John Lechner
speaker
145 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
John Lechner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
How many guys did you have gathered to attack Konnikovo at that time?
beginning of the morning because this happened on February 8th, right? February.
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?
It's like a personality trait.
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.
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.
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.
The U.S. was inside the facility.
That they wouldn't get involved.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They denied.
What they were first doing was they were faking artillery training. Because they had set themselves up close.
This tank was on the right side from me. I saw the tank only at the last time before
Showing 61–80 of 145 · page 4 of 8
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