of helicopters and and planes about 13 people are killed
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But each time, you know, he's getting... Provozhin is getting closer and closer to Moscow. And he's also kind of going into empty space. And so now he's trying to communicate to Putin that all he is trying to do is take out his rivals, Shoigu and Gerasimov. He's not trying to overthrow... Putin himself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. And so the Kremlin has to think very quickly, like, how do we support but not support these separatists in eastern Ukraine?
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But the issue is, the closer he's getting to Moscow, the more he could accidentally be unleashing a coup, because it's going to be such a destabilizing moment. 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Behind the scenes, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is negotiating between Putin's side and Prigozhin. Eventually, he gets Prigozhin to agree to halt the march. I think for Prigozhin himself, he was a little bit relieved because he was realizing that events were...
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
going out of his control by... I mean, they were hardly in his control beforehand, but the closer he was getting to Moscow, and they got within 150 miles, things were really starting to get out of control, and he backs down. And you could make an argument that the guy who had...
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
You know, an insane risk tolerance, you know, from going after, you know, going against Americans in the Battle of Kasham and, you know, risking his neck saying he's going to take Bakhmut like this was perhaps the one moment where he should have doubled down and gone all the way to Moscow. But he chose not to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And that sealed his fate, ultimately, three months later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. He fought in Chechnya. He was stationed near Estonia. And he had just come back
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Because that's how you make big money in Russia is by skimming 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 mine your own plots.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so one of the ways that people were making money in Donbass in 2014, 2015, is you're a commander and 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
I think a lot of people would put it on the FSB, which is the Russian successor to the KGB, which handles domestic threats for Putin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So everything became subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. But the thing was, as we were talking about, the relationship between Wagner and the state was also different in each place. And so in Syria, like when Marat was there, you know, they get everything from the Ministry of Defense. They're probably paid through the Ministry of Defense. They're working very closely.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
and almost got in big trouble for this kind of misadventure with a Russian PMC in Syria, these two guys come together and they sign an agreement whereby Utkin will provide the tactical knowledge, provide the men as contractors, and Prigozhin will provide
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
They have Russian air power that support. I mean, this is like a Ministry of Defense operation. when you get to like the Central African Republic, there's not as much support from the Kremlin. And so... Some kind of autonomy. There's a degree of independence. They're opening up breweries, like Ministry of Defense doesn't want breweries, or they have these gold mines.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so when progression is gone, the Ministry of Defense has to figure out how do we take over all of these things. Because Prokofiev wasn't just involved with mercenaries like Murat. He had troll farms. He had chocolate museums in St. Petersburg.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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. He was never really able to do it. But so when he died, 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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
but where they were acting independently in like the Central African Republic. The guys showed up and 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. Let them just kind of keep doing their thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So I think some account numbers got changed in terms of the transfers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
Yeah, because they don't understand it fully. Only the guys who work there know how it works.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
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.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
How did they recruit their fighters? So as Murat was saying, I mean, it's word of mouth, basically. And I think Murat will tell you later as well. The initial group of Wagner, which came out of this PMC that had the year before gone to Syria. So before Wagner, there were a number of kind of what we would think of as Western-style PMCs that had popped up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And largely in response to the Somali piracy crisis, which I'm sure you remember, there was an opportunity for these Russian contractors to protect Russian ships that are going through the Gulf of Aden. A number of Russian contractors were even working in Iraq during the war on terror as well. The issue is that mercenarism is illegal in Russia, technically.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And so these firms would basically establish themselves in Hong Kong or the Bahamas or something along those lines. And then the client would provide them with the weapons when they showed up going through a third country to protect the ship or what have you. And there was this one group called Moran Group where Dmitry Utkin, after he left the service, went to go work for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And one of the founders of Moran got a contract with a Syrian oligarch in 2013 to at least what the guys thought at the time to basically protect oil and gas assets from ISIS. And when they showed up, it turned out that the Syrians wanted them to actually take those assets from ISIS. And there was almost like a little mutiny among the contractors, but they went ahead and they got ambushed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And Dmitry Utkin actually 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 two commanders who went to Syria with mercenarism. Lutkin, who's like one level below, gets off along with all the rest of the guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And only a couple of months later, all of a sudden, Russia needs... mercenaries, they know who 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 of what was just then called The Company. And Dimitri Utkin, who is a fan of the German composer Richard Wagner, takes his call sign, Wagner, in Donbas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
And since he was the main commander, eventually it becomes kind of the catch-all term for the company more generally. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
So when Marat first came in in April 2015, I think it was getting close to about 600 guys. He can correct me if I'm wrong. And Marat was coming in in April 2015. So this is right around the time... that Russia is actually trying to sort of get to a ceasefire and take over these separatist republics at the time. And so when Marat joined, Wagner was a bit different at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
It was one of many different forces that the MOD was using to support these separatists, and no one thought that it was going to become what it became. 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
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
this group of 50 guys or so who had been in Syria, but they also had a unit of Serbian volunteers that were coming through. And so when Murat joined, he was initially part of the international brigade, which was largely Serbian and he had a Serbian commander. Eventually the Serbs would be kind of kicked out, kicked by the wayside later on when we got to Syria.
Shawn Ryan Show
#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary
But when Murad joined, it was a few months before some of the final big battles, before we saw what was called the Minsk II ceasefire between Ukraine and the separatist statelets backed by Russia at the time. Okay, okay.