Marat Gabidullin, born in Siberia and raised in Uzbekistan, served in Soviet airborne forces until 1994, then spent three years in prison for shooting a crime boss. After security work in Russia, he joined the Wagner Group in 2015, rose to lead a reconnaissance company, and was badly wounded near Palmyra in 2016. He later advised the ISIS Hunters Battalion and fought at Khasham, but quit Wagner in 2019, briefly ran a Redut detachment in Syria, and left disillusioned. Gabidullin’s 2022 memoir denounced Wagner and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; he now lives in France. Journalist and researcher John Lechner reports from conflict zones and specializes in Russian PMCs. His book Death Is Our Business (Bloomsbury, 2025) charts the rise of Wagner, following earlier work such as Beginner’s Chechen and upcoming Circassian and Sango language texts. A former policy analyst for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and an emerging-markets banker at Deutsche Bank and Lazard, Lechner holds degrees from Harvard (Slavic Languages) and Georgetown (MSFS). Fluent in five languages and conversant in several others, he is a recognized expert on Russian foreign policy and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Washington, DC. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.roka.com - USE CODE SRS https://www.americanfinancing.net/SRS NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://www.expressvpn.com/SRS https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.hillsdale.edu/SRS https://www.shopify.com/SRS https://trueclassic.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Guest Links: Marat Gabidullin FB - https://www.facebook.com/share/15TBVmf2mt/ Book - Moi, Marat, ex-commandant de l'armée Wagner - Les dessous de l'armée secrète de Poutine enfin révélé https://a.co/d/csNMjFH Book - Ma vérité https://a.co/d/bLZYssf John Lechner X - https://x.com/JohnLechner1 IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnalechner/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/john.lechner.5 Book - Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare https://a.co/d/7rKXhnI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
This is my first ever interview with an enemy combatant, a commander from Russia's infamous Wagner Group. There'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.
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, and the caliber of men that they had working there. Enjoy the show. Murat Gabidullin, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to meet you. 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 Gabidullin. 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.
You worked closely with Wagner boss Prigozhin, advising the ISIS hunters in Syria and fought in the battle of Kasham in 2018 against U.S. in Kurdish forces. You then quit Wagner 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 has taken place in Paris.
Obviously, we couldn't get you to the US, so we came here to meet you. It's really weird for me to say this, but you are an enemy combatant. He fought in a skirmish in Syria against 40 US soldiers. 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 asked to be connected with you.
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. Thanks for having me.
I want to dive in on a little bit of the history of Wagner Group. And so how did it start?
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.
Some of my friends told me that in Russia emerged some kind of structure where I can start my life from the very beginning.
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