Death Is Our Business: Inside the Wagner Group | John Lechner | Ep. 331

John graduated from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown, John focused on security issues in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey; Russia, and the former Soviet Union. He is an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic). Get John's book "Death Is Our Business" about the Wagner group here: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Our-Business-Russian-Mercenaries/dp/1639733361 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: American Financing ⬇️ https://AmericanFinancing.net/teamhouse or call 866-889-8010 Disclaimer NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 50% OFF!!! Ridge Wallet ⬇️ https://ridge.com/HOUSE for up to 40% off!! The Perfect Jean ⬇️ http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15 for 15% off!! ____________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  And Fergozhin, all of a sudden, is, you know, in the limelight. He officially is, you know, the founder of Wagner. He's in Putin's good graces. And he starts promising ever bigger things. He eventually promises Bakhmut, that he's going to take Bakhmut. And the MOD, too, is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front. And so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of, you know, cool guys in the Russian context of, you know, to bring in men to recruit.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  And so the billboards are going up across Russia, "Join PMC Wagner." So he's recruiting new volunteers. And then he gets access to Russia's prison population. The Project K. Project K.

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• 4:38Speaker 05

  Special operations.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 4:57Jack Murphy?

  Hi, everyone. This is episode 331 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here today with journalist and author, John Lekner. He's the author of Death is Our Business, which came out just yesterday. It's probably, it is the most comprehensive biography of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company. I just finished reading this book this week. It's pretty incredible. There's a lot of stuff for us to go through in here. Some very colorful characters.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:29Jack Murphy?

  John, thanks for coming on the show. And before we jump into the book, I mean, let's hear a little bit about yourself. Like you have a pretty extensive background, you know, working in journalism. And also you speak like eight languages, which really explains why you were able to write this book. But tell us a little bit about like who you are and what led you into the book project.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I think I was telling you, I mean, I love, for whatever reason, my Primary interest in life is languages, linguistics, and like learning new language. I just love it. And I don't know why. It's been since, since I was a little kid.

• 6:15Jack Murphy?

  And according to this handy little sheet that your publisher-

• 6:18Speaker 02

  From the good people at Bloomsbury, yeah.

• 6:20Jack Murphy?

  You speak Russian, French, Sango, Turkish, Georgian, Bosnian, Croat, Serbo-Croat, German, and Chechen.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And working on right now Arabic, ancient Greek, Portuguese. And I should be going in April to the Amazon to hang out with an indigenous community to try to learn their language.

• 6:46Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna write a piece about it. So I just like, I love this.

• 6:51Jack Murphy?

  So yeah, you're like a linguistic cartographer or something.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I, that's what, yeah, that's, that's what I really enjoy. And I mean, like, like, along with that, like, if you're into that, you kind of have a, like, a predisposition to being interested in different cultures and, and, and history.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And, and so I, you know, how I, you know, came upon this, I, I had lived in Russia for a little while. I, I spoke Russian and then went to college and was a Russian studies guy. And then, like a lot of people who have like super niche interests, I went into investment banking and worked on Wall Street for like seven years. And, and slowly kind of allowed my soul to be crushed. And then finally, kind of, I made the decision, I gotta do something that is like closer to what I'm passionate about. So I moved down to DC and, and I had been spending some more time in Africa.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  And so when Wagner first touched down in the Central African Republic in 2018. And, and I remember reading about it. And I mean, there were kind of like two things, like one was, I thought it would be fascinating to find out, you know, that this was a confluence of my interests. Russia and Africa, this, I wanted to know how these people were interacting and adapting to each other, or not adapting to each other. And also, I just like wanted to be the person who writes about. I didn't want other people to write about it.

• 8:29Jack Murphy?

  So, I mean, did you have a job going over there? Or did you really just hit the ground and just start filing like wire reports?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know exactly how like, yeah, basically that. Like, there's a weird thing about, like, when you get in, I mean, I got into journalism, and I still like, don't feel like, super, like, I still feel a lot of kind of imposter syndrome, calling myself a journalist. Because there is this interesting thing about journalism that you can't do in investment banking. You can't just show up in New York and say you're an investment banker and like, manifest it that way. Like, you have to, but like, with journalism, you can kind of show up in a place and, and say, and kind of declare

• 9:19Speaker 02

  yourself a journalist and, and try to figure things out and, and write articles and pitch them. And, you know, they, you know, over time, it takes a lot of effort to get those pitches accepted. And then it takes a lot of effort to move up the, but you can basically kind of manifest it yourself.

• 9:36Jack Murphy?

  As far as like, the, the, the networking part on the ground in some of these countries is very interesting, you know, just, you got me thinking about it. Everything over in, in a lot of these places is based on personal relationships. So like, if you know the right people, if you have the right like, interlocutors and they like you, you can get wild interviews, like, like, you can get introduced to people that, like, it just would not happen in the United States, for instance. Like, you can be a journalist and come fly to America and I want to interview the Delta Force commander. That will never ever happen. But you can fly into the Philippines or Kurdistan, and if you know the right people, you can interview their equivalent of that, of their intelligence service or their counterterrorism unit or whatever.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:22Jack Murphy?

  It's, it's interesting how that works.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  And, and, and I mean, there's kind of a, a side to it that is. Both an advantage, you know, and also a negative as well, which is, you know, specifically when it comes to conflict reporting, you see a lot of freelance journalists.

• 10:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Because, I mean, basically, the model that they're doing is going to a place without, you know, a lot of

• 10:52Jack Murphy?

  No insurance.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  No insurance. And, and, and operating there. And because it's so expensive for the big outlets and the risk profiles and everything, you, you can kind of jump ahead and, and, and get kind of those big pitches by basically putting yourself in danger.

• 11:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Um, and, and so there's always kind of a big risk reward to it, too, that also makes it easier in a place like, yeah, like you said, the Central African Republic, or, you know, Mali, or Libya, these kind of places. So, um, so I first started showing up in the Central African Republic in 2019. And so just a little bit after Wagner had touched down. And I think for me, it was very clear right away that the kind of like overarching narratives about Wagner and Russians in Africa as these kind of omniscient, uh, hyper, uh,

• 11:57Jack Murphy?

  Ten, ten feet tall.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Ten feet tall was just like, was not what was matching what, what I was seeing. And, and so I,

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• 13:36Speaker 02

  I first realized that I had to understand the Central African Republic first before I could understand how Wagner fit into it. And then the book started rolling from there.

• 13:51Jack Murphy?

  We'll get deep into the book, but I mean, since you kind of talked about it a little bit right there. There is something interesting about this book that I thought you teased out, sort of like on a more meta level about warfare, which is you point out that, especially in the chapters about Central Africa, that the way these conflicts sort of like coalesce is in a manner that all of the players involved get to benefit in some shape or form. And I saw that, I mean, I think we saw it all over the world with ISIS. So ISIS came in and these little groups of bandits in Mozambique, Philippines, wherever, got to raise the black flag, try to attract international attention. It brings in press attention.

• 14:35Jack Murphy?

  It gives them legitimacy. It gives the government, you know, they get more American funding, counterterrorism funding to come in and fight them. And it gives US military something to do. Like, we're sending our advisors. Everyone kind of gets something out of it.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hit on the whole book. I mean, like, but I mean, I think it takes. That's why I think it's so interesting talking to you because you have a lot of experience kind of on the other side of it. And so some of these, like, what we think of like these overall structures of conflict kind of become apparent over time. And the thing that was fascinating to me throughout the book is, and we can get into Evgeny Prigozhin and these guys, but Wagner was operating in sort of an interesting, kind of ambiguous area where

• 15:33Speaker 02

  it was both a commercial enterprise, exactly, like, commercial and kind of also part of the state. And so where they were especially effective was where they could sell a narrative back to the Kremlin about, you know, why there are these initiatives that so happen to also involve gold mining and what have you are like within Russia's national interests. And kind of the overarching narrative, well, the narratives that they used were both the

• 16:14Speaker 02

  war on terror, Russia's version of it. Russia has a long history of issues of terrorism at home and, you know, fought a campaign against ISIS as well in Syria. And so Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, he leveraged that to make sure his guys were in, but also kind of this new great power competition narrative, the competition between the US, China, and Russia. And you see how, in the book, how everybody, like you said, positions themselves vis a vis the narrative in a way that is politically expedient or profitable to them.

• 16:56Jack Murphy?

  You also get into a little bit about

• 17:01Jack Murphy?

  What was I gonna say?

• 17:04Jack Murphy?

  Jeez, I'm sorry. I totally lost my train of thought already.

• 17:08Jack Murphy?

  Let's jump into the book.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it. Yeah.

• 17:11Jack Murphy?

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• 19:23Jack Murphy?

  My girlfriend has one of these. My stepfather has one of these. So, I've given them away, too. And our producer, Dmitry, has one. So please go and check out Ridge Wallets. So I think there's, Prigozhin is a great starting point, kind of the main character of your book.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:42Jack Murphy?

  Um, tell us about who Prigozhin is and sort of who he is in the context of like 1990s, early 2000s Russian politics.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, so, I mean, Prigozhin is an endlessly fascinating, uh, character and he was one who I hoped to, I had hoped to actually interview for the book, uh, before his sort of epic demise, but, uh, you know, he grew, he, you know, grows up on the wrong side of the tracks, uh, in the Soviet Union and is sort of a, you know, a thief and a, a street thug. Uh, he goes away to prison, I think at 18, uh, for, uh, robbing and strangul- strangulating a woman. She, she nearly died,

• 20:31Speaker 02

  gets caught, uh, goes, goes away to prison for eight years. He gets out and in the meantime, the Soviet Union is, is basically collapsing. And so he returns to what became again, St. Petersburg, uh, from Leningrad and, uh, and it's, you know, right in the swing of the wild, chaotic, uh, 1990s and, um, uh, Prigozhin joins in with a couple of gangsters, uh, who set him up, uh, as, as the manager of these grocery stores at first. Uh, and then he eventually

• 21:10Speaker 02

  kind of leverages that to, uh, owning several restaurants, um, that cater to the nouveau riche in, in Russia and the Russian elite. So, you know, it's serving the finest champagne and caviar, like the more expensive, the, the better. And, and this is where he, uh, most likely comes in touch with, with a kind of a younger Vladimir Putin at the time. He- He strangely, it's only Prigozhin himself who has claimed that he sold hot dogs.

• 21:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, with his mom, right?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  With his mom, like, you know, like stirring the mustard, apparently. Um, and that the cash was like, it was too much. They couldn't even count all the cash they were making from hot dogs, which, I mean, I could see hot dogs being a good, in the nineties in Russia, that, I mean, McDonald's was making money hand over fist, so.

• 22:04Jack Murphy?

  And I mean, maybe one of the great ironies of your book, if I recall correctly, you point out that Prigozhin probably made a lot more money from food catering than he ever did from his private military companies.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and so, and this is what's interesting is that, like, he, um, so, yeah, like you said, he, he, he, he leverages these, he's a guy of endless ambition and, and networking. He's always trying to meet the next most important guy. Um, and he, he leverages those connections to getting a job providing, uh, meals or get the contract for providing meals to the Russian military and the Russian schools. And that was, in the context of Russia, that's where you, like, manage to skim a lot off the top. Like, that's where the serious money is made. And, and so that's probably always where most of his, uh, cash was coming from.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, we can get into, like, his character later, but the, the, the fact that he was kind of this thuggish, uncouth ex-con with a chip on his shoulder goes into play, uh, you know, who's not accepted by kind of the buttoned up, uh, Russian bureaucracy and, and some of the Putin's old friends, like, really goes.

• 23:25Jack Murphy?

  Like, basically him as a Gopnik?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, yeah, exactly. And so, uh, that will, that will become kind of like increasingly important over, over, over time. But he was always trying to overcome that stigma of basically being like a street thug ex-con from the Russian prison system.

• 23:48Jack Murphy?

  And so how does he then make that jump from being, you know, known as Putin's caterer?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:53Jack Murphy?

  To comic book villain? I mean, how, how does that, how does he make that jump?

• 23:58Speaker 02

  So, I mean, we have to go to, um, and, and I mean, I guess it, it's particularly timely now.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  We have to understand the context of what is now kind of the first phase of the war in Ukraine. And and and also kind of how

• 24:21Speaker 02

  how Putin's regime works. And and so a guy like Prigozhin, he he rises up, he gets these contracts. The Russian state is one, I mean, like any state, but more so than the US is one with

• 24:37Speaker 02

  a high amount of ambition on what it wants to achieve and

• 24:43Speaker 02

  a lot less capacity and resources to do it. And one of the ways that they fill these gaps within the system is that oligarchs will kind of go out and and fund, you know, these patriotic initiatives for the oligarch. They they might not always be making money on it, but it is sort of a form of like virtue signaling, like donating to a political party in a way, right? In the hopes that it's going to reap rewards later on.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And and so if we if we look at what was happening in Russia at the time.

• 25:20Jack Murphy?

  Oh, just gonna fix your mic there. You're good.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Cool. If we look at what was happening at Russia at the time.

• 25:27Jack Murphy?

  You're good.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  In 2012, there are massive protests against Putin's proposed return to the presidency. And and this is coming on the back of

• 25:49Jack Murphy?

  Libya.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is coming on the back of Libya, the Arab Spring, the color revolutions. And Putin eventually returns to the presidency, but he's he's shaken by it. And there are people from all sorts of Russian ideologies are marching against Putin.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  From liberals like Navalny, you know, who, you know, was killed much later on. But also a particularly worrisome group, which are like the Russian nationalists.

• 26:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  And these are, I mean, it's pretty

• 26:26Jack Murphy?

  The Night Wolves.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  I mean,

• 26:28Jack Murphy?

  Is that one of them?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  The Night Wolves were kind of always like pro Putin. There were a lot of guys, I talked to a guy a lot who's in the Russian imperial movement.

• 26:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and these guys are orthodox and want the return of the Russian empire and they want to restore the czar.

• 26:47Jack Murphy?

  Third Rome.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  A third Rome. And to them, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus are the artificial product of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks. And so not only is Ukraine illegitimate, but so is the Russian Federation and therefore so is Putin. Because he's, he's the, the head of a, an entity that is illegitimate to begin with. And the czar is really what we want to go back to. And, and so these guys are marching against Putin and, and, you know, Putin navigates his way through it. But he's shaken, Prigozhin, you know, kind of ever the astute observer puts out like a big documentary

• 27:30Speaker 02

  that called Anatomy of a Protest, which, you know, paints the protesters as, you know, like a conspiratorial, Western, you know, Western stooge.

• 27:42Jack Murphy?

  Oh, revolution.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, right as kind of Putin is sort of consolidating again, his, his position, the revolution in Ukraine breaks out, that what became known as the Maidan Revolution. And as Ukrainians are overthrowing the, the current government, wanting to go on a pathway to the EU and towards the West, the Kremlin makes the decision that they're going to seize Crimea in 2014. There are a number of reasons they do it. It was a very top down decision.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  I mean, as you remember, probably it was a pretty well done operation in, in terms of lack of bloodshed and

• 28:33Speaker 02

  And effectiveness and Russia's Black Sea Fleet is there. It's a warm port. It's important to Russians. Russian history in their mind as it's important as a vacation spot. Russians are fondly think of Crimea. They, they, they, the Russians turn to a mix of special forces and also these kind of nationalistic volunteers, like these Cossacks and guys who come in and kind of provide muscle, security, and like a degree of like, this is a local thing, right?

• 29:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the little green men that they talked about.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Like little green men, but then also just these like tough guys who not, who aren't even, who like could be local, might not be local. And they, they get through, they take it, they, they pass a referendum where Crimea votes for, to join the Russian Federation. Kremlin thinks it's basically done and dusted. But at the same time, there are these other regions, particularly in Eastern Ukraine, the coal mining region of Donbass, where the kind of counter-revolution or anti-Maidan movement is, is taking place. And these people are taking over administrative buildings, declaring potentially themselves separatists.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  And they're expecting the Russian state to come in, just like they did in Crimea. Except the Russian state doesn't want to go in. They don't want to annex these territories. It's not the same thing as, as Crimea. They don't want more sanctions. They don't want more isolation. But Putin also can't like be seen as among the Russian public of like letting these guys in Eastern Ukraine, kind of being hung out to dry. And so the government is, the Kremlin is trying to figure out, how do we like support these guys while not supporting them? And, and so they turn to a number of different things. They start letting through volunteers across the border to, to go and, and support the separatists.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  And then they turn to some of these groups that, that form these mercenaries, quote unquote, at the time, who form these units to cross over to support the separatists. And of course, again, you need a sponsor for these types of things, right? Financially and politically. And so.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  A guy, Yevgeny Prigozhin, comes into contact with a GRU, Russian military intelligence, a former military intelligence officer, Dmitry Utkin, who has a group of about, I think, 50 mercenaries at the time, and that forms the nascent Wagner Group, which goes into Luhansk and starts supporting the separatists.

• 31:16Jack Murphy?

  And then around the same time as Ukraine is happening, Syria starts happening. So how does, he then goes from that initial contract in eastern Ukraine, and then, you know, the Russians make their presence into Syria.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:35Jack Murphy?

  What year was that, 2015?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting, because initially, the guys in eastern Ukraine, they provide support, and then the Russians start sending in more just kind of covert, actual military guys in, and these are also the little green men. And the idea is, they want to, they want to get towards some sort of ceasefire, they want this thing to be over with. The first deal doesn't go through, Minsk 1, it was called, it was negotiated in Minsk, and so they're trying to get another ceasefire in Minsk 2.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  The issue is, is that especially a lot of these kind of volunteers and separatist leaders, who have gone from being like, you know, again, like Gopnik, like mechanic, to like owner of a fiefdom.

• 32:32Jack Murphy?

  Warlord.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, warlord, I mean, basically warlord. They're like, why would we stop? And so Wagner becomes the enforcer, and so they start assassinating these kind of wayward separatist leaders, as the Kremlin decides we have to take control of these kind of separatist areas, and then negotiate and get...

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Some sort of ceasefire. And so in 2015, Minsk II is signed and the front sort of stabilizes. And for a lot of these volunteers, right, they just sort of like, they go home. A lot of them hate Putin, actually, and they they're disappointed that the Russian state is now in eastern Ukraine.

• 33:21Jack Murphy?

  I thought it was interesting that you kind of keyed in on the liquidations on their side. Because I remember hearing about at the time, some of people, either they were involved in too many war crimes, or they were involved in the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines. But those people like got disappeared, a lot of them, because it was just going to be too much of an embarrassment.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, they got moved. I mean, Strelkov, who was kind of a very famous guy, the guy who like shot the first first shot of the war, was another one of these volunteer guys who was involved in the Malaysia air downing. Yeah, they quietly moved him like into Russia. They couldn't they couldn't disappear him. But there were a number of, again, like militia leaders, Kosic leaders, one guy Batman, was his kind of call sign nickname. He was gunned down. And then a Kosic leader, his car exploded on the way to his wedding. Car bomb went off. I mean,

• 34:25Speaker 02

  they were all just disappearing, not really disappearing, disintegrating in in mysterious ways. And we know that Wagner was part of at least one from internal documents.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  But anyways, kind of the opportunity, right, is diminishing in eastern Ukraine as the front is settling. And like you said, like luckily enough for Prigozhin, Russia overtly intervenes in Syria.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And I want to say September 2015. Uh, and you know, one of the reasons that they do it is because they're isolated and they want to, uh, force the Americans into sort of a joint, uh, counter terror operation against ISIS. And so Prigozhin's lobbying to get his guys in. They come in, in very late 2015, early 2016. No one really knows what they're doing and like why they're there. They do some training of like local Assad forces. And then they get hit by, um, uh, they get hit, I think by a missile or something and a bunch of guys die.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  And the MOD, the Ministry of Defense panics and they decide to send them home. And, and then it became very clear that, uh, that Russian air power alone was not going to, uh, do the job against both the rebels against Assad or, or ISIS. And so Wagner comes back in and they partner with a, um, a local Syrian PMC and they start an offensive on Latakia and, and eventually they take Palmyra.

• 36:08Jack Murphy?

  This is the, the desert hawks?

• 36:11Speaker 02

  This is the desert hawks, yeah, of the Jabir brothers.

• 36:14Jack Murphy?

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• 37:11Speaker 06

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• 37:59Jack Murphy?

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• 38:42Jack Murphy?

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• 39:56Speaker 02

  And there's not a lot of love, as you probably saw in the book, between like the Syrians and the Wagner guys.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  And this is, this is going to be a recurring theme. So they take Palmyra and then again, they're sent home. The MOD basically says, thanks for everything.

• 40:13Jack Murphy?

  And then they lose the city again.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  And they lose the city. They take all the credit, which is always an issue in Russia, right? Because credit, credit means like allocation of resources, you know, being on Putin's radar.

• 40:27Jack Murphy?

  I mean, it was interesting in a lot of these offensives in Syria where it seemed like they'd use the Wagner guys as like shock troops. And then afterwards, they'd bring in Spetsnaz dudes to do like the video interviews, you know, with the Russian press like, oh yeah, we captured Palmyra. It's all great.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that was, that was one of the things and, and the Wagner guys were even frustrated too, that they felt that the Syrians were taking advantage of them. And kind of the Syrians would kind of, you know, slowly disappear, you know, from the action. And, and so they felt like they were being, you know, used. Yeah. And, and, and all sorts of ways, um, being thrown into it.

• 41:11Jack Murphy?

  So this is my point that I forgot earlier that maybe we can come back to here. And this might be a good point is that we have this perception, I think, a lot of us in, in America and in the West that.

• 41:26Jack Murphy?

  Wagner is the Kremlin's proxy that they, you know, they issue their orders to this PMC and they go out there and fulfill the mission in Central Africa or Syria, wherever it is, which is generally true, but you point out that it's a little bit more complicated than that, that Wagner is also profit oriented and they are rent seeking. So they're out there looking to do for-profit operations and sometimes just doing their own thing. And that brings us into the Arcady oil fields and the Kenoko facility specifically.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think, and I feel like you probably under, in your audience probably understands this better than the most, like, you know, like, how does any government function? And I mean, especially, you know, how does Russia function? Putin has the same 24 hours as we have, right? The guy is not able to sit in front of a map and just be like, I want us to be in the Central African Republic. There, you know, Russia is filled in the same way that America is filled with entrepreneurs who are going out there and kind of lobbying for what they think policy should be. And

• 42:42Speaker 02

  very often they're lobbying in a way that is kind of politically, you know,

• 42:47Jack Murphy?

  In their self-interest.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  In their self-interest. Or, I mean, like, our capacity for rationalization is infinite. And so, you know,

• 42:56Jack Murphy?

  That's why we think he's making, he's a chess master, moving these pieces across.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  But it's also, you know, like, it's not even, and I try to explain too to people, like, you know, Russia is now a version of a capitalist society, right? And so, as Americans, we don't think it's counterintuitive that you can kind of further the well-being of your country and make money at the same time. Like, that is American, you know? You know, like Lockheed Martin will never say, "We're a profit-driven company." They will say, they will say,

• 43:31Jack Murphy?

  Protecting the homeland.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  We're protecting the homeland. But they're also profit-driven. And so, you know, there are versions of this in Russia that might look a little bit more, you know, in some cases, like a little bit more kind of rough around the edges, I suppose, and not as polished. But, you know, that is kind of how things are also done at a, at a basic human level. And so you have both the supply and the demand and you have a lot of, you know, guy, you can have guys like Prigozhin who are going out there and trying to push things. Right, right. And, uh, and so, yeah, like you said, they get, they get kicked out of Palmyra.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  They, uh, the Assad loses Palmyra again. The Russians lose it again without Wagner to ISIS. And so Wagner i- is brought back in, but this time Prigozhin is, signs a deal directly with the Assad government, saying, you know, we'll go after, uh, we'll go after ISIS, but we get, uh, 25% of the proceeds from any oil and gas assets that we capture in this, uh, or that we kind of return. Uh, and, you know, this sounds good. They, they, they come in, yeah, they, they launch an assault, they retake Palmyra, they're heading straight, you know, straight to the Euphrates. ISIS at this point is falling back. You

• 44:51Speaker 02

  have at the same time, the, the SDF, the Kurds backed by the Americans, uh, coming in through, uh, the northeast. Yeah. Yeah. Initially heading towards Raqqa at the time, I think, as the, as the Russians in Wagner are moving up. And at a certain point in late 2017, uh, a couple of things are coming together, right? Um, uh, it, it seems clear that ISIS is collapsing. Uh, and it seems also, uh, clear from letters Prigozhin was sending to Assad, uh, that he wasn't getting paid for, uh, all the money that he was investing in this, uh, offensive

• 45:35Speaker 02

  on ISIS. And he's complaining. He's like, you know, we've recovered X, you know, oil fields and, and yada, yada. And, uh, you know, you're not making us whole. I've, I've, I'm losing a lot of money here. And, uh, there are, uh, everyone knows about, in Syria, everyone knew about these conoco. Facilities, which are sort of like the, the big moneymaker. It was ISIS's big moneymaker for, for fuel smuggling, sort of the prized asset. And, and so as it looks like ISIS is collapsing,

• 46:12Speaker 02

  both groups now are kind of positioning themselves for what the post ISIS future is going to be. And so the SDF starts getting away from Raka and, and down into Derazor and the Russians are rushing up and the SDF takes Konoco first. And, and you might know better than me, but I mean, there was obviously some, you know, US special forces who, who are around. And, and Konoco lies right on the other side of the Euphrates, which also happens to be the deconfliction line between Russia and,

• 46:56Speaker 02

  and Assad forces and the, the SDF and, and US. And, and so that poses a problem for Prigozhin, who really wants these Konoco facilities. You want to just go into the?

• 47:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause I mean, he, he's, he thought that we would just give it up, right?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  I think so. So I think so. And so, so, so what happens is Prigozhin decides he's going to take a gamble. And I've talked to like a bunch of people in Wagner about how they think it probably went down. I'm sure you have some.

• 47:34Jack Murphy?

  Do you think, do you think like, uh, it was like a fait accompli on Prigozhin's part? Like he's like, we'll go do this and the Russian government will have to back us up?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I think it was, I think it was part that. I think, I think, and, and I mean, this is also how Russia works too. I think, I think that he thought that at the time that the Americans would just fall back. And he probably got like a wink and a nod from some guys in the Ministry of Defense saying, if it works, it works.

• 48:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  You know?

• 48:12Jack Murphy?

  That's a very Russian.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, eh, you know, and if it doesn't, eh, you know, it doesn't work. And, um, and, and, and so I think he got some sort of signal like that. And, and, you know, if it does work out, big victory. If it doesn't, you know, it's mercy, you know?

• 48:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's a PMC.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  It's a PMC, whatever. Um, and so he decides to take the gamble. He's going to try to take Konoka from, from, uh, the SDF and the Americans. And, uh, and, and this is on February 8th, 2018. At the, in the evening, they, they, they gear up and they start, uh, rumbling towards closer, I think to midnight, if I remember correctly. And, uh, the, the Americans see this whole buildup happening. And they're calling over the deconfliction line to the Russian MOD being like, is this, are these your guys? And, and three times, uh, the Russians say, no, they're not. And, and so I think it was on the third time, and again, we probably have people listening

• 49:18Speaker 02

  in who, who, who know the American side, uh, much better than I do. But on, on the third time, the, the, the Americans just got permission to

• 49:27Jack Murphy?

  Hose them.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  To hose them. And, I mean, you probably know, I mean, I think it's fair to say that the amount of firepower that the Americans brought to this force was overwhelming and, and probably not necessary, other than to send a message. Because, I mean, this was probably like, I would say a force of maybe like 300 guys most, and, you know, there were some tanks and, but it was mostly guys, just, you know? Uh, and, and, I mean, we were flying in.

• 50:02Jack Murphy?

  Apaches, sort of overhead, just machine gunning those dudes.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so it, it was just an absolute, just, they, they got absolutely destroyed. And then finally, in the early hours of the morning, the Russians, you know, ask for a pause so that they can go collect their dead. And that was that. Prokoshin never tried to cross the Euphrates again. And he never really talked about it again. Like, when I talked with the guys in Wagner, like, it wasn't, you know, for them, it was like, okay.

• 50:40Jack Murphy?

  Another day in the office.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, moving on. Yeah. And it wasn't really, it was something that was kind of like legendary within the community, the Wagner kind of community. But it was not something that they, you know, that they brought up.

• 50:54Jack Murphy?

  And then he starts making the jump into Africa, right? Around?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yes, a little bit before.

• 51:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  And so this is where I think we start getting into all the different kind of versions of Wagner, right? And so, and I think, probably, I think, the way that I think about it, too, is that the relationship between Wagner and the state depended on the contexts and the geographies, the theaters in which they were operating. And Ukraine, I mean, obviously then, and even more obviously now, is something existential to the Russian state.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And so Wagner was working quite closely with the Ministry of Defense. And there are all other kind of types of security institutions that are there, right? The FSB, the GRU, SVR. And the same in Syria, too. That was an overt, there was nothing covert about Syria. It was an overt Russian military intervention. No one was trying to hide anything. Wagner's usefulness was much more...

• 52:14Speaker 02

  plausible deniability back home that the the official statistics of Russians soldiers coming home in caskets was much lower because they were contractors over there. And so the Russian public wouldn't question too much, why are we in this far flung location?

• 52:32Jack Murphy?

  Do you think that's a lesson that the Russians learned? I mean, and I think you may have pointed out even in the book, it's like the Russians don't need to mimic the West in order to come up with something sneaky. But I mean, do you think they saw the Blackwater model and saw that, oh, that's something we can use to affect Russian foreign policy without as much blowback?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  I think so. I think so. I mean, especially in Syria, I think that I think that was a more conscious decision because that was the first, that was the first time that Russia, the state, was really moving outside of what it considers its near abroad of, you know, the former Soviet Union. And I don't think that there was an incredible amount of support at that time for intervention in

• 53:26Jack Murphy?

  Military adventures.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Military adventures. And so Wagner kind of helped. And there's, you know, there's also that very specific kind of Russian experience in the 90s in Chechnya and, you know, the kids coming home in caskets and the mothers who were a very effective political force in Russia. And so, and so they, you know, I think that they also, you know, probably chance, I mean, they, they surely were watching what America was doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. And they were certainly picking up on how many contractors were over there.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  We know that because General Gerasimov even, you know, mentions the use of Western, you know, PMCs in their minds to overthrow these governments and what have you. But I think, I think that they saw, I think that that's how they That they recognized that as something useful and that was probably worth imitating. And I think that Prigozhin too, now that he had this mercenary force underneath him, kind of envisioned himself as a sort of Eric Prince or, you know, maybe even Barlow or, you know, one of these kind of big entrepreneurs in this space.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  But to go back to kind of what you were saying, once you get outside of Syria, like Russia's footprint in these other places is very light. And, and we know that because just the state isn't really there. And, and so I talked with one, one guy who was the head of Prigozhin's gold mining operation in Sudan. And the way that he told me about kind of how everything went down was that in 2016, a, a probably a GRU guy goes to Prigozhin in St. Petersburg. And it's like, hey, I got an opportunity to like dig gold in Sudan.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  You interested? And Prigozhin obviously is like Prigozhin. And so he's like, yeah, hell yeah. And so he sends this guy who I talked to, Mikhail Potyopkin, to go there. And this guy, again, this is like, as we get back to like, what is like, who are these guys? And like, are they 10 feet tall? Like, they're kind of just like buddies in St. Peters. Like, they're all kind of part of the same like little network. And then, you know, someone is like, oh, my cousin is like real good at this. And I'm like, okay, send him to Sudan. See if he could like do a gold feasibility study, you know? And like, and so like, he goes down there and he realizes that these guys are all like swindlers. And he goes back to Prigozhin.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  He's like, it's not going to work. And he's like, you don't know anything about gold, which is like true. He didn't. And so then, and so then he's like, go back and figure it out. And so then he goes back to figure it out and they end up like inking this, this deal between Sudan and Russia that, that, that Russia will provide military trainers.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Not something that is like totally unknown in the West by any stretch. Uh, and, and would also get these kinds of concessions in gold mining. Uh, and, and that's kind of what kicks it off. And then Prigozhin starts sending out his associates doing business development in a way.

• 57:03Jack Murphy?

  The, something I want to get into and maybe a surprising part of your book was you talk about 2018 and Wagner Group in Madagascar, which I had not heard about before. And this may be a good point also to point out that Wagner was not just a mercenary organization in the sense that like sending in shooters and fighters, right? That there's a more robust support system there that like he brought in like political analysts for some things, um, got information operations, disinformation operations and like, it sounded like some election, uh, election racketeering, uh, going on in Madagascar.

• 57:43Jack Murphy?

  Like, like I think you said something that like they try to work with the, um, the incumbent.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:49Jack Murphy?

  But then they see that's not going to work. So they go to like his competitor. They ally with some guy who's named like Dr. Doom or the prophet of doom or something. He's like a cult leader.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  My whole, yeah, he was the cult leader.

• 58:00Jack Murphy?

  It's like, this is, it's like, this is, this is fucking crazy.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Yeah. There's so many, every story is just like, it's, they, I mean, they were just always up to just crazy insane stuff, but like, yeah, they, uh, the, the president of Madagascar shows up in Moscow and he meets with Prigozhin and then the Russian leadership and talks about how he wants, you know, their help. And so Prigozhin has, says.

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• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Oh, I have these like political guys who, political consultants who can go down. And, and, I mean, this is, so all of these things, like, like, I think, like, what we're thinking of when we're thinking about Wagner, like, these are all, it, it, it's, I mean, I'm sure the audience knows this is kind of like well-known, but like, there wasn't, like, there was no LLC, Wagner LLC, registered somewhere in the Cayman Islands, right? It was, it became a collective term for all of the companies that, and shell companies and what have you, that revolved around Pragoshion.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  And, and this guy was like, if, if he had... A love in life, it was to create shell companies and like and have ever more complex like like financial like uh financial structures and and so uh he but but a lot of it was born first like in Russia, right? And so there's that scene as well uh uh with a friend of mine uh who who went undercover at the Internet Research Agency, which became like super famous, obviously during the 2016 president, US presidential elections for interference.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  And the start of this whole like troll farm thing was kind of just to go after Prigozhin's like opponents at home and just like post about them and to like post Shit posting? Yeah, just like shitposting and like shit and and like giving like good comments about like his catering company, you know, like and then but he's he's he he is to his credit, he is incredibly entrepreneurial and he understands and he's always thinking about how can I like create synergies between these various businesses that I'm I'm trying to get into. Um, and so he he develops like this slew of services that can be offered. And so in this in Madagascar, it's political

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  consultants and they're coming out of that St. Petersburg scene around Prigozhin. And so yeah, they go down and like, I mean, they they don't know anything about Madagascar and its politics. And so like you said, they first start backing and they make like a lot of mistakes that like,

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  like, I don't even think like deliberately, just like accidentally breaking the law and stuff like that, like, you know, like, starting a newspaper and like. That was like illegal. They like give out these pens that like misspell the president's name. And, uh, and then they end up like realizing that he's gonna lose. And so then they, oh, and so then they also like have this new candidate. It's like a lot of guys running in this election. So they're going around and trying to find like the right one. And they, there's this guy Pastor Myholm who, uh, runs the Church of the Apocalypse and

• 1:03:10Jack Murphy?

  That sounds promising.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like 20 years earlier, God told him that he would be president of Madagascar.

• 1:03:17Jack Murphy?

  As one does.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  So that's why he's running. And the Russians like give him money. And like, obviously, that doesn't like work out. Um, and, and, and so, but in the end, one of the guys who they, you know, get, ended up winning. But, you know, it wasn't, yeah. I mean, and I think again, we get back to like, you know, these guys are often bumbling through.

• 1:03:41Jack Murphy?

  You could write that into a novel and people like, come on, dude, stop. Like, that's too over the top. That would never happen.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, they continue to do like, you know, in, in car, they're opening breweries and like vodka distilleries and then like, like, like attacking the other brewery that's operating there. I mean, they're always up the.

• 1:04:04Jack Murphy?

  So they, they got in their hooks in pretty good. It sounds like Sudan was sort of like their foothold in, in Africa.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Sudan was initial, but like very quickly after that, they, they go on this quick like period of like, and so in, in, in Central African Republic, they, uh, they're, uh, someone in the Central African Republic reaches out to them saying, hey, are you interested in, in something similar? They, they, they get everything put together and they get that through in 2017 too. And so they touched down there in 2018. Um, and then, I mean, probably six months after that, um, Prigozhin's meeting with Haftar in Libya. And so they're

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  like, he, and, and, and, you know, for every one of those, they're, they're like throwing things against the wall, right? Like, we should see if there's anything in Zimbabwe. We should see if there's anything in like Congo, South Sudan. And so they're out there trying and, and these are the ones that like stuck.

• 1:05:11Jack Murphy?

  Um, CAR, I mean, that's where it sounds like, you know, these guys really became like comic book villains. I mean, you have the quote in there from somebody like, yeah, they told us to kill the women and children because it'll terrorize the rebels and, you know, like, holy shit. Um, tell us about, you know, the black Russians, these like death squad ops that they went on. And they had these commanders with names like Zombie and Lotus. I mean, it's.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Central African Republic was also, I mean, that's where I spent my, the most of my time. And I met a bunch of the guys over there, the Wagner guys over there. I traveled like throughout the country and I think it was, I think it was the most interesting case just in general, right? Because, um, they, uh, they, yeah. So, I mean, the first thing that they do when they show up there is the, the, the CAR government owns just like basically the capital. And it's all these predatory armed groups in the countryside. And so Prigozhin and his, gets his guys together and they decide they're going to like get a peace deal between the CAR government and all these armed groups.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  And, and, and there's a fun section about how they go about that. Um, and they do it and, and, and they, they, they bring them all in and it's looking good. They're gonna, now there's kind of territorial integrity, figure out how to, how to do mining. And, and they, I mean, this was also a good, like, peace was good.

• 1:06:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Um, uh, and, but, you know, the, the elections are coming up. It's very destabilizing that the agreement can't hold. And, and six of the armed groups join together to form a, a new armed coalition. And they, they start going down to take Bengi. And I was in Bengi at the time, uh, when, when this was all going down and, um, And that's when like things really changed and and Wagner's mission went from like a training mission like it was in Sudan, decision was made to defend Bengi. Um, and so they they they bring in like 1500 to 2000 guys from Syria.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  And and it becomes the Syrian operation just in in car. Um, they defend Bengi, which like even like humanitarians and everybody like quietly thanks them for doing. Um, and this is the weird things that happen on the ground, right? And then they go on the counter offensive. Um, and it's very effective. And like Central Africans, for the most part, are very happy unless they're from uh, some of the groups that are perceived to be as supportive of the armed groups. Because like you said, the Russian, uh, the Russian doctrine around counter insurgency

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  is not like the same, uh, uh, as kind of some of the other models. And so in some of these communities where they perceive them to be as supportive of the armed groups, very often it's ethnic. Uh, they, again, they they employ these tactics which are just, you know, scare, you know, create intense pain, scare the shit out of people. Uh, there's a lot of killing. Uh, in the belief that they won't support armed groups or harbor armed groups again. And, um, in the case of of the Central African Republic,

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  um, it is, uh, it is relatively effective and also relatively popular among the the the general population that.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  You know, for them, they've lived in precarity and in conflict for like 20 years like this. It's not, the idea of people dying is not, it's also the poorest, least developed country in the world. Like, you know, uh, at least one in five babies doesn't make it to one. I mean, so this is a, you know, and, and so for, for most people, it's a question of, you know, is my life better under the armed groups or Wagner? Am I able to go to my field and cultivate and, and do a little farming and, and go to the next village without getting killed and robbed?

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  And, uh, for a lot of people, that was better despite the, the brutality that, that was going on at the same time.

• 1:09:50Jack Murphy?

  Uh, let's jump a little bit into Libya.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Jack Murphy?

  There's an interesting, there's a lot of interesting stuff.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Libya has a, yeah.

• 1:09:58Jack Murphy?

  With, with Saif Gaddafi and then Turkish intelligence gets in sending Syrian mercenaries. And like, this is like also kind of mind boggling.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there, yeah, I think one of my favorite, not favorite, I mean, it's always tough. It's like my favorite and tragic moment in the book.

• 1:10:17Jack Murphy?

  Your favorite atrocity in Africa?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:19Jack Murphy?

  Thank you, John.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite tragic moment, um, is, yeah, like you said, um, so, uh, Prigozhin kind of, well, I mean, we can go into, there's that interesting section where kind of Prigozhin is actually muscling his way in likely a little bit into the Libya portfolio, uh, from some guys who are connected to, uh, the FSB, uh, some other kind of P, smaller Russian PMC rivals. And, um, and, uh, but he, he does get in there. He, he, he strikes a deal with Haftar and the Libya.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  I always wanted to put Wagner in the overall context of these conflicts, right? They are a piece of the puzzle. They never are the reason that there was civil war in Libya or the Central African Republic. And so to put them in the context of Libya, I wanted to talk about all of the different mercenaries who or security entrepreneurs or contractors, what have you, who are operating. And I mean, when it came to Haftar's attack on Tripoli and started in April 2019, I mean, he had the armed groups, rebel groups from Darfur.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  There were the like ex-Janjaweed guys who had fought the Darfur armed groups who were fighting alongside them. There were the Chadian rebel groups. You had

• 1:12:00Jack Murphy?

  Toregs.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had Toreg. You had Wagner coming in. All of this is kind of backed by the UAE financially. Some American security entrepreneurs are around and about. And initially, kind of the offensive is going well. They're on the outskirts of Tripoli, the southern suburbs called Ainzara. But as the government in Tripoli is increasingly kind of worried, they sign a memorandum of understanding with Turkey on maritime boundaries that just so happened to like, I think draw

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  like a straight line from like, you know, Tripoli to Turkey that like, you know, that like puts all of like Cyprus in, you know, all of the East Med is now all of a sudden like Turkish like territory.

• 1:13:02Jack Murphy?

  Oil going out, it's coming in.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so in exchange, Erdogan taps the Turkish intelligence, the Turkish military advisers are coming in, the Bayraktar drones start coming in, and then through Turkey's own

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Very close to the state PMC Sadat. They start shipping in Syrian mercenaries from the territories that are under Turkish control in Syria. And then

• 1:13:35Jack Murphy?

  It was a small strip.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Small strip that they had moved, yeah, that they had buffered into a lot of guys from the, um, from the SNA and, uh, kind of these al-Hamzat militias who were over there.

• 1:13:46Jack Murphy?

  I mean, that sounds really bad. Like the, the Italians have this saying, the slaves of the slaves.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Jack Murphy?

  If you're a Syrian mercenary working for a Turkish PMC in Libya, like that sounds like not a, uh, not a, yeah, your life expectancy.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, and there were guys I interviewed for it and, you know, they, it was always interesting to get people's different perspectives of the different conflicts in which they were in. And, and for these guys and were, I mean, they, they fought in Syria. Like they were saying, for the most part, like, it's just like a lot of like, you know, shooting like this. And they were like, yeah, the, like the artillery was like never accurate. So we didn't have to worry too much. And all of a sudden they're on the Libyan front with like, you know, effectively like Turkey versus Russia and UAE and the Libyans have a lot of money. And so, you know, I don't know if you've ever managed to go through Libya,

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  but like it's, it's very different. Like, uh, the militias like have a lot of money. And so they have like,

• 1:14:55Jack Murphy?

  Like this is oil money?

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just like billions of dollars swimming around there. And so, uh, so it's very different. And so they show up on this front line. There's drones going and they're like, what the hell did we get ourselves into? And, uh, and some of them are like, want to go back. And the Turks are like, you're not going back. And oh, and they, then they find out like that they don't really have weapons and there's a lot of like Captagon and drugs getting smuggled in, which the Libyans don't like. The local Libyans don't want them there. Um, and so it, it's, it's a total mess. And

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  of course, the Turks had like delegated the recruitment to the, to the Syrian commanders.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  And so the Syrian commanders, and so it just becomes like a, a, a, a cash scheme.

• 1:15:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  And so the Syrian commanders start sending guys over, they collect the salaries and then the guys aren't getting paid. It's just a total mess. And then Wagner starts recruiting Syrians from Assad controlled territory. And so now they're bringing in Syrians and, and there's this, this was kind of the tragic moment I'm talking about where uh, you have this uh, situation where Syrians who had fought each other in Syria are now facing off against each other in Tripoli.

• 1:16:28Jack Murphy?

  Surreal.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  In Libya and it's surreal and it, and it, and it was one of those things where you're like, you're like, like it feels significant, but I can't quite put my finger on, on why.

• 1:16:40Jack Murphy?

  And you, you put your finger on it maybe earlier on in the book where you talk, uh, if I recall correctly, I mean, I may have read this elsewhere about like the period of Italian history where of mercenary fiefdoms.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Jack Murphy?

  Like it feels very much like that sort of like, you know, early Renaissance era.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that this is like where I was trying to get at, you know, the subtitle is like the new era, right? And, and that was always tough to uh, try and tease out as well because we've had mercenaries for as long as we know. And, and so, you know, people always want, what, what is new? And then what is new is that we're returning to something kind of in a way.

• 1:17:24Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  But what, what is different is that the, the, the technology has changed. The logistics has changed and, and, and the resources that are at uh, these people's.

• 1:17:39Jack Murphy?

  It's global.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  It's global. And, and so this became kind of in a way like the dark underbelly of globalization, right?

• 1:17:46Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  The same, the same processes that come together that allow Amazon Prime to give me, you know, deliver something same day to me are also making it possible to ship, you know, Syrians relatively easily from, from Syria to another location to fight. And, and the, the distances is, is collapsing.

• 1:18:11Jack Murphy?

  Let's jump into, at least I feel like we should touch upon briefly Mozambique and Mali.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:19Jack Murphy?

  Those were two other places that Wagner went into, tried to go into.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Mozambique, again, this is during this period of kind of intense expansion, you know, trying to get everywhere. And in one of the places where they successfully managed to get in was in Mozambique. And just immediately, the mission is a disaster. And I talked to some Russians about it, and they said that actually, in this case, like Prigozhin was being warned by people in the MOD that it's like, not a good idea to go in.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  The politics at the time were not conducive.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  There was a big peace deal that was about to kind of come together after like decades of conflict between Frlimo and Renamo.

• 1:19:25Jack Murphy?

  Are those organizations even still around?

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy Cold War relics. And then there's a big division between the police the police and the army. And they hate each other's guts. And then this thing, this kind of unknown thing is kicking off in the north in Cabo Delgado, where at the time, like, no one really knows what's going on, but there's there's an insurgency, and it's getting close to these massive, like, LNG fields that are owned, not owned, but being exploited by the French.

• 1:20:08Jack Murphy?

  LNG is light natural gas?

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  And so, of course, Prigozhin's like, perfect, like, let's go in. And he inks a deal and they show up and like, they don't, like, no one knows why they're there. Like, it's not clear what the-

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• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  What the mandate is, the guys decide that they want to actually go like to Cabo delgado, where I can't remember if it's like around this time that they declare themselves an ISIS affiliate. Yep. And so all of a sudden it's like, you know, oh my God, you know, what's going on in Cabo delgado? And so they show up, they're in this kind of dense jungle that they're not prepared for. They have a bunch of drones that they can't use and they basically fall into these ambushes, lose a bunch of guys, and...

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  You know, I like, I think, and I put in the book, like, I think the standard kind of story was like, oh, they lost a couple of guys and, or they lost guys to failure, like, and they leave. And I think kind of like tied to like our whole previous, like what we were talking about previously, like Prozhen was like pretty used, like he had a high tolerance for losing guys if it was worth it, right? Like, I mean, this is after Hasham, right? Where he, Hasham the Konikov fields in Syria. And, and they had lost, you know, like maybe around 10 guys or something like that in Mozambique.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Um, I think the reason that he pulled out was that the, the, the, first of all, there was one institution that, that hated him. Uh, and then, uh, I don't think that he saw a way that he could sell it back to the Kremlin in a way that would result in kind of meaningful subsidies and support.

• 1:23:42Jack Murphy?

  You point out repeatedly, I think, that for Russia, Africa was just not a priority. Like, which, which makes it kind of interesting that he was gallivanting all around North and Central Africa.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  So like the thing that I wish, like I, I was, would have been, and like, I know the guy and he talked to me for the book and he like saved this whole quote for like after the book gets published. But, uh, he likes to think of himself, he works at, for a Russian PMC and he likes to think of himself as, you know, and he is, uh, a historian and kind of an intellectual as well. Um, and the way that he described it, he was, he told me, he was like, John, you have to go back and look at how Russia conquered Siberia. He said, the way that it happened, you know, this is like the 16th

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  century, is a Cossic leader, he goes to the Tsar, Yermak, uh, is the guy's name, and he says, you know, give me the troops and, and give me the, the funds and I'll go conquer Siberia for you. And the Tsar goes, that's interesting. Prove to me that you're successful and then I'll give you the funds. And so Yermak goes to like the boyars, the, the, the barons around and he raises up the money from them to, to, uh, to go out. And then he starts conquering Siberia. He starts running into issues when he, when he's at the, at the Chinese border. So he goes back to the czar and says, you know, like, I need, I need your help.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  And the czar says, sure, we're taking this over. We got it from here. And he gets kicked out. And, and he, and, and, and, you know, the, the guy, you know, the guy who works at the Russian PMC is like, in this sense, like what he, like Prigozhin was working as he was, in a very Russian style. In, in, in Africa is how he put it. And it's sort of the Francis Drake mob, right? Where like you go and you plant the flag in the name of the state and you're hoping that the state is then going to like come in.

• 1:25:50Jack Murphy?

  It's, it's interesting with Prigozhin and also with Eric Prince, who sensed that bitterness. Like neither of them, I think, really understood at the time that they were being used as tools by the state apparatus, right? It was only in retrospect that.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and I mean, I think, you know, and, and, and Eric is a good example of a guy too, who goes out there and, and is looking, you know, is looking forward for these.

• 1:26:19Jack Murphy?

  Opportunities.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  These opportunities that you can then, uh, you know, the primary client is really the, you know, your own government, right? And, um, you know, for a PMC, what, what is kind of, you know, what I would think is sort of the sweet spot is you have to find uh, these places that uh, present a threat of some sort, right? Or a need of some sort to your home government. The threat can't be so high that the government wants to just send in its own troops. But it can't be like too low because then why would they fund you?

• 1:27:04Jack Murphy?

  It reduces your prestige.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you have to find something that's like, kind of right at that perfect, like we should be there, but like not too much. And that's like the sweet spot.

• 1:27:13Jack Murphy?

  Low intensity conflict.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Low intensity conflict in Africa is, and that's why everyone is there. And, and so, you know, you, you talk to Eric, um, and, and, and some of his guys. I mean, they were oscillating around, you know, orbiting the same opportunities.

• 1:27:31Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Prigozhin got into Mozambique.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  Because he was able to underbid those guys so much because he was initially able to like-

• 1:27:39Jack Murphy?

  Labor is cheap.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, labor is cheap, but also he had that preferential access to Putin and he had deep pockets himself that he was willing to invest like crazy money in for a long-term investment. And Mozambique, though, he couldn't get it to work for whatever reason, on the economics and on the political.

• 1:28:02Jack Murphy?

  So, Ukraine take two.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Jack Murphy?

  We get into the 2020s. Tell us a little bit, this was an interesting thing, interesting lead in. Tell us about like Russian imperial myth-making in that period and how it kind of intersects with Wagner.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's sort of the like imperial boomerang effect, right? Where the policies in the periphery kind of come back home in a way. And so, over time, I think the Kremlin more generally and Putin as well, like come to kind of believe their own myth-making about Russia as this powerful state, about, you know, the West and Ukraine. Putin is

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  going to be this next, you know, the leader that returns Ukraine back to the fold. And so, at least, you know, Putin himself becomes like also personally obsessed with this, especially during COVID-19. He's like a famous germaphobe.

• 1:29:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  He's-

• 1:29:23Jack Murphy?

  He isolated.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  He's very good at isolating. Anyone who wants to see him, even like his best friends, you know, they have to quarantine for like three weeks. And Prigozhin isn't a best friend. You know, Prigozhin's a guy who can like get his, he's an acquaintance and like he can get his ear. Putin likes him because he's like rough around the edges, you know, he's a little bit different. Uh, and he'll do whatever, you know, Putin says, um, but you know, he's not, he's not like the closest confidant. And so, and as you can imagine, like Prigozhin too, has made a lot of enemies as he's been going around, doing all of the crazy stuff that he does.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  Uh, and so, uh, you know, the decision is made that, you know, that the, from the, from the Russian perspective, the Ukrainians are not willing, you know, to come to a final resolution on Crimea and, and eastern Ukraine. They need to be, you know, the regime in Kiev needs to be overthrown. They think that this will be a relatively easy thing. All the guys, all their spies who are basically like not working that much in Ukraine are just sending them back like, yeah, they love Russia over here, you know, what have you. And so they're, they're believing their, their own kind of, it's, it's a, it's a circular information space, right?

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  They believe what they're producing, the information that they're producing.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  And so the, for the operation, the Ministry of Defense initially does not want to go have Prigozhin there. He, he's a thorn in their side in so many different ways. And so they try to raise their own, what they call PMCs, but I mean, they're really kind of just volunteer.

• 1:31:09Jack Murphy?

  But I, I mean, they thought this was, this was a three day military special operation. You don't, you don't need to bring in these PMCs.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, they, they raise their PMCs for their, for their own reason that, you know, they think if we, if we need them, we, we got them, but they really thought that this was going to be very quick, like you said, like three days.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  And, uh, it very clearly was not. And, and so, uh, it, it's already going pretty poorly for the Russians, like, uh, I mean, almost, I mean, immediately and, and, and a few weeks in, and, and, uh, Prigozhin finally gets the call that he's allowed to get his Wagner guys in. And he was pissed about not getting in because this is, I mean, this is where you make real money, right? I mean, this is the full scale war. Central African Republic is nothing to the Kremlin. This is, this is everything to Putin too.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  And so he gets his guys in ironically, like they're mercenaries, contractors, what have you. Um, but these guys are like, have, have had more experience than, you know, most people and most soldiers in the Russian military, even some of the special forces guys, right? They, they've been in the interim, they've been fighting on the ground in Syria, throughout Africa. It's not going to be the same thing by any stretch, but they have more experience. And so they start to make a difference and Prigozhin, uh, all of a sudden is, you know, in the limelight. He officially is, you know, the, the, the founder of Wagner. He, he's

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  in Putin's good graces and he starts promising ever bigger things. And he eventually promises Bakhmut, that he's going to take Bakhmut. Uh, and, and the MOD too, is, is looking to get as many guys as they can now for the front. And so they start leaning on Wagner as this kind of brand of, you know, cool guys in the Russian context of, you know, to, to bring in men to recruit. So the billboards are going up across Russia, join PMC Wagner. Uh, so, so he's recruiting new volunteers and then, um, he gets access to Russia's prison population.

• 1:33:33Jack Murphy?

  Project K.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  Project K. Um, and again, we don't know like exactly, I mean, it was, it was a wink and a nod from, uh, the presidential administration that Prigozhin gets this right to do something which is illegal in Russia. And this is always a double edged sword, right? Because

• 1:33:54Jack Murphy?

  If it works, you're good to go. But if it fails, you know, you're going to prison.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  You're going to prison. And this is always the world in which he's operating, right?

• 1:34:01Jack Murphy?

  You, you lay out this like totally insane scene where like a helicopter comes and lands in the prison, dude gets off and it's like, we have a special mission for you.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, and it was really, and he, he knew how to ham it up. Now his ex-con.

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  His history as an ex-con comes into play because he can speak like the language of

• 1:34:22Jack Murphy?

  Prison Russian.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  Prison Russian. Um, and, and he shows up, uh, at, at prisons across the country. And he gives the deal of, uh, you know, if you, if you fight for me for six months,

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  you, you go free, your, your criminal record is expunged. He is open, he says, you know, my losses are worse than Stalingrad. Um, and, uh, and that any deserters will be shot on sight. But I mean, he, he taps into this old Soviet history of

• 1:35:02Jack Murphy?

  We will sacrifice.

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  Sacrifice and some of the language and, and so the Soviet, in, in the Soviet during Stalin, during, um, World War Two, he swept the Gulags for prisoners and they had penal battalions as well of, you know, people who became politically unsavory, had their own special units that they would throw into the worst parts of the fight. And the whole idea was that you atone for your sins, uh, with blood.

• 1:35:28Jack Murphy?

  Oh.

• 1:35:28Speaker 02

  And literally this language actually shows up again in the contracts, uh, that these guys are assigned. That it's a chance to atone for their sins. You know, to, with blood for, you know, Mother Russia. And so up to, I think 50,000 guys end up, uh, taking the deal.

• 1:35:49Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  And, and, and, uh, Prigozhin, they go through, uh, they go through a very intense two week training with like Russian special forces instructors and like very kind of experienced Wagner instructors.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  And then they're thrown into the front and uh and and you know, they're used as kind of human waves going going at first uh going first, jumping over and and attacking.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  And you know, the life expectancy was uh pretty short. I think about probably half of them uh perished.

• 1:36:32Jack Murphy?

  You you talk about in the book how they basically use these dudes as like scouts like to go out and see where the enemy is.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Jack Murphy?

  And like they'd all get wasted and like, oh, okay, we'll send out another group. So you find out a little bit more. Oh, that group gets wasted. And like, okay, so we know they're sort of around that area.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, and it's and the thing and I, you know, I was I was there on the front and I was talking to the Ukrainians who who were dealing with it and it is obviously incredibly inefficient, but it is an effective method if you have unlimited access.

• 1:37:07Jack Murphy?

  Meat power.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And and so, you know, for the Ukrainian, I mean, and and you know, we can get into, you know, should they have even been defending Bakhmut the first place and not have, you know, pulled back to a more strategic position. But uh for, you know, the the ratio was cra- you know, probably like one Ukrainian for every four Russians or something like that was was, you know, getting casualty'd out.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  But in the Russian mindset, they they were using an expendable force and the Ukrainians were losing some of their kind of most talented, experienced guys uh in this fight because again, like you said, they're used to find the positions. You know, if you send out ten guys, you know, eight might, but then two of them do jump in the trench trench. They get, you know, one or two, and it's just endless.

• 1:38:06Jack Murphy?

  Attrition.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  It's just attrition and uh.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  And this is how Prigozhin is going to to take Bakhmut. And but ultimately, he his star is ascending. He's everywhere. He's known internationally now. Bloomsbury is like, wait, we have a book about this guy like. Like, um, and I'm sitting there like, oh, my God. Um, but, uh, you know, his ego is getting increasingly. I mean, he's already a narcissist and and very egotistical. It's getting, you know, it's reaching all sorts of new heights. Um, and and then the Ministry of Defense cuts off his supply of Russian prisoners,

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  which is effectively cutting off his means of taking Bakhmut.

• 1:39:01Jack Murphy?

  Did they? I I mean, did they do that for an an actual reason? Like, I I have to think it's, uh, not because of like unmoral grounds, but.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  It wasn't because the the Ministry of Defense was also recruiting prisoners.

• 1:39:14Jack Murphy?

  It's there. There was. This was about the time where the Russian MOD starts taking over the private military companies. Right?

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  It's pretty soon after that. So they cut they cut off Prigozhin. There's continuing. The MOD itself is continuing to recruit from prisons. So it was not a moral thing. And.

• 1:39:31Jack Murphy?

  But it's like MOD is taking control of this.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Yes, MOD is taking control of this. And because the MOD has more leverage, they get the Russian Parliament to like.

• 1:39:41Jack Murphy?

  Rubber stamp.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Rubber stamp, like the legal backing for them to be doing this. And so Prigozhin is getting kind of squeezed out and and he's going in and he can't get to Putin. So what's the best way for him? He he he is good at recognizing the cards that he has and and like the advantage that he has over his opponents. And and where he has advantage in this situation is on social media.

• 1:40:09Jack Murphy?

  Posting through it.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  Posting through it. And and, uh, you know, he's going out there and he's giving updates from the front, like much closer than like the Minister of Defense Shoigu is is ever going to go. And Shoigu can't post on Telegram. He's the Minister of Defense. And so he starts going after the Ministry of Defense about how they're cutting them, not giving those guys enough ammunition.

• 1:40:32Jack Murphy?

  Where's my ammunition?

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  Where's my ammunition? Like, these decadent bureaucrats in their mahogany offices, you know? They've forgotten, like, the, you know, the average Russian soldier, you know? Like, you know? And so, I mean, that's kind of his route to, to get back onto Putin's radar, and it, and it's not working. And, and then ultimately, you know, the, the thing that, like, snaps is the MoD is pushing for all people fighting in Ukraine to now re-sign under contract with the Ministry of Defense. And so for Prigozhin, who, who had mentioned, uh, in one of those, like, many Telegram messages that he's sending, and he does it in such that way that he's like, you know, some people

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  are saying that, uh, that, you know, having all this big mercenary army, like, makes me political or something, you know? And it's like, oh, really? Like, some people are saying? And so he recognizes it. And now, and now what makes him political is about to be taken away from him. And I think tho- and, and if you look at kind of his personality already at this point, like, he is not some dude who is going to, like, fade quietly into the

• 1:41:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, he's not gonna accept a quiet desk job.

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  Like, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no log cabin in Siberia. That's like waiting for him to, like, chop wood before the, before the helicopter comes in saying, "We need you for one last mission." So, like, uh, and so he, he always, you know, when in doubt, he doubles down.

• 1:42:07Jack Murphy?

  Well, speaking of which, let's talk about the mutiny.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, and so this is where he, he basically decides

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  That the way that he's going to get himself out of this situation with the Minister of Defense Shoigu is that he's going to kill him. And so Bold move. It's a bold move. And, and so he, he turns, you know, his force, they cross,

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  you know, from Ukraine into, into southern Russia. They take over the southern military headquarters. Rostov. In Rostov, yeah, Rostov-Donetsk. And

• 1:42:54Speaker 06

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• 1:43:02Speaker 06

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• 1:43:46Speaker 06

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• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  He's looking for Shoigu and, and Shoigu isn't there. And so then he's like, they've taken the thing.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  And I think it's so tough to tell like how much of this was like at some point he's kind of clearly freewheeling, you know, like, um, but so they, you know, they're, yeah, they're, they've taken over the southern military command headquarters. He's not there. Some of the Russian generals are trying to like, talk with him and, and he's just like, give me Shoigu. And they're like, we can't do that. And he's like, okay. And so then, and then he declares kind of this march for justice and he turns his guys from, from there and they start heading up the highway to Moscow. And I talked to one of the participants for

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  the book and, uh, and, and, and I was like, what, what was your mission? And they were like, it was very simple. Like, we were going to try to take over the Ministry of Defense. And like, in the process, Shoigu was gonna like, have been shot, you know, accidentally. But like, the whole thing was like, kill, kill the Minister of Defense and create some sort of fate accomplice, which sounds crazy that like, oh, because you killed my Minister of Defense, I now have to name you my Minister of Defense. And, and I think too, that he, that Progozhin at that point was also hoping that the Russian military was gonna like,

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  rise up with him. And, and that wasn't happening. They're getting closer to Moscow and it's like closer and closer to the point of no return. Um, and like, for the first time, he just like, calls something off, which is like, not his tendency to do.

• 1:46:11Jack Murphy?

  He did that on his own.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  I mean, Lukashenko, the, the Belarusian leader,

• 1:46:16Jack Murphy?

  brokered the,

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  brokered, uh, some sort of agreement. I think he was probably looking for

• 1:46:24Jack Murphy?

  An exit strategy.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  An exit strategy. And, um, and so he calls it off.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  And you know, for the next couple of months, everyone's like waiting, like, what is gonna happen? And, and he's moving around everywhere, trying, you know, they're making a move to Belarus because Wagner can't be in Russia anymore.

• 1:46:44Jack Murphy?

  Right, right. They've been exiled.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  They've been exiled. So he's doing this move to Belarus, but he's also trying to like lobby for them to, to keep the Africa operations. He's trying to prove, you know, uh, that, that he is still the man to, to do that. Um, and then ultimately three months later, uh, he gets on a private jet with Utkin, his number two guy and, and a bunch of top lieutenants. And, and they take off from Moscow heading to St. Petersburg and midway through, plane explodes and, uh, he comes crashing back down to earth. So, yeah.

• 1:47:25Jack Murphy?

  And yeah, Putin's now famous quote that he was a man with a complicated fate.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Jack Murphy?

  His eulogy.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, he even said something, I mean, I'm trying to remember exactly what he said. He said, he said, he did a lot of things. Sometimes he did things for me, like, yeah, he was a man of like complicated faith. But yeah, it was like, yeah, it was, yeah. And then like, uh, uh, I think a little couple of weeks later, Putin's like, oh, they did the investigation and like someone was drunk with a grenade on the plane.

• 1:47:59Jack Murphy?

  Sounds legit.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  And it's, yeah. And that was, you know, that, and there, and that, and that was, um, I mean, there was no effort to like disabuse.

• 1:48:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. They don't want to disabuse.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  They didn't want to. Yeah, I don't know. It was, so there, there was no reason to. I mean, it was an extraordinary way to, to do it. It was meant to be.

• 1:48:17Jack Murphy?

  Are you getting my point?

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I think, I think, I think though, that Prigozhin, again, this like speaks to his ego and at, at the time, because people were like, didn't he like expect? And I, I don't think that he actually did. I think that he somehow thought he had gotten away with it.

• 1:48:36Jack Murphy?

  That his balls were so big.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think because it only, because only that way can you understand. How the mutiny could have occurred in the first place, because again, how are your balls so big that you like turned on Moscow?

• 1:48:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  Like you had to be already like, you know,

• 1:48:51Jack Murphy?

  Pretty out there.

• 1:48:52Speaker 02

  Outside of few, yeah, a few standard deviations outside of like the norm in terms of like, yeah, and so, and so kind of, yeah, inevitably, he thought that he got away with it in a way. And, and he was the last one to find out, I suppose.

• 1:49:08Jack Murphy?

  Post-Priogian, what is the, the present for Wagner? I mean, does it still exist?

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  I mean, yes, but it's, uh, it's still very much, I mean, now it is very much under the control of the MoD. And it depends, and again, we get back to like each intervention was very different. And so, um, you know, we didn't get a chance to talk too much about Mali, but, um, you know, if we think about like Africa, right? The, in Libya, after Haftar's failed offensive, there's a ceasefire in October 2020. But the Turks and the Russians on either side who are kind of guaranteeing a stalemate. Nothing's really moving.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

  And, and so there are Wagner guys who are stationed there. The MoD shows up and it's like, hey, here's, you know, here's a new contract. Most people sign.

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  Sudan at that point had like gone through its own issue of outsourcing like security to paramilitary and is in like a full scale civil war with the RSF.

• 1:50:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  And the Sudanese military. But Wagner is still in, in Mali and in the Central African Republic. And in Kar.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  They they show up. And again, this is a place where like it wasn't important. And so Prigozhin had the ability to, there was no natural check on him. And so he could expand into whatever opportunity he he saw fit. And so they had breweries, vodka distilleries. I mean, they were in my like logging, mining, they were doing diplomatic activity. I mean, they were doing, I mean, it was like a kind of a British East India Company. Yeah. Thing going on. And so the guys in the military like show up. And you can imagine, these are like, you know, kind of bureaucratic guys. And they look at all of this and they're like, we don't understand what the hell is going on here.

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  Only the guys who are here do. And like, if it's not broke, like, let's not. Yeah. It's not, it's like, not important enough for us to like, do it, you know. And so like, I think some bank account numbers shifted in terms of where things are getting transferred. And like, some, some people were replaced, but it was left largely intact. And then in in Mali, where you have this kind of mix of MOD advisors and Wagner on the ground going after only 2,000 guys, going after two different kind of jihadist armed groups. One Al Qaeda, one ISIS affiliate. And then they decide to also take on Tawarik separatists in the north.

• 1:52:05Speaker 02

  It's a full deteriorating situation. They, they don't really know like how to hand it over because resources too are already constrained with everything that's going on in Ukraine. And so they're kind of like trying to fix the plane in in the air, like as we speak. And so, but again, like all of the, all of these things still now are, you know, there's no kind of like independent aspect to to the legacy Wagner right now. It's all in one way or another, kind of subordinate to the state.

• 1:52:50Jack Murphy?

  I mean, that kind of leads us to like a bigger question for Russia, but also for the rest of the world. Like, we had these kinds of conversations, I feel like, through the War on Terror years about many conversations, maybe over-philosophizing about it. You know, the state losing the monopoly on violence and these private military companies, and is the state becoming irrelevant, or, you know, subsiding and, you know, giving way to these transnational corporations? There's like this very large, like, conversation to have about that. In the aftermath of Wagner, because Wagner does sound like it's kind

• 1:53:29Jack Murphy?

  of like the press's worst nightmare about Blackwater, which did some bad things, also did some good things, but, you know, but Wagner was really like off the rails and sounds like it became that, well, I mean, jeez, the mutiny is the epitome of it, right? That you create this monster that's gonna come after you.

• 1:53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:51Jack Murphy?

  What, I mean, what conclusions do you have about the private military company industry and the future of warfare, you know, after writing this book?

• 1:54:05Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, I think, I mean, it's obviously here to stay, and I think it's probably only going to grow from here. If not for the only reason that Wagner itself and Prigozhin and his associates went out there and they created a market for their product as well. And now that Wagner has existed, it's, again, everything is, it's like everything, right? It's tough to close Pandora's box. Once, once something is out there.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Even if Wagner itself goes away, there are going to be other people. And I think what I what I tried to do with this book as much as humanly possible is make it about like the actual people. Because I don't love it when we talk about like, you know, what is Russia doing or like, what is China doing? Like these anthropomorphized like, Right. You know, China is in Africa because, you know, minerals and and I want like Wagner was a bunch of individuals who go out there and try to do like crazy things. And so inevitably, there are going to be others who, now that this market has been created,

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  will try to imitate it in some way. And so, you know, the Sadat, who was providing the Syrians is kind of experimenting in that way. There are UAE officials who are thinking about their own foreign legion. Rwanda does kind of a lot of similar things in Africa in terms of the model of kind of providing troops for mineral resources. And I think overall, this is existing in a context of ever increasing outsourcing and privatization under this second Trump administration.

• 1:56:19Speaker 02

  That's clearly the direction that I think they want to go. I'm still kind of for the same reason that we were talking about earlier. I'm still not sure yet if like for some of the top markets for private security like in Africa, they would are are interested actually in even funding like American PMCs to be over there or if they're just like not interested at all. And, you know, one, if they're not interested at all, it's it becomes difficult for, you know, these PMCs to be operating. But I think that it is an increasingly competitive space too, and one that will that will only grow.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  I, I, what was I gonna say? I think.

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  You know, ultimately, too, like the supply of guys who will be available for this is probably going to increase as well.

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  You'll, I mean, if, if there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, I mean, the, the,

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  you're going to see a lot of guys hovering around.

• 1:57:37Jack Murphy?

  Out of work soldiers.

• 1:57:38Speaker 02

  You're going to see a lot of out of work soldiers who will be looking for something on both sides, who will be looking for things to do. So the Ukrainians, I think if there's a ceasefire, will very much get, get involved in this space as well. But, I mean, like, I think sometimes the, the whole, like, is this a threat to the nation state is kind of sometimes overblown because I don't want to, our reference point still is very much the nation state and, and we still very much operate, even, even though at the edges it might not really exist, it's still like the referent for us, right? And, and.

• 1:58:22Jack Murphy?

  And the PMC is still the tool of the state rather than the other way around.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  It's going, for the most part, they're going to this, they're going to states looking to, like, like, they're, like, I think, like, the, the theor, the theory of, like, a, I mean, it happened, I think, a couple of times in the past, but like, the theory of, like, a PMC going into, you know, like, eastern Congo and just like setting up like the country of Wagner, right? Like, that would be, the international system would pretty quickly, like, seek to destroy that. Because, you know, the, the, the paradigm is still.

• 1:59:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, the system deploys red blood cells.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very, very, yeah, we like.

• 1:59:13Jack Murphy?

  Or white blood cells.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they, they don't like, they, they don't like that. And so I don't think we're, we're at any point where anything is, where any kind of entity like that is in position to replace the nation state either. But, um, will things be further and further outsourced?

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:59:35Jack Murphy?

  And we'll create a world where conflict is just more rife. Like, are we moving back into this sort of medieval system where city-states sponsor mercenary companies and deploy them out against each other? Especially Syria, you know, it seems like a harbinger of that, I think, in some ways. The way these groups came together, like LLCs, conflict, conflict.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  I mean, it's an interesting question because, and I think it's important, and we mentioned it earlier, like, PMCs are not the, like, the source of conflict, right? They're a symptom of conflict.

• 2:00:16Jack Murphy?

  There are some tangential exceptions where, and the fear is that they are exacerbating the conflict.

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And so they, they certainly can exacerbate, right? And they, they.

• 2:00:32Jack Murphy?

  For profit-driven reasons.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  For profit-driven reasons. I don't think, and, and like, having spent a lot of time in the central, there, there's also this theory that like, you know, PMCs will, like, are incentivized to keep a low-grade conflict going because that's how they stay hired. But like, I mean, you know, like, anyone, you can't maintain anything, like, anyone who like tries to, like, anyone, like, just try managing like three people and you realize that you can't like maintain a low-grade conflict at like a perfect, and so like, what we attributed to like, what people attributed to, you know, Wagner, like, creating, you know, more armed group insurgents because of its methods.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, they weren't doing that on purpose. It was the result of what they were doing. Um, but like you said, it can really exacerbate like the war economies. And, and a lot of these places, I mean, Carr is one of them, the Sudan border with Chad. I mean, kind of to bear arms is how you live life. That's the political economy and that might expand.

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

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• 2:02:36Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:02:53Speaker 00

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• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, might expand to more areas. Um, but, you know, how these things are solved is ultimately a question of politics and, and the equitable distribution of political power and resources from, you know, among the, the people of, of the state. It's the only way.

• 2:03:51Jack Murphy?

  So the book Death is Our Business, it's out now.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:03:56Jack Murphy?

  People can find it wherever they shop for books.

• 2:03:59Speaker 02

  Wherever fine books are sold, yeah.

• 2:04:00Jack Murphy?

  They're out there. Um, anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to get into? Anything that I missed?

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think, I, I, I think we've covered like

• 2:04:10Jack Murphy?

  Quite a bit.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've covered pretty, pretty much the, the story. Yeah, it was a pleasure.

• 2:04:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So guys, go check out the book. Um, like I said, I, I read it this week. It's definitely worth your time. And this guy, John, speaks like eight languages. And he was, and that, this is really, I can say this as a writer and as a researcher, like this is one of the stumbling blocks for any type of book like this is like, I am not bilingual or trilingual or whatever it is you are. So there's a difficulty in like reaching across these cultural lines. Like I can't talk to Russians and Russian, you know, I can't talk to Afghans and Pashtun. I have, I have this problem. And so you were uniquely positioned, I think, to write this.

• 2:04:57Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 2:04:59Jack Murphy?

  And, and I think it comes through.

• 2:05:00Speaker 02

  Uniquely stupid too, in a lot of respects as well.

• 2:05:04Jack Murphy?

  It required, it required a little bit of that, uh, that egotism, right? To, that I can go into CAR and I can write this book.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Jack Murphy?

  It's okay. And a little bit of ambition is a good thing.

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:17Jack Murphy?

  Uh, so yeah, questions. What do we got, Demetri? Uh, from M. Corbin. Have they ever used Wagner to pull people east of the Urals for the Russian military?

• 2:05:29Speaker 02

  Have they ever used Wagner to pull people with?

• 2:05:33Jack Murphy?

  He means like, like in Siberia or Central Asia? Yeah, to pull people east of the Urals for the Russian military.

• 2:05:39Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Um, I mean, the people within Wagner come from all across Russia. Their recruiting offices were from all across Russia. I'm not sure that there's like a, a massive geographic distinction.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  In terms of where people are from and, and, and fighting on the front. Like a distinction between like, it's mostly like European Russians or like, you know, people from Siberia or, or what have you.

• 2:06:16Jack Murphy?

  Um, one more question, Adam. Um, have you ever read the book written by a Russian ex Wagner guy? Uh, who fought in Palmyra? Um, it's called The Same River Twice, published in 2022.

• 2:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, I know, I know Murat, who, who wrote that book, uh, very well. And, and Murat also, uh, shared his story, uh, again, and I, I cite his book and his story, his books, but also, uh, he shared, uh, some, some extra stuff as well, uh, for this one.

• 2:06:55Jack Murphy?

  I got a question. What's the deal with, uh, uh, Pavel Prigozhin now?

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  I don't think so. Pavel Prigozhin is Evgeny Prigozhin's son. Um, I think there are kind of these like rumors that he's like the head of Wagner now, but I mean, again, I mean, if anything, I think the guy's like in a golden cage where the agreement was probably that he can, you know, keep some money and like, uh, not like do anything, uh, that would be, you know, considered a, a threat. And so if he does even have a role, I don't think that he, I think if anything, it would be as like a, a figurehead, but I've

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  never seen anything to show that he even has like a serious role at the moment.

• 2:07:50Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, we will see all you guys, uh, on Tuesday for our Patreon subscribers. And if you're not subscribed, there's a link down in the description and you can subscribe for just $5 a month and get access to all of these episodes ad free. And if you subscribe for $10 a month, we'll send you the patch, the Team House Podcast patch. And we'll also have some links down in the description to Death is Our Business. Um, I hope you guys will go and check it out and we'll see you next week. So take care everyone out there. Have a nice weekend.

• 2:08:26Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this, you can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the Team House. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has

• 2:09:06Jack Murphy?

  helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers, and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop.

• 2:09:47Jack Murphy?

  And additionally, they got t-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag.

• 2:09:53Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection,

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• 2:11:21Jack Murphy?

  Egg, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show.

• 2:11:27Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 2:12:10Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain, or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

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• 2:12:57Jack Murphy?

  So, we really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 2:13:03Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 2:13:48Speaker 06

  inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at Extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:14:03Speaker 07

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• 2:14:39Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help. Right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 2:15:22Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensura. Learn more at Extensura.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:15:39Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at OnDeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:16:10Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extensura. Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extensura is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extensura is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 2:16:53Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensura. Learn more at Extensura.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:17:10Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at OnDeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.