#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary

Marat Gabidullin, born in Siberia and raised in Uzbekistan, served in Soviet airborne forces until 1994, then spent three years in prison for shooting a crime boss. After security work in Russia, he joined the Wagner Group in 2015, rose to lead a reconnaissance company, and was badly wounded near Palmyra in 2016. He later advised the ISIS Hunters Battalion and fought at Khasham, but quit Wagner in 2019, briefly ran a Redut detachment in Syria, and left disillusioned. Gabidullin’s 2022 memoir denounced Wagner and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; he now lives in France. Journalist and researcher John Lechner reports from conflict zones and specializes in Russian PMCs. His book Death Is Our Business (Bloomsbury, 2025) charts the rise of Wagner, following earlier work such as Beginner’s Chechen and upcoming Circassian and Sango language texts. A former policy analyst for the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and an emerging-markets banker at Deutsche Bank and Lazard, Lechner holds degrees from Harvard (Slavic Languages) and Georgetown (MSFS). Fluent in five languages and conversant in several others, he is a recognized expert on Russian foreign policy and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Washington, DC. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://www.roka.com⁠ - USE CODE SRS https://www.americanfinancing.net/SRS NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://www.expressvpn.com/SRS https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.hillsdale.edu/SRS https://www.shopify.com/SRS https://trueclassic.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Guest Links: Marat Gabidullin FB - https://www.facebook.com/share/15TBVmf2mt/ Book - Moi, Marat, ex-commandant de l'armée Wagner - Les dessous de l'armée secrète de Poutine enfin révélé https://a.co/d/csNMjFH Book - Ma vérité https://a.co/d/bLZYssf John Lechner X - https://x.com/JohnLechner1 IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnalechner/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/john.lechner.5 Book - Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare https://a.co/d/7rKXhnI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:12Shawn Ryan?

  There's a little bit of a language barrier with this one, so bear with us, because there is some very interesting information in this episode. If you can bear with the language barrier, I think you're going to get a lot out of this and learn a lot about Wagner Group, how they came about, their training, and the caliber of men that they had working there. Enjoy the show.

• 1:40Shawn Ryan?

  Marat Gabidullin, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to meet you. John, thank you for being here. Wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier. Sure. Marat Gabidullin, born in Ural. You grew up in Uzbekistan and joined the Soviet military in 1984. Served as a paratrooper officer and commanded a recon company. Then joined Russia's Wagner Group, starting as a grunt, fighting ISIS in Syria, and rising all the way to commander. You worked closely with Wagner boss Prigozhin advising the ISIS hunters in Syria and fought

• 2:22Shawn Ryan?

  in the Battle of Kasham in 2018 against US and Kurdish forces. You then quit Wagner in 2019 authored a book about your time with Wagner and since then you have moved to France where you are now seeking asylum. This interview is taking place in Paris. Obviously, we couldn't get you to the US, so we came here to meet you. It's really weird for me to say this, but you are an enemy combatant. And you fought in a skirmish in Syria against 40 US soldiers, special forces soldiers, and I'm friends with a couple of those guys and heard their account of that battle.

• 3:06Shawn Ryan?

  And then we ran into your friend John Lechner and asked to be connected with you. So I just want to thank John. Freelance journalist, writer and researcher who's been in conflict zones across the globe. Author of the book Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries in the New Era of Private Warfare. Expert on Russia's moves in Africa, their foreign policy and private military companies. So, thank you again for being here.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 3:35Shawn Ryan?

  I wanted to dive in on a little bit of the history of Wagner Group. And so, how did it start?

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Well, so as Marat was telling you, Wagner really began in 2014 and Marat, as he was saying, he joined the company, as they call it, they only on the inside call it the company. Wagner Group itself as an entity never existed. It was sort of just a nickname that was given to it.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  Some of my friends told me that in Russia emerged the some kind of structure. You can start...

• 4:22Speaker 04

  My life from the very beginning.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Wagner initially came out of the war in eastern Ukraine. And its founder was a guy, Evgeny Prigozhin, who Marat has mentioned a couple of times. This is a guy who was born in the 60s in the Soviet Union and sort of grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He was a petty thief and kind of a small-time gangster in his teenage years. And he goes away to prison at the age of 18, if I remember correctly, for assault and robbery. He and his gang were on a street in Leningrad, which became St. Petersburg.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  And Prigozhin came up behind a woman and strangled her until she almost died. And then they robbed her and he was caught and sent away for nine years. And when he gets out, the Soviet Union is collapsing around him. And he returns to his native St. Petersburg, where first he falls in with some gangsters again in the 90s, which Marat had kind of alluded to previously with these various crime bosses and things. And so he falls in with some crime bosses himself, and they set him up as a manager of some grocery chain, grocery store chains. He eventually turns that into becoming a restaurateur of some very fancy restaurants

• 5:51Speaker 03

  in St. Petersburg that a younger Vladimir Putin enjoyed. And he leveraged those relationships to eventually getting the job of providing meals to the whole Russian military and the Russian school system.

• 6:06Shawn Ryan?

  So he became close with Putin through his restaurateurs?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Well, as you'll see, kind of as we go through the story, he manages to connect with Putin. Putin likes him, but he's never able. He would always say that he was about one handshake away from Putin. And so Putin gets to know him, he he kind of likes him because he's uncouth, he he he he's kind of has that sort of rough kind of attitude, which is somewhat refreshing, given kind of the bureaucratic elite that are surrounding Putin. And and so Prigozhin eventually gets uh this this job to provide the meals for the Russian military. Um, and so that that

• 6:50Speaker 03

  takes us to around 2014 or so, when uh, well, we have to go back a little bit uh, a little bit further. So, you know, while he's doing this work as a contractor, he he also is looking for different ways that he can look good and get on Putin's radar. One of the ways he does it is there are massive protests against Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. Uh, and and so Prigozhin puts together this kind of documentary that that shows how all the protesters are fake, basically supported by the West. And, you know, he finances it himself. It's not like Putin is doing this, but it's a way to to virtue

• 7:34Speaker 03

  signal and show, hey, you know, I'm furthering the cause of, you know, Putin's cause and and Russia's cause more broadly. And so, as I said, Putin is coming to the presidency again in 2012. There are massive destabilizing destabilizing protests against it. And he navigates it and and and and gets back into power, but pretty much fairly quickly thereafter, another revolution is happening, this time on Russia's border in Ukraine, what became the Maidan Revolution in late 2013. And for Putin, he he sees these two things as connected,

• 8:14Speaker 03

  right? It's it's the West basically trying uh to overthrow Russia, overthrow his own regime, and they're doing it wherever they can. And so the Kremlin in early 2014 makes a decision to annex Crimea, which is a peninsula on the Black Sea that is part of Ukraine. It had beforehand been part of Russia during the Soviet period, but it went to Ukraine during the Soviet Union, and Russia's Black Sea Fleet is there. This is the only warm-water port that they have, and it's important. And so amidst all of this chaos, the Kremlin decides to annex Crimea. They use special forces to do it.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  But then they also rely on these kind of like right-wing Russian nationalist chauvinist kind of the folks in sort of Russia's own nationalist militant movement to provide some of the security on the peninsula for the annexation. And after its success, the Kremlin thinks everything's done and dusted. But kind of unbeknownst to them at the time, or kind of something that was unexpected, was that amidst this revolution in Ukraine, there's also an anti-Maidan movement, especially in eastern Ukraine, in this region called Donbass, which is economically and culturally closer to Russia. And so as Ukrainians are taking over government buildings

• 9:42Speaker 03

  to overthrow the government of Yanukovych, anti-Maidan protesters are taking over these buildings in Donbass, in Donetsk, and in Luhansk. And this puts Putin and the Kremlin into a difficult situation. Because unlike Crimea, they didn't want to annex eastern Ukraine, Donbass. It's not that important to Russia. But Putin is kind of boosting his nationalist credentials by annexing Crimea. It gives a big kind of rally-around-the-flag effect. And crucially, this is a rally around the flag from people who, these nationalists, these Russian nationalists and militant guys

• 10:24Speaker 03

  who were against Putin's rule in 2012 and were marching against him. And so he can't be seen as letting these separatists in eastern Ukraine hang out to dry. But he doesn't want to risk further sanctions from the West, international isolation. And so the Kremlin has to think very quickly, like, how do we support but not support these separatists in eastern Ukraine?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  And this is where Evgeny Prigozhin, the guy who's providing the meals for the Russian military, becomes acquainted with another guy, Dmitry Utkin, who is a former GRU officer, Russian military intelligence. He fought in Chechnya. He was stationed near Estonia. And he had just come back and almost got in big trouble for this kind of misadventure with the Russian PNC in Syria. These two guys come together and they sign an agreement

• 11:27Speaker 03

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

• 11:53Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting because when I interviewed Eric Prince, we had spoken about Eric Prince earlier, they reached out to Eric Prince to try to help build Wagner Group off of Blackwater. Did you know that?

• 12:08Speaker 04

  To tell the truth, I am not completely agree with this opinion. Firstly, Wagner Group has nothing to do with the private sector.

• 12:24Shawn Ryan?

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

• 12:28Speaker 03

  So as Marat was saying, I mean, it's word of mouth, basically. And I think Marat will tell you later as well. The initial group of Wagner... Uh, whi- which came out of uh this uh PMC that had the year before gone to Syria. So there, before Wagner, there were a number of kind of what we would think of as like western style PMCs that had popped up. Uh, and largely in response to the Somali piracy crisis, which I'm sure you remember. Mm-hmm. Um, there, there was an opportunity for these Russian contractors to, to protect

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Russian ships that are going through the Gulf of Aden. Uh, a number of Russian contractors were even working in Iraq during uh the, the war on terror as well. The, the issue is that mercenarism is illegal in Russia technically. And so these firms would uh basically establish themselves in like Hong Kong or, you know, the Bahamas or something along those lines. And then the, the client would provide them with the weapons when they showed up going through a third, a third country to protect the ship or, or what have you. Um, and there was this one group called Moran Group where uh Dmitry Utkin, after he left uh the service, went to go work for.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  And, and one of the founders of Moran uh got a contract with a, with a Syrian oligarch in 2013 to at least what the guys thought at the time to, to basically protect uh oil and gas assets uh from ISIS. And, and when they showed up, uh it turned out that the Syrians wanted them to actually take those assets uh from ISIS. And uh there was almost like a little mutiny among the contractors, but you know, they went ahead and they got ambushed. And Dmitry Utkin uh actually uh got the guys out safely during a sandstorm. They all go back to Russia, kind of with their tail between the legs.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Uh, in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, arrests and charges the, the, the two commanders who went to Syria with mercenarism. Utkin, who's like one level below, gets off along with all the rest of the guys. And only a couple of months later, all of a sudden. Russia needs mercenaries. They know who, you know, is interested in this type of work because they almost arrested the guy in Syria. And so those same 50 guys or so formed the core of what was just then called the company.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  And Dmitri Utkin, who is a fan of the German composer Richard Wagner, takes his callsign Wagner in Donbass. And since he was the main commander, eventually it becomes kind of the catch-all term for the company more generally.

• 15:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So it sounds like when Marat came in, it was about 600 people.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  So when Marat first came in, in April 2015, I think it was getting close to about 600 guys. He can correct me if I'm wrong. And Marat was coming in in April 2015. So this is right around the time that Russia is actually trying to sort of get to a ceasefire and take over these separatist republics at the time. And so when Marat joined, Wagner was a bit different at the time.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  It was one of many different forces that the MoD was using to support these separatists. And no one thought that it was going to become what it became. And so it was one of several units that were kind of figuring out ways to bring volunteers in to support the separatists. And Wagner at that time had this group of 50 guys or so who had been in Syria, but they also had a unit of Serbian volunteers that were coming through. And so when Marat joined, he was initially part of the international brigade, which was largely Serbian, and he had a Serbian commander. Eventually, the Serbs would be kind of...

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Kicked out, kicked by the wayside later on, when we got to Syria. But when Marat joined, it was a few months before some of the final big battles, before we saw what was called the Deminsk II ceasefire between Ukraine and the separatist statelets backed by Russia at the time.

• 17:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good, oh, good. Is it true that they started recruiting out of the prisons?

• 17:40Speaker 04

  In a conflict situation with a crime boss.

• 17:44Shawn Ryan?

  With a crime boss?

• 17:45Speaker 04

  With a crime boss.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  And...

• 17:50Shawn Ryan?

  What was the situation?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  As a criminal, using any opportunity to

• 18:02Speaker 04

  to

• 18:04Speaker 04

  to take some money from anyone.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  And this situation emerged on the empty place.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  But as a result, during the during the meeting, I shot him.

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  You shot him?

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Shot him. And I was sentenced to three years in prison.

• 18:40Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you shoot him? Where? In the head?

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Uh, no. In the body.

• 18:48Shawn Ryan?

  In the body?

• 18:49Speaker 04

  And then in the head.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  I was in prison in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  At the time, I served in Siberia.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Our regiment was removed from the Kishinov to Siberia. After Soviet Union collapsed.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  So they, I think Wagner at the beginning, and I think this is what Marat will tell you was, for the most part, guys who had military experience like Marat, guys who had trouble adjusting to civilian life in some shape or form and wanted to experience the adventure and camaraderie again, and largely through word of mouth, were recruited to the company when they found out there was this opportunity in Ukraine or eventually later on in Syria and elsewhere.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  And so for the most part, it was guys coming out of the military. Maybe they had a brush with the law, like Marat had, to put it lightly. But the full convict recruitment program, where if you saw the videos of Prigozhin going around to all of the penal colonies and recruiting prisoners, that only happened after 2022 for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

• 20:28Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  So there were definitely dudes who had served prison time, got out, and then joined Wagner. But they weren't recruiting from the prisons at that time. It was really, I mean, if I remember correctly, Marat's,

• 20:43Speaker 03

  it was Marat's buddy from his military times who recruited him just by word of mouth. He said, "Hey, I'm doing this. Do you want to join?"

• 20:52Shawn Ryan?

  What was the, what was the test like? You said you had to take some type of a test to get into Wagner Group.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  After a bit of time and push up, fifty-five time.

• 21:08Shawn Ryan?

  Fifty-five push-ups?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  Push-up.

• 21:10Shawn Ryan?

  A three-kilometer run? Were there any tactics involved? Like room clearance, entering a building?

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no.

• 21:21Shawn Ryan?

  No, nothing like that?

• 21:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 21:22Shawn Ryan?

  What are these guys getting paid?

• 21:25Speaker 03

  They, I mean, I think it depended, but they usually were getting about $2,000 a month during uh their time on the contract. Um, and so this is pretty good money. Uh, in, in, in Russia for, for guys, so. Um, it, it's definitely a motivating factor.

• 21:45Shawn Ryan?

  What, what has it developed into? I mean, they're in Africa.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:49Shawn Ryan?

  They're in Ukraine.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:52Shawn Ryan?

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

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:55Shawn Ryan?

  What, what all are they involved in?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  So. What, what I think is interesting about this story, because Marat will, will tell you, you know, this was very much a state-supported entity. But, a, a, and, you know, we can ask Marat as well. Again, I, I also don't think it could have become what it was if it weren't for the ambition of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin as well. And, and, and so, uh, kind of, if we look at what was happening in Ukraine in 2015, a lot of those units that the MOD was supporting after the ceasefire, they just kind of, you know, dispersed, went home, uh, didn't really do much after.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  But, uh, only a few months later, Russia's overtly intervening in Syria. There's, there's nothing covert about it, right? It's a full, you know, air campaign with the, the Russian military. Um, and, and Prigozhin, uh, and, and, and Utkin are very much also lobbying to make sure that he gets his guys into there because he has now this kind of force at his disposal. And what he's good at is trying to figure out, okay, I have this, now what do I do with it?

• 23:10Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  And, and, and, and it was at this point where I think he, he saw the black waters of the world and he said, okay, I want to do kind of my version of this. And, and it so happened that Syria was going to be the next opportunity for him to do so. Um, and so, uh, Marat was one of the first guys, uh, on the ground in Syria. Um, as he'll tell you, uh, they, the MOD didn't really know what to do with them. And, and a couple of guys got killed, uh, and, and they didn't want casualties right away. So they panicked and, and sent them home. And it was only until it became clear that Russian air power alone wasn't going to defeat

• 23:56Speaker 03

  the rebels, rebels against Assad or ISIS, that Wagner was brought back in. This time, you know, on the ground where they they take Palmyra, then they get sent home again, then they get back in and Marat will tell you all about the Battle of Khachem. But it it gets to that point where it's it's this mix, right? They have state backing, but Prigozhin is also out there with his guys, basically doing business development, right? If you have, if you have a PMC, where are you going to market your services? You have to go to Africa at some point, otherwise you you should fire your your B and D guy.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  And and and so already in 2017, Prigozhin is sending his guys out to to drum up new business. They they first sign a contract with the the Sudanese to provide training and and they get access to mining concessions in Sudan. Then they show up in the Central African Republic where there's really no other kind of competition from other Russians and so Prigozhin is able to provide training. He offers his like information warfare because he has the troll farms, which were kind of very famous in the US during the 2016 elections.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  And his guys go out and they try to start breweries and they go into gold mining and and what have you. They act, as Marat was saying, very independently of the Kremlin because the these places aren't that important to Russia. And so in the places that aren't aren't important, he has to figure out his own ways to finance these these operations. And so they go from the Central African Republic, they're in Libya, backing Haftar in in his bid to take Tripoli in 2019. Then they show up in Mali, uh, where they, they sign a, a deal with the Malian government to, to go after, uh, various jihadi groups. Uh, and then ultimately they, uh, are initially

• 26:02Speaker 03

  left out of the full-scale invasion, uh, of Ukraine in, in February 2022 and only get brought in, uh, when, when the Russian government's in trouble.

• 26:12Shawn Ryan?

  So these guys are not, they're definitely not just in Russia's best interest. They're doing, they're doing their own thing in all these separate parts of the world.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think, I think, you know, that it's not, I, because people are always asked, you know, is this a private thing or, or a public thing? And the answer is, is both. And I mean, we're in Paris right now, but when I'm sitting in Washington DC, I, I try to explain to people like, this is the capital of public-private partnerships, right? Lockheed Martin, uh, is a profit-driven company.

• 26:50Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  They will frame whatever they're doing as furthering America's national defense and security, but they're also a profit, profit-driven. And so a lot, what Prigozhin was very good at was selling back to the Kremlin, this dream of kind of Russia's expansion abroad.

• 27:10Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 27:11Speaker 03

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

• 27:19Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting. All right, let's, uh, let's move to Syria.

• 27:31Speaker 01

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• 28:06Speaker 01

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• 29:11Shawn Ryan?

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

• 29:17Speaker 04

  First time in September in 2015. I think Prigozhin is looking for the opportunity to implement this completely new concept of the using military forces. And he want to demonstrate the ability, combatability of the mercenaries. And we were delivered to Syria by the Shudut.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Civilian flight, uh, civilian, uh, the truth, uh, military, Russian military. Uh, firstly, um, um, look at, uh, looked at us with a surprise. They don't know, didn't know who we are and what we, uh, to do here and, uh, uh, how they must to treat us. And, uh, we, after we received the weapon,

• 30:49Speaker 04

  uh, we take, uh,

• 30:55Speaker 04

  uh, take a part in, uh, several, several, uh, military action and demonstrated, uh, their whole superiority on the, uh, superiority over, uh, enemy. And, uh, of course, the whole superiority over the Bashar Assad army.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  But, I think, uh, uh, at that moment, uh, Russian military, uh, and Syrian military, uh, thought that, uh, they, um, handle, uh, this situation, uh, without us. Uh, Russian military thought that if, uh, they provided, uh, uh, Syrian army with, uh, air strike support, uh, Syrian army, uh, can achieve, uh, the victory in this war. But it turned out, uh, that Syrian army, uh,

• 32:05Speaker 04

  degraded to the point of inability.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  To wage a offensive action.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  And so, like as Marat is saying, when Russia first intervenes in Syria,

• 32:25Speaker 03

  one of the reasons that they're doing it, actually it's after the annexation of Crimea, and they recognize the importance of Syria at that time for the US and for the West. Because this is, if you remember 2015, this is when ISIS is really at its height with the territorial caliphate. And the US has already intervened, gone back in to fight ISIS. And so the Russians think that if we go in backing Assad, we can kind of force the US into a joint counterterrorism operation against ISIS that will force them to kind of basically start talking to us again.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  And so they come in and they're backing Assad. But as Marat's saying, Assad's government, I mean, the forces that he has are incredibly unmotivated. I mean, for obvious reasons, given his rule, and the rebels, not just ISIS, but all the other rebels fighting against them are a lot more motivated. And the Russians initially wanted it to just be an air campaign. But I mean, as you find out pretty quick, like air campaigns alone rarely work for anybody. And it was clear that Russian air power with Assad's forces on the ground were not going to, was not going to work. They were not going to take the territory back from rebels.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  And so, but they face an issue at the time, which I think you speak to as well, where they, this is kind of a faraway intervention for Russia. And they haven't figured out yet if they want to have actual Russian troops on the ground and what Russians will think, the Russian public will think, if Russian soldiers are going home in caskets. And there's a sense that they're going to be against this and say, why are we here in Syria? And so, one of the reasons that Marat and Wagner were able to get back in is that the Russian military didn't have to report casualties for Wagner.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  And using the mercenaries in this war

• 34:50Speaker 04

  could resolve the very very main, very difficult task.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  The thing is that Russian generals invented the concept of the war with a little bloodshed. And using the mercenaries, they can create some kind of appearances that this concept is working.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  The lost of the mercenaries, didn't it include in the official statistic?

• 35:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, that makes sense. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole point of Russia going into Syria to include Wagner was to build some type of an alliance with the United States?

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was an effort. It was an effort because, in part, there's always a lot of reasons why things happen, but the timing of their intervention. Because if you remember, Syria started going into civil war right around the time of the Arab Spring. So this is already like five years before that.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  The Russians didn't have any particular love for Assad. Despite the fact that there was a Russian base in Syria and kind of some history going back to the Soviet Union. What really explains the timing of why they went in was this sense of isolation that they felt after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 in Ukraine. And it was this effort to basically get themselves onto the world stage again in a crisis that they thought was existentially important to the West, which was the defeat of ISIS. Of course, also when they show up and they're on the ground,

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Assad also has different ideas for what he wants the Russians to do. And ISIS is less of a concern to him than a lot of the more secular rebels elsewhere as well. And that he wants the Russians to go after those guys. Whereas the Russians want to go try and meet up with the Americans as they're closing in on ISIS as the territorial caliphate is crumbling down.

• 37:44Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting. Well, let's talk about the Battle of Khachan between Wagner and US Special Forces. So, like I had mentioned, I have friends that were in that battle. It sounds like there was about 500 Wagner Group soldiers on the ground. There were 40 US Special Forces guys along with a Kurdish partner force. And so, let's just start with the beginning. What were you doing that close to American forces?

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Hmm, from the very beginning. This factory was very important. This factory enclosed all infrastructure of the oil field nearby, around nearby Konaka. And Prigozhin wanted to seize this factory.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  During the battle for the Dvzor. But we have not enough resources. We constantly, we forced to attract our forces in order to achieve a goal, in order to liberate Dvzor.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Our lives was very undecidedly acted, very undecidedly. And we cannot using our forces in order to advance forward.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  Can I put like a little bit before where, so

• 40:01Speaker 03

  like what was, like why did Prigozhin want to take the, these Konoco facilities? And so in, in 2016, Marat and Wagner, they capture Palmyra from ISIS. And, and Marat has like some of the medals from that and from that time period that, that they'll show. But after the capture, the Russian military sends Wagner home again. And, and then a few months later ISIS recaptures it, Palmyra. And Wagner comes back in, but this time Prigozhin has signed a deal with Assad's government.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  And part of the, the deal is, is that Wagner will participate in the counteroffensive. And Prigozhin and, and his companies get a 25% share of the proceeds of the oil and gas assets that are recuperated. And so Prigozhin has this massive incentive now to go out against ISIS and, and capture as much of those assets as he, as he can. And so in 2017, Marat and Wagner are back in Syria. And this is right around the time where ISIS is collapsing. The US is backing the Kurdish SDF.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  The SDF is coming from the northeast. South, they're heading for ISIS's capital, Raqqa.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  And Wagner and Assad forces are heading north. And at a certain point, there's this factory that Marat is talking about called Konoco, which is sort of the crown jewel of all the assets. It's valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it was one of ISIS's most valuable assets for fuel smuggling.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  The most rich, most profitable oil field in Syria.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  So Purgosian wants this. And he's sending letters to the Syrian government, saying that they're not upholding their end of the bargain, that he's spending all of this money on the offensive and the Syrians aren't paying him. So he sees Konoco as the way to kind of get profitability, get out of the red and into the black. The only issue is that as ISIS is collapsing, everyone is thinking what a post-ISIS world is going to look like. So the Kurds, with the blessing of the US, start moving away from Raqqa and heading south towards their resort.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  And there's a rush for who's going to get this Konoco plant when ISIS is gone. And the SDF, the Kurdish forces backed by special forces, get there first. And then this is where Purgosian

• 43:11Speaker 04

  made a mistake. He thought that he can achieve his goal

• 43:28Speaker 04

  as a result in negotiation with the orders of the Kurdish tribe. But at that time,

• 43:40Speaker 04

  The functionaries of the SPS were in charge of the whole thing. And the oldest of the tribes, they liked Prigozhin.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  The Kurdish elders.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  They gave a guarantee that Kurdish forces retreated

• 44:20Speaker 04

  as soon as we started to move forward.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  But they just played.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  How many guys did you have gathered to attack Khanakho at that time?

• 44:39Speaker 04

  I think about 500, two units, Karpathi and the 5th Assault Unit. And my group

• 44:55Speaker 04

  that consists of Syrian fighters, 75.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  75.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  75. This was only units of Syrian that took part in this action. No one else. Only Russian mercenaries and this group of Syrian fighters. Only this. I had to

• 45:31Speaker 04

  advance on the left flank and take over, to take over, to stronghold.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  We advanced on the start line of attack, but Americans prevented us. They

• 45:59Speaker 04

  strike on the second echelon, headquarters, artillery position,

• 46:12Speaker 04

  squadron,

• 46:15Speaker 04

  squadron artillery.

• 46:17Shawn Ryan?

  The armory.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Armory. And then they shift the fire on us.

• 46:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys fire on them?

• 46:33Speaker 04

  On the sky, Americans uses at the beginning, Americans uses only aviation.

• 46:43Shawn Ryan?

  They had two Spectre gunships and two Apaches,

• 46:48Shawn Ryan?

  helicopters.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Combat drones,

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Spooky,

• 47:03Speaker 04

  and combat helicopter.

• 47:10Shawn Ryan?

  So what was going through your head when you knew that so US Special Operations initiated the attack?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  No, no, no. What you should tell them is start from the beginning of the morning, because this happened on February 8th, right?

• 47:32Speaker 04

  February, the night.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  The night of February.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Between 7 and 8 February.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  And you were in the room the day before or a couple of days before, where Utkan, he comes in and he says, "We're gonna take this from the Americans." And someone said, "Are the Americans gonna be there?" And he said, "Yeah."

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Yes, I don't know why, but Prigozhin decided that Americans

• 48:06Speaker 04

  wanted involved.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  And uh

• 48:10Speaker 03

  That the Americans would just fall back.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  Uh, the thing is, the

• 48:17Speaker 04

  Пригожин uh, have uh, uh, have a, uh, one, uh, um, future, что это черта характера.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  It's like, um, personality trait.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  From time to time, his ego.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  His ego.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  Ego, uh,

• 48:39Speaker 04

  uh, uh, right, uh, uh, rose above the common sense.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Maybe it's something that, it might be, it might look cool, um, and no one has done this before. If we get a piece of paper, and Marat can show where the Americans were and how Wagner came over with the, with the arrows and stuff. That way, that way the people can get.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  No one's done this before.

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• 50:15Speaker 03

  So, you want to show, you have the river, Euphrates.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 50:23Speaker 03

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

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Ah, uh, Euphrates, Konika, Konika, uh, Sham. We, we, we were completely destroyed.

• 50:44Shawn Ryan?

  So this is...

• 50:46Speaker 04

  This is our position.

• 50:47Shawn Ryan?

  This is your position.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  The factories.

• 50:49Shawn Ryan?

  This is Konika.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:51Shawn Ryan?

  And this is the Kurds in the US.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  No, no, no. The Kurds in the US are in here, in the Konika facility. This is Wagner's two positions right here.

• 50:59Shawn Ryan?

  They're inside the facility.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Facility is around like this. And then they go and attack that way.

• 51:05Shawn Ryan?

  But the US was inside the facility.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  US was inside the facility.

• 51:08Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so Wagner initiated an attack.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Initiated, it's, it's what I planned, uh, action with the signs of the false, uh,

• 51:24Speaker 04

  artillery assault from the Kurdish.

• 51:27Shawn Ryan?

  And you guys, you knew that US special operations were in the factory?

• 51:33Speaker 04

  Yes, we know about it.

• 51:35Shawn Ryan?

  Were you worried?

• 51:36Speaker 04

  We knew, because, don't worry, it, uh, our chief, uh, uh, our commander, uh, told us that, uh, Americans, um, wanted involved.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  That they wouldn't get involved?

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Um, um, yeah, uh, as I, uh, already said, uh, I don't know why. But, uh, Prigozhin was convinced that, uh, American forces, uh, uh, wanted involved.

• 52:10Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 52:12Shawn Ryan?

  What's this distance here?

• 52:16Shawn Ryan?

  What's the distance here? How many kilometers?

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Distance, uh, uh...

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Between my units and first stronghold, about 300 meters.

• 52:38Shawn Ryan?

  300 meters? That's it?

• 52:40Speaker 04

  We moved very close to this position and we have already ready to attack, but Americans prevented us from any possibility.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  What you know too is that what your buddies will say who are there. So the other key thing is this is the Euphrates right here. And so during this kind of counter ISIS operation, the Russians and the Americans are trying to figure out ways that they can de-conflict, right, so that no one is actually shooting each other. Because there's a lot of guys running around in this area now. And so they create this kind of line of de-confliction between US-backed forces in Syria and Russian-backed forces.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  And the line is pretty much the Euphrates River, which is right here. And that's established. And so, but the issue for Prigozhin is that the most profitable oil fields are right across on the other side of the de-confliction line. And so Marat and Wagner, what they're doing prior to this is they're building up their forces. They're testing a little bit the line of de-confliction probably.

• 54:21Speaker 03

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

• 54:31Speaker 03

  And so the Americans are watching this on the drones. Uh huh. And, and they're seeing the buildup. They see it all day. And, and eventually, they, at, in the evening, they, they start calling the Russians over the deconfliction line that they have between the US and Russian militaries. And they say, "Are these your guys?" And the Russian military says, "No." No.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  They denied to... They, uh, he denied to, da, priznat, uh...

• 55:10Speaker 03

  Confirm, yeah.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Uh, con- uh, confirm.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:13Shawn Ryan?

  What did you initiate the assault with?

• 55:17Speaker 04

  Uh...

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Какое оборудование, вооружение?

• 55:21Speaker 04

  I have, uh, um... Uh... Well, I was supported firstly by the artillery.

• 55:31Shawn Ryan?

  Artillery. So you were hitting Konaka with artillery?

• 55:37Speaker 03

  What they were first doing was they were fake, they were doing, they were faking artillery training. Cause they had set themselves up close.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  Mortal.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, mortars.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Mortal.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Mortal artillery. Uh, Americans, uh, very quickly, uh, suppressed the activity of the, any kind of artillery.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  And I left without any support. I have, uh, no... Automat- uh, automatic rifle, machine gun, uh, automatic grenade launcher, uh, AGS seventeen. And, uh, some kind, uh, uh, and two, uh, two, uh, machine gun, uh, um, heavy, heavy machine gun.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  But it was nothing great against the...

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Well, the fifth unit had, uh, tanks, right? There were two tanks?

• 56:40Speaker 04

  No, this tank was, uh, on the right side, uh, from me. Uh, I, uh, saw, uh, the tank only at the last time, uh, before, uh, before this tank was, uh, destroyed. I, I heard the, uh, shoot. I heard the sound of shooting. And I, uh, come out, uh, uh, come out of the position. And I, uh, saw it, uh, our tank.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  And firstly, I decided this is, uh, good for me. But immediately after, I, uh, I, uh, glanced on him. She was, uh, destroyed by the rocket. And, uh,

• 57:43Speaker 04

  and there was absolutely, uh, no, and, uh, there was a big explosion. Uh, um, this tank was completely destroyed.

• 57:57Shawn Ryan?

  What was going through your head when the Americans retaliated?

• 58:04Speaker 04

  To save my life.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Uh, so, uh, save, uh, lives of my people. I, uh, cried him, uh, "Run away from here." Run away, in any way, run away, but, but only, uh, small group. Only, with a small group.

• 58:29Shawn Ryan?

  Small groups.

• 58:29Speaker 04

  Two, three person, not, uh, not gathering, uh...

• 58:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  But...

• 58:36Shawn Ryan?

  You wanted to disperse.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Uh, but it's, uh, it was, uh, um, in vain. Um, they, uh, unfortunately, uh, I will, in any way, gather together.

• 58:53Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  And, uh, fall on the fire from the, uh, helicopter.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  And I lost twenty-three fighters. Twenty-three fighters was killed.

• 59:14Shawn Ryan?

  Were you close with them?

• 59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Were you friends with them?

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Ты дружил с этими лютыми, которые потерял?

• 59:25Speaker 04

  It was very little time to become a friendship. I was appointed on this position two and a half week before this event.

• 59:46Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty-three dead, twenty-eight wounded. Zakharov.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  And his unit only.

• 59:52Shawn Ryan?

  And your unit.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the thing that is also kind of important for people to realize is, you know, it's getting towards the evening and Wagner, they're feigning drills and then they attack, right? And the US is calling, and they call three times over the deconfliction line to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and they say, "Are these your guys?" And three times, the Ministry of Defense says, "No." And so, as you know, and your buddies know, that's when the US had the green light to effectively defend themselves against this attack.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  And I think it's fair to say that the US defended itself in a way that would send a message as well. And the amount of air power that came in was probably disproportionate to the threat and designed to send a message because, I mean, the amount of...

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  I think Americans didn't care of the...

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  Facility of the Russian Army. They, they, uh, they was ready to, uh, to strike in any case.

• 1:01:37Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  And they.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  I, I think they absolutely didn't fear to use their, uh, their weapons.

• 1:01:50Shawn Ryan?

  That's generally the, uh, the sentiment. I mean, these guys are at war. That's what they want to do.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  No. Yeah.

• 1:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  And they did it.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  And you said, I mean, the, the US brought in like two Apaches.

• 1:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  Two Apaches and two Spectre gunships.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Two Spectre, which, and Spectre gunship is?

• 1:02:11Speaker 04

  Russian generals, Russian generals, uh, was completely confused by this situation. Russian generals, uh, didn't have, uh,

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  uh, ability, uh, uh, inability to, to, to, to take a responsibility and, uh, to make a decision, uh, uh, uh, no, like, independently.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  Independently.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Independently. Hmm. And when he encounter, uh, with this situation,

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  he, uh, he was, uh, he confused absolutely.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  Because the question is, right, why did the Russian Ministry of Defense deny

• 1:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  that it, it was Russians who, who were attacking and?

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  There, there is an argument, I think, to be made, like Prigozhin, his gamble in trying to take Konikko, uh, was that when the, when the Americans saw that it was Russians coming, the Americans would want to avoid any direct confrontation, World War III, and, and they would back away and retreat along with, with the Kurds. And he was incredibly mistaken in, in, in that calculation. Uh, and what I think he wasn't counting on, and what Marat is saying, is that when the Americans were calling into the Ministry of Defense, you have some poor guy on the

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  line who is also not going to be responsible for World War III. And so the, the quickest thing that you're going to do is not say, yeah, those are my guys attacking US soldiers, you're going to say, don't know anything about it, don't know what you're talking about, and try to go to your higher ups to cover your own butt. And so ultimately, it was, you know, it was probably, he probably got, Prigozhin probably had kind of a wink and a nod from the Ministry of Defense that he was going to try to do this. And if it worked out, it's a great Russian victory for everybody, Assad, the Russians, Prigozhin.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

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

• 1:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. How long did the battle go on for?

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  Uh, how, how long? Uh, about six hour.

• 1:04:57Shawn Ryan?

  Six hour.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  From the, uh, from the midnight to, hmm, to mo- to, to morning. About midnight to morning, uh, uh...

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  Eighteen nine Russian machinaries was killed in this battle. And twenty-three Syrian fighters from my Union was killed.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  How many wounded?

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  About two hundred.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  Two hundred dead?

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  Two units.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Two hundred wounded?

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  Two assault units was completely destroyed. I mean, weapon, technique.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Like three hundred casualties total.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  On the next day, Russian Authority proclaimed that no one Russian suffered

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  in this event.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  No one.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  And you were responsible for counting the bodies, right, and reporting it?

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Yes, of course. And I must to bring the body of the dead, of the killed, of the dead, deaths Syrian, in the town, in the city. You were was a headquarter of my battalion.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Oh, so you was there for the ceremony of the burial?

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  Ah, burial.

• 1:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, before we get there, what ended it? Why did they stop? If they didn't kill everybody, what stopped it?

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  After I coming back from this battle, I gave an order to send my people to bring body and weapon on the battlefield. Brought from this area all body and all weapons that was left on this area during the battle.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  So eventually, in the morning, the Ministry of Defense got in touch with the Americans, and it was agreed, the Americans agreed, to a two-hour pause so that the Russians could collect weapons and dead.

• 1:07:38Shawn Ryan?

  So if the... If the Ministry of Defense of Russia initially denied this three different times, then how do they contact the US to ask to clean up the bodies?

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  They can, they could say that, say so in the very beginning. And if they say, "Yes, okay, we, I, I will give an order to retreat." And if Russian generals to give an order to retreat, nothing happened.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Everything will be fine. But Russian generals didn't know what to do in this situation.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  But eventually, they told the Americans, "We need to, we need to go collect." So eventually, they said, "There might be some Russians there," to the Americans.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  The thing is, this, it, it has already happened.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's no denying it anymore.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  We, we were destroyed.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  We were, the whole field was covered with coptus. And the, the, beyond, tank, and trucks of our units. Everyone who can move left this area and...

• 1:09:31Shawn Ryan?

  So there was only bodies left.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  And come to the bank of the river.

• 1:09:36Shawn Ryan?

  So there were only bodies left.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  And then the agreement was made that they have two hours to go back to the area to, to, to collect the dead.

• 1:09:49Shawn Ryan?

  How does that make you feel now, knowing that the Russian military had denied three different times that it was Russians on the ground? And then also told the Russian people that there were no Russians that were killed in that battle?

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

  Firstly, I think the Americans acted as it

• 1:10:19Speaker 04

  according to the situation.

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  If I was on their place, I will do the same action. It's a rules of war. If you under attack, you must to protect themselves. And wage and counter attack.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  Secondly, I think

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  it was bad thing from the side of our chief.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  It was the Prigozhin and Wagner was absolutely

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  wrong in this situation. Absolutely wrong. But

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  By Wagner, he means Putin.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. This battle was offensive, was defensive action from the outside. We

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  was under attack of Kurdish forces. And despite of the

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  heavy losses, we can stay, we can stayed on our place and to protect and protected our position. But what surprised me very much is that many of

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  Our guys that took part in this battle accepted this version.

• 1:12:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Accepted this version, that is nonsense. But this is true.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  I spoke with some guys and trying to remind him them that do you remember? We, we are going to assault.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  No one attacked us.

• 1:12:52Speaker 04

  We was, we was

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  we initiated this event.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Only we have responsibility for the circumstances of this battle.

• 1:13:12Shawn Ryan?

  I think probably every American that fought that day is gonna watch this. Do you have anything personally to say to them?

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  What, what, what can I say them? They, as I already said, they acted

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  as according to the rules of war.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  It was our initiative.

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  Nothing.

• 1:13:52Shawn Ryan?

  So, how long after the battle did you leave Syria?

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  One year.

• 1:13:59Shawn Ryan?

  One year?

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

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

• 1:14:04Speaker 04

  Yes, when I left Wagner, I started, I joined Redut. Только охранял.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  It only defended or like did security for it was a different, it was a different PMC. But their only job as a PMC was to secure.

• 1:14:24Speaker 04

  Secure.

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:14:26Shawn Ryan?

  Static security.

• 1:14:26Speaker 03

  Static security, exactly.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

  It was not for me.

• 1:14:31Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

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• 1:15:11Speaker 00

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• 1:15:46Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Marat. So you get back to Russia. How much longer was it until the Ukraine war kicked off?

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  After this event, this war began.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  And I left my country.

• 1:16:12Shawn Ryan?

  John, what was the mutiny all about?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, I think, you know, Marat, as he's saying, he goes back, he finishes his work in Syria. But, I mean, after the Battle of Khachem,... In which Marat participated. I mean, already by this point, we were talking about it earlier. Wagner is in Sudan by this point. By around the same time as the Battle of Hasham, they first start arriving in the Central African Republic. And then they're showing up in all sorts of places in Africa, Libya and in Mali. And over there, Prigozhin is acting kind of independently, like we were talking about.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  But as the Battle of Hasham kind of showed,

• 1:17:09Speaker 03

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

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  And he's sort of a rock in their shoe very often. You have to imagine, here's this guy who is kind of technically supposed to, with his forces, be subordinate. But he also has a mind and ambition of his own. And he can occasionally get in front of Putin himself. And you can imagine what he's saying about the people that he doesn't like in front of Putin. So, you know, imagine, you know, you're the boss of an employee, but the employee's dad is the CEO, right? I mean, you know that there's another channel that goes up if you try to, you know, if you try to boss them around.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  And so even though the Ministry of Defense and Wagner are cooperating in Africa quite a bit, there's still that interpersonal tension. And so when Putin makes a decision to launch the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, he gives, you know, the planning of it over to the general staff in the Ministry of Defense. And they want nothing to do with Prigozhin. And so their thinking at the time is that this is going to be a quick, easy victory. And we can do it, kind of in their minds, by the book, without having to use guys like Prigozhin.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

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

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  Wagner is actually left out. And Prigozhin is pissed about it. He's calling up the guys in the GRU, trying to figure out why his guys aren't in it, and then trying to get his guys into it. And meanwhile, the very quick operation to take Kiev does not go as planned, and the Russian military is suffering setbacks. And so Prigozhin now has his opportunity to get his guys into the war. And, you know, the thing about Wagner that I think Marat would tell you too is that

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  in the intervening years, really since Chechnya and, you know, a very brief war with Georgia, not a lot of guys in the Russian military have real battle experience. Like, not a lot of people have been shot at. And so when Wagner comes in with its commanders, they start delivering some quick battlefield victories. And so this puts Prigozhin all of a sudden in this, like, great position. He's able to come out of the shadows, and he becomes a hero of Russia. He declares himself... Oh, he denied it always that he was tied to Wagner Group. Now he declares, "I was always the founder of Wagner."

• 1:20:15Speaker 03

  And he's on state television. And as Marat said, this is a guy who already has a big ego, right? And the way that he always gets around his rivals is by gambling big, like at Khachin. And so he starts also promising things that he's going to do, something that the generals would never do. And ultimately, what he ends up promising is that he's gonna... Basically, Wagner is gonna take Bakhmut, this kind of middle-sized city from Ukrainian forces. And the way that he's going to do it is he gets exclusive permission for a time

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  to go to all of Russia's prisons and recruit prisoners to the front line. And so he shows up. And he goes himself. I mean, he's a guy who does a lot of things himself.

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  Yes, he was deprived for the resources of the mobilization.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, he wasn't allowed to have actual soldiers, and so he gets the convicts. And so he shows up at these Russian penal colonies, and they gather all the prisoners into the prison yard. And he comes in in his helicopter, and he comes in and he speaks in front of all of the prisoners, and he says, "You know, I have an offer for you. You can come and fight for me for six months, and if you survive, you're a free man and your criminal record is expunged." And he tells them that my losses are worse than Stalingrad, which, you know, obviously resonates with Russians.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  And ultimately, about 50,000 guys sign up. And the tactic that Prigozhin is going to use to take Bakhmut is the human wave tactic. And so these convicts, they get two weeks' training, usually, I think, just inside kind of the border with Ukraine and around Luhansk. And then after that, they're sent to the front. And basically, they're put in small units, and each small unit, one unit will go out, attack the Ukrainian position.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  Eight guys might be killed, but two guys get into the trench, and they do some damage before getting killed. And before the Ukrainians have a chance to recover, another unit of convicts is coming through. And so it's a very inefficient way to wage war, but it is effective over time. And so...

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  The thing is that the main reason for this operation was to attract as many Ukrainian forces as possible in order to prevent from the attacks on the other areas of the front line.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Speaker 04

  And...

• 1:23:43Speaker 03

  Because you can imagine, it's a huge front line now, right, in Ukraine. In the beginning, the first phase of the war in Donbass, you know, it's a little section of the Donbass region. Now it's, you know, like a thousand kilometers long maybe or something. And so he's also engaged with the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians are sending some of their best guys to defend Bakhmut. While for the Russian government, they're losing, in their minds, some of the worst people in society, right? These convicts. And so, you know, it's like a four to one ratio in terms of losses.

• 1:24:24Speaker 03

  But it's something that the Russians and Prigozhin are willing to do for the reasons that Marat said. But, you know, at this point, though, Prigozhin is like an internet... Like, we all know who Prigozhin is, right? During the Bakhmut campaign, he becomes like the face of the war itself. CNN is trying to reach him, The New York Times is trying to reach him for an interview. He's, you know, he's huge back home in Russia. He's like, finally, everything that he... You know, his ego is matched now by his popularity.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Yes, and this term, Wagner Group completely faulted his mission in this war. They achieved their goals that would stand before them.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Speaker 04

  ...attract many, a lot of Ukrainian forces and give the opportunity for the Russian army to prepare a mobilizing reserve and to build the defensive line on the, in the area of Zaporozhye district.

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  But still, I mean, there's still a lot of enmity between the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and Prigozhin. And so at some point, inevitably, especially since Prigozhin is having all of this success, like Marat mentioned, the Ministry of Defense is going to want to check him. And so the first way that they do it is they start cutting off Prigozhin from convict recruitment. So he's promised to Putin, "I'm gonna take Bakhmut", but his means of doing so now is disappearing. He needs a lot of bodies to take Bakhmut. The Ministry of Defense is cutting him off of those bodies. Not because they're against prisoner recruitment,

• 1:26:46Speaker 03

  they just start doing it themselves. But the difference is, and this is always the issue for Prigozhin, is when he was doing it, he had the permission by like a wink and a nod from the presidential administration. When the Ministry of Defense does it, Russian parliament officially makes it legal for them to recruit from prison. So there's always a way that Prigozhin can get screwed over in whatever he's doing. So he's getting cut off, and so now he starts going public with the Ministry of Defense, saying, "I'm not getting enough ammunition." For for what we're trying to do. And the Ministry of Defense is screwing over Wagner by not giving by not giving us enough ammunition,

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  ammunition that we need. And so now this spat starts going very public over social media. And then ultimately, Shoigu and Prigozhin at this point hate each other's guts. And the Ministry of Defense then kind of like their final uh kind of counterattack on Prigozhin is they get the Kremlin to agree that all soldiers fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia have to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Under those who fight on the front line. Those on the front line, yeah. And so for Prigozhin, you can imagine, he's this big guy now in Russia.

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  He's got thousands and thousands of men ostensibly under his command. And he recognizes that this is making him political too. And so all of a sudden, the Ministry of Defense is taking those men out from underneath him. And I think for him, what what he saw was the writing on the wall, that at the very least, when I no longer have Wagner Group, it means that I'm going to kind of disappear into obscurity, which he wasn't able to do at that point. He couldn't just retire and be quiet. He was incapable of that. But also without those men, he's no longer, he doesn't have political leverage anymore, and it could result in his ultimate demise. And so he has to figure out a way, how do I convince Putin

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  to choose between me and Shoigu, because Putin is choosing Shoigu right now? And so the decision is made that Wagner is going to turn back from Ukraine into southern Russia.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  And and they're gonna capture and kill the Minister of Defense.

• 1:29:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  And so, uh, on June twenty-third, uh, twenty twenty-three, Wagner crosses back over. Prigozhin claims that that Ministry of Defense hit them with a rocket attack, which seems to be not the case.

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  False, false attack.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  But it's the pretext.

• 1:29:36Speaker 04

  Absolutely false attack.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  But the pretext is now that we're gonna go capture, we're gonna go arrest Shoigu and and uh, another General Gerasimov. And so they they go back into Russia and they they take over, they surround and take over the southern Russian, uh, Russia's Southern Military Command in Rostov. And they're looking for Shoigu, but Shoigu has already escaped. And so the generals who are there, they try to talk Prigozhin down.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  Yes, uh, Prigozhin, uh, thought that when he, uh, uh, when he proposed, uh, uh, to make a choice between there, uh, between him and, uh, between Shoigu, uh, Prigozhin, uh, will, uh, choose, of course, him.

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  Putin will choose Prigozhin, yeah. And he also, he also thinks too, or is hoping in the back of his mind that all of that popularity that he had from being on social media and being on Russian TV on the front lines of Bakhmut means that the the soldiers in the Russian military itself are on his side too.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  And and and so he goes and and they've taken the military command and and the generals who are there are trying to talk him down. And they're not able to do it. And so Prigozhin announces that they're gonna have a march for justice on Moscow. And and the column of Wagner, the Wagner column turns from Southern Russian Military Command and starts heading up the highway, uh, to Moscow.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  And I mean, this is, I mean, I think everybody was glued to their TV screens to see like Wagner. Oh. Uh, call him heading on Moscow and, and the mayor of Moscow. They started digging up the highway around Moscow to prevent, uh, their, you know, their potential arrival. Uh, Wagner shoots down, I think, a number of helicopters and, and, and planes. Uh. About thirteen people are killed. Um, but each time, you know, he's, he's getting, Prigozhin is getting closer and closer to Moscow. And he's also kind of going into empty space. And so now he, he's trying to communicate to, to Putin.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  That all he is trying, all he is trying to do is, is take out his rivals. Shoigu and Gerasimov. He's not trying to overthrow Putin himself. No. But the issue is, the closer he's getting to Moscow. The more he could accidentally be unleashing a coup. Because it's going to be such a destabilizing moment. And so. At, at, at some point, he's trying to say, I'm not overthrowing the government. But now it's getting close to looking like he might overthrow the government if he gets into Moscow. And, and behind the scenes. Uh, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is negotiating between Putin's side and Prigozhin.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  And, and eventually he, he gets Prigozhin to agree to, to, to halt the march. And I think for Prigozhin himself, he was a little bit relieved because he was realizing that events were. Going out of his control by, I mean, they were hardly in his control before it. But they were, as the closer he was getting to Moscow and they got within a hundred fifty miles. Things, things were really starting to, to get out of control and he backs down. And you could make an argument that the guy who had. You know, an insane risk tolerance, you know, from going af, you know, going against Americans in the Battle of Khashoggi.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  And, and, and, you know, risking his neck, saying he's going to take Bakhmut like this was perhaps. The one moment where he should have doubled down. And gone all the way to, to Moscow, but, but he chose not to. And

• 1:33:40Speaker 04

  Prigozhin didn't want to take over the power.

• 1:33:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Speaker 04

  And I think Prigozhin eventually realized that he didn't take into account one simple thing.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  Putin don't need the Ministry of Defense, professional Ministry of Qualifying and Efficiency Minister for Defense. He need a close alliance supporter.

• 1:34:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Speaker 04

  And when Prigozhin realized

• 1:34:29Speaker 03

  Because the Minister of Defense is not a soldier himself.

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  When Prigozhin realized that in any case he cannot achieve his goal,

• 1:34:44Speaker 04

  he gave an order to turn around.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  And that sealed his fate ultimately, three months later.

• 1:34:53Speaker 04

  As far as a conflict between the Ministry of Defense and Prigozhin,

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  this conflict was permanent.

• 1:35:07Speaker 04

  The main reason,

• 1:35:11Speaker 04

  from the moment of the creation, the mercenary brigade and from the moment when Prigozhin

• 1:35:26Speaker 04

  become a sole curator of this project, this conflict began.

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, began.

• 1:35:37Speaker 03

  Because it works for Putin's system.

• 1:35:39Speaker 04

  The main reason, of course, money.

• 1:35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:42Speaker 04

  Prigozhin Wagner Group

• 1:35:47Speaker 04

  was funded by passing the Ministry of Defense. And Shoigu was deprived from the opportunity to use this money to profit from this flow of the money.

• 1:36:09Speaker 03

  Because that's how you make big money in Russia is by skimming off of the state budgets. So everything is a battle over the flow of budget. Because the more budget that comes your way, the more you can line your own books.

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  Of course, Prigozhin was... Wagner Group was funded directly from the state budget.

• 1:36:34Speaker 04

  Bypassing, bypassing.

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it went all the way down. And so, one of the reasons that... Like, one of the ways that people were making money in Donbass in 2014, 2015, right? Is you're a commander, and you tell, you say, you tell the Ministry of Defense, "Oh, I have 200 guys under my command." The Ministry of Defense pays your salaries, but you actually have 150 or 125 guys under your command. So...

• 1:37:08Speaker 04

  Not the case in the term of the Prigozhin, Prigozhin don't...

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  He was at a bigger level.

• 1:37:14Speaker 04

  It's some... Some... Like, milky mochilnik.

• 1:37:21Speaker 03

  This small, small money, that's small money laundering, though.

• 1:37:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  So, was he assassinated?

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:37:32Speaker 04

  Uh...

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  And...

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  Do you think the государство, you... You killed Prigozhin, no?

• 1:37:40Speaker 04

  No. Uh... I don't know what exactly, who exactly, uh... To...

• 1:37:50Speaker 04

  Who was the... Like, the executor.

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  Who was the actual person who did it? He doesn't know.

• 1:37:58Speaker 04

  Who is the actual person who did it? Uh... Uh, Prigozhin had many enemies.

• 1:38:07Shawn Ryan?

  So you're saying it could have been anybody, it might not have been the Ministry of Defense or Putin himself?

• 1:38:12Speaker 03

  I think a lot of people would put it on the FSB, which is the Russian successor to the KGB, which handles domestic threats for Putin.

• 1:38:26Speaker 04

  Of course, the indecision...

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  The final decision.

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  Final decision, Putin made a final decision, of course.

• 1:38:37Shawn Ryan?

  Putin made the final decision.

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  Only with his permission, that can be happened.

• 1:38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. But who came up with the attack plan?

• 1:38:48Speaker 04

  Who was executives?

• 1:38:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:54Speaker 04

  Time will show.

• 1:38:57Shawn Ryan?

  So what is Wagner Group today?

• 1:39:00Speaker 04

  Right now? Since Prigozhin's death, Wagner Group, in my opinion, ceased to exist.

• 1:39:11Speaker 03

  So everything became subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.

• 1:39:16Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, God.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  But the thing was, is that, kind of as we were talking about, like the relationship between Wagner and the state was also different in each place. And so, in Syria, like when Marat was there, you know, they get everything from the Ministry of Defense, they're probably paid through the Ministry of Defense, they're working very closely, they have Russian air power that's support, I mean, this is like a Ministry of Defense operation. When you get to like the Central African Republic, there's not as much support from the Kremlin. And so...

• 1:39:52Speaker 04

  Some kind of autonomy.

• 1:39:54Speaker 03

  There's a degree of independence. They're opening up breweries, like Ministry of Defense doesn't want breweries, or they have these gold mines. And so when Prigozhin is gone... The Ministry of Defense has to figure out, how do we take over all of these things? Because Prigozhin wasn't just involved with mercenaries like Marat. He had troll farms, he had like chocolate museums in St. Petersburg, he had mining companies.

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  The main body of uh uh this project was not Wagner Group.

• 1:40:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Speaker 04

  Wagner Group only part of uh this project. Wagner Group is a military group that uh uh was uh you used uh for the crea- uh for the creation of the favorable environment uh to promote a business project.

• 1:40:48Speaker 03

  Of Prigozhin. So Wagner, what basically what's saying is...

• 1:40:52Speaker 04

  Wagner Group is a part of the project.

• 1:40:54Speaker 03

  Wagner was a way for Prigozhin to overcome his status as, you know, an ex-con and try to show his worth to eventually join Putin's inner circle.

• 1:41:06Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  He was never really able to do it. But so when he, when he, when he died, the, it was relatively easy for the Ministry of Defense in places like Syria or Libya just to have guys sign new contracts and to take over. But where they were acting independently in like the Central African Republic.

• 1:41:24Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, the Central African, it's a special status.

• 1:41:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, the guys, the guys, the guys showed up and they were like, they couldn't understand it. There's breweries, there's all sorts of things going on. And so the decision is made. If it's not broke, let's not fix it. Let them just kind of keep doing their thing.

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  And the industrial project in Central African Republic, uh uh uh

• 1:41:50Speaker 04

  this is as a resource for the benefit of the President of Russia and his inner circle.

• 1:41:59Speaker 03

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

• 1:42:03Speaker 04

  Hmm, okay. It's a little bit differ- uh difficult uh to take over.

• 1:42:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, because they don't, they don't understand it fully.

• 1:42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  Only the guys who worked there know how it works.

• 1:42:13Speaker 04

  But Wagner Group's, Wagner Group is over.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  It's over.

• 1:42:20Shawn Ryan?

  Well guys, thank you. Thank you for so much for being here today and for sharing all that information. And I just want to ask you one thing. You know, we'd had a conversation earlier about your feelings on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And now you're here in France seeking asylum. I'm just curious if you have anything to say to Putin.

• 1:42:45Speaker 04

  Hmm. What do you want to say to Putin? What do you want to say to Putin? Get out.

• 1:42:53Shawn Ryan?

  Get out.

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  Get out.

• 1:42:58Speaker 04

  You are enemy for my country.

• 1:43:04Speaker 04

  You are the main problem for my country.

• 1:43:12Speaker 04

  And you're in his inner circle.

• 1:43:17Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you both for being there. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you.