WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.879 Hey everybody, it's your host A .R. and I am 00:00:03.879 --> 00:00:06.639 beyond excited for what we have coming up next 00:00:06.639 --> 00:00:10.039 on the Diplomacy and Discourse Podcast. This 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:13.539 week we dive into one of the most explosive and 00:00:13.539 --> 00:00:17.079 sobering reads of the year, Putin's Sledgehammer, 00:00:17.539 --> 00:00:20.199 the Wagner Group, and Russia's collapse into 00:00:20.199 --> 00:00:24.719 mercenary chaos by Candice Rondeau. This is not 00:00:24.719 --> 00:00:28.219 just a book about Russia or Ukraine. It's a wake 00:00:28.219 --> 00:00:31.120 -up call. It's about the collapse of accountability, 00:00:31.739 --> 00:00:35.159 the rise of mercenary warfare, and how one man's 00:00:35.159 --> 00:00:38.880 hunger for power destabilized global security 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:42.340 through a private army of extremists, criminals, 00:00:42.979 --> 00:00:47.880 and killers. Candice doesn't just report. She 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:51.460 exposes. With deep scouring and razor -sharp 00:00:51.460 --> 00:00:54.219 insight, she unpacks the story of the Wagner 00:00:54.219 --> 00:00:56.740 Group in a way that will leave you speechless. 00:00:57.660 --> 00:01:00.539 Don't forget to like and subscribe, share us 00:01:00.539 --> 00:01:03.939 your thoughts, email us at diplomacyanddiscourse 00:01:03.939 --> 00:01:10.780 at gmail .com. Now, let's get into it. All right, 00:01:10.799 --> 00:01:13.599 everybody. Welcome back to Diplomacy and Discourse 00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:16.260 podcast. I'm your host, AR, and today's guest 00:01:16.260 --> 00:01:19.620 is someone whose work I've come to recently admire. 00:01:20.299 --> 00:01:22.659 Not only for sharp political insight, but for 00:01:22.659 --> 00:01:25.099 her courage to dig where others won't. Joining 00:01:25.099 --> 00:01:28.379 me is Candice Rondeau. a renowned journalist, 00:01:28.760 --> 00:01:30.980 strategic analyst, and scholar whose work has 00:01:30.980 --> 00:01:33.200 been featured in The Washington Post, Foreign 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:36.680 Policy, The Guardian, and beyond. She's currently 00:01:36.680 --> 00:01:39.079 a senior fellow at the Center on the Future of 00:01:39.079 --> 00:01:41.760 War at Arizona State University and is the senior 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:44.739 director for Future Frontlines and directs the 00:01:44.739 --> 00:01:47.459 planetary politics initiatives at New America. 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:51.640 Candice has spent decades investigating the intersection 00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:56.180 of political violence, disinformation, and authoritarianism. 00:01:56.439 --> 00:01:59.219 with a special focus on the post -soviet world. 00:01:59.859 --> 00:02:02.500 Her latest book, Putin's Sledgehammer, the Wagner 00:02:02.500 --> 00:02:05.180 Group, and Russia's collapse into mercenary chaos, 00:02:05.579 --> 00:02:09.379 is a gripping expose that pulls no punches. It 00:02:09.379 --> 00:02:12.500 examines how a rogue mercenary army, once a tool 00:02:12.500 --> 00:02:15.199 of the Kremlin, grew so powerful it threatened 00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:18.840 to overshadow the Russian military itself. This 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:21.819 is a story of war crimes, disinformation, betrayal, 00:02:22.199 --> 00:02:24.800 and the death of state accountability. And Candice 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:28.219 documents it all with fearless precision. Candice, 00:02:28.419 --> 00:02:30.699 welcome to the show. It's an honor to have you. 00:02:30.919 --> 00:02:32.400 Oh, it's so great to be here. Thank you. And 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.379 thanks for that really kind introduction. So 00:02:35.379 --> 00:02:38.419 what sparked your interest in the Wagner Group? 00:02:38.819 --> 00:02:42.759 And how did it how did this project evolve into 00:02:42.759 --> 00:02:46.120 Puth and Sledgehammer? Yeah, you know, there 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:48.800 are so many different little things that kind 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:52.240 of led my led me into this trail of trying to 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:54.020 sniff out the Wagner Group, what it was about, 00:02:54.020 --> 00:02:56.800 I guess. maybe three threads that are important 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:00.120 to mention. The first is I have been looking 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:02.840 at and studying and thinking about all things 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:05.840 Russian since I was 14 years old in high school, 00:03:05.939 --> 00:03:08.780 stumbling through the Russian alphabet, trying 00:03:08.780 --> 00:03:12.360 to figure out and make sense of Cyrillic. I studied 00:03:12.360 --> 00:03:15.719 Russian history and culture and language as an 00:03:15.719 --> 00:03:20.900 undergrad and then stumbled my way into a career 00:03:20.900 --> 00:03:27.539 in journalism. which oftentimes was really animated 00:03:27.539 --> 00:03:29.680 by the desire to become like the next bureau 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:33.780 chief of of like Moscow for New York Times or 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:36.139 Washington Post. That was like my fantasy. I 00:03:36.139 --> 00:03:38.120 didn't get that far. I actually ended up in Kabul 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:42.240 for the Washington Post. But still, that's like 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:43.819 one of the big threads is just the experience 00:03:43.819 --> 00:03:47.620 I had studying Russian. I lived in St. Petersburg 00:03:47.620 --> 00:03:52.180 in 1990s. And I guess one of the kind of connective 00:03:52.319 --> 00:03:55.819 threads here is that it was exactly when Vladimir 00:03:55.819 --> 00:04:00.520 Putin was kind of rising to power. He was then 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:05.180 deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and a little known 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:07.860 to most of the world at the same time, Yevgeny 00:04:07.860 --> 00:04:11.560 Prugosin, who was this sort of CEO and Presario 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:15.400 of the Wagner Group mercenary army was also kind 00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:17.620 of coming into his own at the same time. So all 00:04:17.620 --> 00:04:20.660 three of us were there in St. Petersburg, living 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:22.300 probably only like blocks from each other. So 00:04:22.300 --> 00:04:24.720 that was kind of, when I started kind of looking 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:27.620 at trying to write about and report on the story 00:04:27.620 --> 00:04:29.480 of the Wagner Group, I was like, oh shit, part 00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:33.860 of my language. But that's kind of weird that 00:04:33.860 --> 00:04:36.279 we have that in common. And I don't really much 00:04:36.279 --> 00:04:39.839 remember anything about Putin at that time, but 00:04:39.839 --> 00:04:42.439 what I do know is that he obviously has been 00:04:42.439 --> 00:04:45.240 very influential in reshaping Russia. And for 00:04:45.240 --> 00:04:48.920 most of my career, I have been in and out of 00:04:48.920 --> 00:04:53.660 trying to report on or understand Putin's Russia. 00:04:54.199 --> 00:04:57.139 And the Wagner Group came up really as a kind 00:04:57.139 --> 00:05:00.939 of question about Russia's ambition to reinvent 00:05:00.939 --> 00:05:05.959 itself on the world stage. So what is, can you 00:05:05.959 --> 00:05:08.139 go back into history on the Wagner Group, how 00:05:08.139 --> 00:05:12.720 it started, why it evolved into the way it is 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:17.199 now? Yeah, so we have to kind of dial back all 00:05:17.199 --> 00:05:22.160 the way to the 1990s, early 1990s. Many people, 00:05:22.160 --> 00:05:25.120 you know, of a certain age will remember that 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:27.959 this, you know, cataclysmic events happens, you 00:05:27.959 --> 00:05:30.519 know, all across the Soviet Union, where, you 00:05:30.519 --> 00:05:34.300 know, Republic by Republic, begins to rebel against 00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:38.100 Soviet authority. It kind of spreads almost like 00:05:38.100 --> 00:05:42.399 a wildfire in the Baltics first, breaches Ukraine, 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:46.660 part of the caucuses. And what is precipitating 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:51.579 this is economic freefall in the country that's 00:05:51.579 --> 00:05:55.319 caused partially by the Soviet Union's long -term 00:05:55.319 --> 00:05:59.819 involvement in Afghanistan. And it's that war 00:05:59.819 --> 00:06:02.839 that leads to kind of the economic collapse of 00:06:02.839 --> 00:06:04.939 the country and this long -standing race with 00:06:04.939 --> 00:06:07.459 the United States at the end of the Cold War, 00:06:07.939 --> 00:06:11.060 you know, the so -called missile gap race and 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:15.639 the race to escalate the capacity to foment nuclear 00:06:15.639 --> 00:06:20.680 war. So fast forward a little bit to, you know, 00:06:20.759 --> 00:06:26.139 let's say 1992, 1993, and a couple things are 00:06:26.139 --> 00:06:28.540 happening. One, the country is really shuddering 00:06:28.540 --> 00:06:31.459 from this huge political and economic shock. 00:06:31.819 --> 00:06:35.300 And people are poor as hell. You know, retirement 00:06:35.300 --> 00:06:37.939 accounts are dried up. I mean, just there's no 00:06:37.939 --> 00:06:44.339 food. But the one group or social cast that does 00:06:44.339 --> 00:06:47.279 have access to food and money is the Russian 00:06:47.279 --> 00:06:52.180 mafia, which at the time in the early 1990s was, 00:06:52.180 --> 00:06:55.160 you know, next to the KGB, the most powerful, 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:58.660 you know, organized movement inside of Russia. 00:06:59.579 --> 00:07:01.600 And in fact, there was kind of a marriage of 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:03.680 convenience that happened in the early 1990s 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:07.339 between the KGB, which later became the FSB security 00:07:07.339 --> 00:07:12.879 service, kind of like the Russian FBI, and Russian 00:07:12.879 --> 00:07:17.139 organized crime groups. And lo and behold, at 00:07:17.139 --> 00:07:19.959 the same time, while this is happening, a bunch 00:07:19.959 --> 00:07:23.000 of veterans from the Afghan war are returning 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.160 home. And guess what? They're out of work. And 00:07:26.160 --> 00:07:27.740 they're out of work at a time when the Russian 00:07:27.740 --> 00:07:31.920 military is trying to find its footing, and the 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:34.720 government is privatizing everything. And this 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:37.579 is the moment we first see the appearance of 00:07:37.579 --> 00:07:41.860 private security companies all across domestic 00:07:41.860 --> 00:07:44.519 Russia, so Moscow, St. Petersburg, big cities. 00:07:45.199 --> 00:07:47.339 And they're doing the things that you would normally 00:07:47.339 --> 00:07:50.660 think of, providing bodyguard protection for 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:54.079 rich people and businessmen, doing surveillance 00:07:54.079 --> 00:07:57.100 and protection of certain valuable properties. 00:07:58.410 --> 00:08:02.250 At this stage, there is no private military contractor 00:08:02.250 --> 00:08:04.990 service or, you know, there's no industry per 00:08:04.990 --> 00:08:08.569 se. But what is happening is there's a merger 00:08:08.569 --> 00:08:12.129 between the security services, between organized 00:08:12.129 --> 00:08:14.610 crime, between these out of work veterans, and 00:08:14.610 --> 00:08:17.389 then these kind of new rising private security 00:08:17.389 --> 00:08:20.970 companies that are domestic in nature. Fast forward 00:08:20.970 --> 00:08:26.769 to 2008, and now Putin is really in power. And 00:08:27.079 --> 00:08:30.600 you know, the Russian military is still struggling 00:08:30.600 --> 00:08:33.779 because of this economic challenge, still struggling 00:08:33.779 --> 00:08:36.399 because of long -standing corruption. There's 00:08:36.399 --> 00:08:42.059 a war in Georgia that goes okay for Russia, but 00:08:42.059 --> 00:08:44.379 it really reveals a lot of the weaknesses of 00:08:44.379 --> 00:08:46.620 the Russian military. And it's at that moment 00:08:46.620 --> 00:08:49.220 that another effort to privatize another part 00:08:49.220 --> 00:08:52.299 of Russia, most importantly, the military, sets 00:08:52.299 --> 00:08:56.320 off this race to develop what is now what we 00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:58.820 call the private military contracting, you know, 00:08:58.919 --> 00:09:02.840 industry in Russia. It's out of that, plus, you 00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:05.100 have Gennady Prigozhin's relationship, long standing 00:09:05.100 --> 00:09:07.559 relationship with Putin, that we get some of 00:09:07.559 --> 00:09:10.279 the first experimentations in expeditionary private 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:13.419 military contractors, like the Wagner Group. 00:09:14.659 --> 00:09:18.399 So, has there been any jaw dropping things that 00:09:18.399 --> 00:09:20.860 you discovered that would make the readers think 00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:23.379 like, I can't believe Putin got away with this? 00:09:23.519 --> 00:09:25.919 Does something with maybe the annexation of Crimea 00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:29.399 too that occurred later? Oh, absolutely. I mean, 00:09:29.559 --> 00:09:31.539 there are so many jaw -dropping moments for me 00:09:31.539 --> 00:09:35.100 in the reporting and writing of this book. Some 00:09:35.100 --> 00:09:37.679 of them unfolded literally as I was typing the 00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:43.120 last chapters of the book. But I guess the one 00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:45.059 I think that's really interesting is I mean, 00:09:45.059 --> 00:09:48.139 you mentioned Crimea and the invasion, the little 00:09:48.139 --> 00:09:50.399 green men appearing on the Crimean Peninsula 00:09:50.399 --> 00:09:55.860 suddenly, mysteriously. And it was there that 00:09:55.860 --> 00:09:58.740 we start to see this experimentation, this deployment 00:09:58.740 --> 00:10:04.080 of small scale battalions of men with no insignia, 00:10:04.379 --> 00:10:06.700 uniforms that are kind of weirdly not very easy 00:10:06.700 --> 00:10:10.980 to distinguish, their faces are masked. And first 00:10:10.980 --> 00:10:12.980 they're in Crimea, and then suddenly they're 00:10:12.980 --> 00:10:16.000 marching across into Donbas. Nobody knows who's 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:21.320 in charge. And it's at this moment that we start 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:24.580 to understand that the Russian government is 00:10:24.580 --> 00:10:27.419 very much behind this separatist uprising in 00:10:27.419 --> 00:10:31.840 eastern Ukraine in 2014. But still, even then, 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:35.440 nobody knew sort of like what battalion was what 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:37.820 battalion. Everything had like sort of like, 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:42.480 you know, alias names. And you might remember 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:48.580 in July 2014, there was this huge event where 00:10:48.580 --> 00:10:53.279 a commercial jetliner out of Amsterdam, a Malaysia 00:10:53.279 --> 00:10:58.980 jetliner MH17 flew over Ukraine and was down 00:10:58.980 --> 00:11:04.840 by some sort of fire, some sort of missile. And 00:11:04.840 --> 00:11:07.200 it was at that moment that the kind of the roads 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:09.820 and the mystery of what was going on in Dumbass 00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:12.769 started to become a little bit more clear. And 00:11:12.769 --> 00:11:15.210 we started to hear kind of, you know, crackling 00:11:15.210 --> 00:11:19.350 on the radios about a guy named Wagner. And it 00:11:19.350 --> 00:11:22.289 was the experimentation that those experimental 00:11:22.289 --> 00:11:25.429 battalion groups that was led by a guy named 00:11:25.429 --> 00:11:29.049 Dmitry Utkin that had the name Wagner, callsign 00:11:29.049 --> 00:11:31.789 Wagner. That's really the origin story. But what's 00:11:31.789 --> 00:11:34.870 interesting is that from that moment forward, 00:11:35.129 --> 00:11:39.409 2014, summer 2014, Putin was able to convince 00:11:39.409 --> 00:11:42.659 the world that Russia had nothing to do with 00:11:42.659 --> 00:11:46.960 this mercenary army. Okay. The book does draw 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:49.039 a link between the Wagner group and what you 00:11:49.039 --> 00:11:51.100 said earlier, the erosion of the Russian state. 00:11:51.419 --> 00:11:55.240 Do you believe Putin intentionally hollowed out 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:58.580 formal institutions to empower proxies like Wagner? 00:11:59.919 --> 00:12:01.860 It's kind of a chicken and egg question, actually. 00:12:02.379 --> 00:12:06.659 I think the hollowing out was a little bit of 00:12:06.659 --> 00:12:10.639 sort of natural entropy that occurs when nobody 00:12:10.639 --> 00:12:17.220 else can be in charge but mafia and security 00:12:17.220 --> 00:12:21.360 services. Eventually what that means is if there's 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:24.700 only two social groups that control most of the 00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:27.600 levers of the power in a country, then you're 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:29.360 going to get a howling out that's kind of just 00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:35.399 natural. And by necessity, some of the bigger 00:12:35.399 --> 00:12:40.000 institutions like the military are going to still 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.080 need talent, though, if things escalate to the 00:12:43.080 --> 00:12:45.960 point where Russia has to go to war. And we saw 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:48.940 that happen in Chechnya, right? So some of the 00:12:48.940 --> 00:12:52.320 early experiments in deploying sort of proxies 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:57.919 or individuals who claimed to be one thing but 00:12:57.919 --> 00:13:02.159 were another really started with some of the 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:07.059 fractiousness in the Caucasus in the mid -1990s. 00:13:07.210 --> 00:13:10.610 particularly in Chechnya and Georgia, and some 00:13:10.610 --> 00:13:15.370 of the experimentation with using kind of ghost 00:13:15.370 --> 00:13:18.850 armies to further Russia's aims really started 00:13:18.850 --> 00:13:24.230 to play out much more aggressively after the 00:13:24.230 --> 00:13:29.070 Russo -Georgian War in 2008. And yeah, I mean, 00:13:29.070 --> 00:13:32.450 I think the hollowing out progressed in large 00:13:32.450 --> 00:13:36.600 part because then The Kremlin started to expand 00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:39.100 this circle of people who could benefit from 00:13:39.100 --> 00:13:42.120 this systema, as they call it in Russia, which 00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:47.320 is the system by which corruption and organized 00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:51.539 crime and abuse of security services kind of 00:13:51.539 --> 00:13:54.860 mixes together. And it's through systema that 00:13:54.860 --> 00:14:00.139 you start to see the expansion of what... Should 00:14:00.139 --> 00:14:02.399 be private started to be kind of absorbed by 00:14:02.399 --> 00:14:04.799 the state through proxies like you have any progression 00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:10.039 Have you observed any sort of dangerous for lack 00:14:10.039 --> 00:14:14.720 of better words dynamics between Interactions 00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:18.679 with Trump this term versus Trump's first term 00:14:18.679 --> 00:14:23.379 and even if there is something with between Obama 00:14:23.379 --> 00:14:25.899 and and and Biden to has there any similarities 00:14:25.899 --> 00:14:29.539 and and differences between that Well, I mean, 00:14:29.580 --> 00:14:31.159 it's an interesting segue. I mean, if you need 00:14:31.159 --> 00:14:34.980 to draw like a line between sort of how authoritarianism 00:14:34.980 --> 00:14:39.100 has unfolded in Russia and the way in which we've 00:14:39.100 --> 00:14:41.259 been dealing and wrestling with this kind of 00:14:41.259 --> 00:14:44.279 murky narrative about Donald Trump, his connections 00:14:44.279 --> 00:14:49.879 to Russia, the ways in which the Trump administration 00:14:49.879 --> 00:14:54.320 in his first term attempted to hollow out institutions. 00:14:55.049 --> 00:14:58.070 and is now very aggressively in his second term, 00:14:58.149 --> 00:15:00.529 hollowing out institutions. Yeah, there's a lot 00:15:00.529 --> 00:15:05.169 of threads to draw on there, but I think what 00:15:05.169 --> 00:15:08.590 I can say is that it has been really fascinating 00:15:08.590 --> 00:15:12.590 to watch how some of the narratives that authoritarian 00:15:12.590 --> 00:15:15.090 governments, particularly those like Russia, 00:15:15.590 --> 00:15:18.549 have seeped into the body politic of the United 00:15:18.549 --> 00:15:21.870 States and really become a polarizing factor. 00:15:22.409 --> 00:15:27.750 We're now speaking in August of 2025. And once 00:15:27.750 --> 00:15:31.950 again, the story of Russia and Trump has kind 00:15:31.950 --> 00:15:34.789 of come to the fore, largely of his own making. 00:15:35.769 --> 00:15:37.789 For a while, I think it kind of had laid dormant 00:15:37.789 --> 00:15:40.950 since the 2016 presidential election, where there 00:15:40.950 --> 00:15:43.009 was allegations of Russian interference in the 00:15:43.009 --> 00:15:46.070 election on behalf of Trump, or at least in sort 00:15:46.070 --> 00:15:49.250 of putting a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump. 00:15:49.710 --> 00:15:53.529 And now it's come to the fore again, in an effort, 00:15:53.710 --> 00:15:56.929 seemingly by Trump and his administration, to 00:15:56.929 --> 00:16:00.590 criminalize even asking the question about whether 00:16:00.590 --> 00:16:05.450 there was interference. Yeah, because, you know, 00:16:05.549 --> 00:16:09.169 Obama dealt with, you know, what occurred with 00:16:09.169 --> 00:16:12.669 Georgia, and then also in the annexation of Crimea. 00:16:13.429 --> 00:16:16.049 Trump, like you just said earlier, had, you know, 00:16:16.169 --> 00:16:18.490 this issue with, you know, supposed Russian interference. 00:16:22.349 --> 00:16:24.929 And then Biden you know with the with the invasion 00:16:24.929 --> 00:16:27.509 of Ukraine and now Trump's sort of dealing with 00:16:27.509 --> 00:16:29.990 this whole you know trying to get a deal out 00:16:29.990 --> 00:16:33.370 of this. So then throughout you know Biden's 00:16:33.370 --> 00:16:37.429 term and now even into Trump's we've seen Zelensky's 00:16:37.429 --> 00:16:40.330 public courage in your book does reveal this 00:16:40.330 --> 00:16:43.250 his hi his behind the scenes battle with Wagner 00:16:43.250 --> 00:16:46.450 because we just. Us, the common listener, our 00:16:46.450 --> 00:16:48.350 common citizen, we don't know about Wagner until 00:16:48.350 --> 00:16:51.750 you expose this. So what surprised you the most 00:16:51.750 --> 00:16:54.350 about how he's handled these shadowy threats? 00:16:55.250 --> 00:16:56.950 Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. And let me 00:16:56.950 --> 00:16:59.190 just sort of emphasize it. Like what you just 00:16:59.190 --> 00:17:04.210 laid out, A .R., is like this long thread that 00:17:04.210 --> 00:17:07.450 goes from Obama to Trump to Biden and back to 00:17:07.450 --> 00:17:10.130 Trump again. And Russia is there again and again. 00:17:10.289 --> 00:17:13.230 This problem of Ukraine has been so central to 00:17:13.230 --> 00:17:18.029 U .S. politics. and frankly has undone several 00:17:18.029 --> 00:17:21.750 administrations. It has frustrated both Democrats 00:17:21.750 --> 00:17:25.289 and Republicans in terms of just trying to tamp 00:17:25.289 --> 00:17:28.130 down the conflagration that has been caused by 00:17:28.130 --> 00:17:32.349 this conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It's 00:17:32.349 --> 00:17:34.890 interesting that you mentioned Zelensky. I think 00:17:34.890 --> 00:17:39.930 a lot of people see Zelensky now some four years 00:17:39.930 --> 00:17:43.829 into this conflict with Russia and Ukraine. as 00:17:43.829 --> 00:17:45.849 a kind of Churchillian figure, right? He's sort 00:17:45.849 --> 00:17:50.589 of like the Churchill of our era. He's challenging, 00:17:51.529 --> 00:17:55.589 he's kind of the David challenging Goliath and 00:17:55.589 --> 00:17:59.009 really putting it to Putin where it hurts the 00:17:59.009 --> 00:18:01.829 most. He was person of the year too. He was person 00:18:01.829 --> 00:18:04.130 of the year. And I don't think anybody would 00:18:04.130 --> 00:18:08.069 have expected that. I was in Kiev in 2019 on 00:18:08.069 --> 00:18:11.890 the campaign trail. when Zelensky mounted his 00:18:11.890 --> 00:18:16.170 campaign for the presidency. And the key opponents 00:18:16.170 --> 00:18:20.329 there were Yulia Tymoshenko, who famously was 00:18:20.329 --> 00:18:23.029 kind of this heroic figure, a little bit besmirched, 00:18:23.130 --> 00:18:26.789 but certainly a heroic figure from the 2004 Orange 00:18:26.789 --> 00:18:30.470 Revolution. She was very well known for her pushback 00:18:30.470 --> 00:18:34.809 against Russian aggression and sort of creeping 00:18:34.809 --> 00:18:37.390 Russian influence. in Ukrainian political culture. 00:18:37.490 --> 00:18:39.710 And then there's Petro Poroshenko, who was this 00:18:39.710 --> 00:18:42.109 kind of rich oligarch, you know, sort of chocolate 00:18:42.109 --> 00:18:46.410 king of Ukraine. And these two were considered 00:18:46.410 --> 00:18:47.750 to be the frontrunners because they kind of had 00:18:47.750 --> 00:18:50.450 this incumbent sort of vibe to them, right? They 00:18:50.450 --> 00:18:52.430 were established politicians. And here comes 00:18:52.430 --> 00:18:56.789 this guy, a comedian, a filmmaker, a guy who 00:18:56.789 --> 00:19:00.109 had a show that was pretty popular, you know, 00:19:00.170 --> 00:19:02.609 that was almost surreal in his kind of narrative 00:19:02.609 --> 00:19:04.960 line, because of course he's like, an average 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:09.059 Joe who becomes president by accident, and he's 00:19:09.059 --> 00:19:11.299 from Dunbass. Unlike these other two who are 00:19:11.299 --> 00:19:14.960 kind of not really from the center of the conflict, 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:19.279 Zelensky is. And I think possibly because of 00:19:19.279 --> 00:19:21.980 that and his extreme charisma, I mean, he's just 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:24.640 a really charismatic figure. I've seen him a 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:28.759 few times in person. And his mastery of social 00:19:28.759 --> 00:19:32.259 media, his understanding of media, Those things 00:19:32.259 --> 00:19:34.380 combined to elevate him to the presidency in 00:19:34.380 --> 00:19:37.720 the summer of 2019 at a time when there's actually 00:19:37.720 --> 00:19:39.920 escalating conflict with Russia over a group 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:42.539 of sailors who've been taken hostage after a 00:19:42.539 --> 00:19:46.859 conflict in the Sea of Azov. And I remember thinking 00:19:46.859 --> 00:19:48.680 like, I don't know how this guy's going to survive. 00:19:50.279 --> 00:19:54.859 He just seems out of his depth. And interestingly, 00:19:55.220 --> 00:20:00.230 in researching the story about Zelensky's quiet 00:20:00.230 --> 00:20:02.589 battle with the Wagner Group. I learned it was 00:20:02.589 --> 00:20:04.190 almost precisely at the time that he becomes 00:20:04.190 --> 00:20:06.710 president that he's confronted with this challenge, 00:20:07.150 --> 00:20:10.430 where the security services of Ukraine have mapped 00:20:10.430 --> 00:20:14.910 out this very elaborate conspiracy to take a 00:20:14.910 --> 00:20:18.410 group of Wagner Group mercenaries into their 00:20:18.410 --> 00:20:22.049 custody through a very elaborate scheme in Belarus. 00:20:22.410 --> 00:20:25.869 that very nearly upends peace negotiations between 00:20:25.869 --> 00:20:28.470 Russia and Ukraine at the time exactly the moment 00:20:28.470 --> 00:20:31.750 that Zelensky is trying to win over Putin's trust. 00:20:32.630 --> 00:20:36.450 And it's actually a weird little known fact that 00:20:36.450 --> 00:20:39.150 that Wagner Group episode was, I think, very 00:20:39.150 --> 00:20:42.990 much one of the main dynamics behind solving 00:20:42.990 --> 00:20:45.390 this distrust between Putin and Zelensky and 00:20:45.390 --> 00:20:47.930 escalating the conflict to a full -blown war. 00:20:49.150 --> 00:20:53.480 Did Zelensky anticipate the Wagner mutiny shocking 00:20:53.480 --> 00:20:57.440 the world? Has there been any warning signs that 00:20:57.440 --> 00:21:01.220 perhaps you spot that others, maybe even previous 00:21:01.220 --> 00:21:04.599 presidents, US presidents have missed? Yeah, 00:21:04.599 --> 00:21:08.579 well, I certainly think that Zelensky was always 00:21:08.579 --> 00:21:11.240 a bit concerned because you have to remember, 00:21:11.640 --> 00:21:14.859 if you think back to early 2022, just after the 00:21:14.859 --> 00:21:17.740 invasion got underway in Ukraine, There were 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:20.539 some reports very early on about a number of 00:21:20.539 --> 00:21:22.500 assassination attempts. There was a joint list 00:21:22.500 --> 00:21:26.119 of, like, 22 people who were in Zelensky's cabinet 00:21:26.119 --> 00:21:28.960 and his government who were being targeted for 00:21:28.960 --> 00:21:31.460 assassination. And the rumor was, or the reporting 00:21:31.460 --> 00:21:33.279 was, that it was the Wagner group that was supposed 00:21:33.279 --> 00:21:34.980 to carry out these assassinations. And it turned 00:21:34.980 --> 00:21:37.539 out to be a completely different mercenary group 00:21:37.539 --> 00:21:43.029 that had some network links to Wagner. It was 00:21:43.029 --> 00:21:45.890 certainly uppermost on Zelensky's mind that the 00:21:45.890 --> 00:21:49.009 Wagner Group was going to be a challenge. And 00:21:49.009 --> 00:21:51.890 over time, of course, we saw Wagner Group march 00:21:51.890 --> 00:21:56.569 across Donbas and take huge portions of territory 00:21:56.569 --> 00:21:59.930 back from Ukrainian forces in a sort of back 00:21:59.930 --> 00:22:02.690 and forth tussle that led to this pinnacle moment 00:22:02.690 --> 00:22:10.170 in Bakhmut in the winter of 2022 and 2023. And 00:22:10.170 --> 00:22:13.490 I think for me, You know, I think there are two 00:22:13.490 --> 00:22:14.910 signal moments where I was like, oh, you know 00:22:14.910 --> 00:22:16.430 what? Something's gonna happen here. I mean, 00:22:16.490 --> 00:22:19.190 obviously anybody with that kind of personality, 00:22:19.430 --> 00:22:21.250 Yevgeny Prigozhin kind of steps out of the shadows 00:22:21.250 --> 00:22:24.349 and into the limelight, starts kind of grabbing 00:22:24.349 --> 00:22:27.829 attention. He's in the news all the time after 00:22:27.829 --> 00:22:30.150 being hidden for basically, you know, almost 00:22:30.150 --> 00:22:33.130 two decades. And people now are assuming, of 00:22:33.130 --> 00:22:35.869 course, that there is a connection between Putin 00:22:35.869 --> 00:22:39.430 and Prigozhin. So all of that narrative is completely 00:22:39.430 --> 00:22:43.579 blown up. But it's... It's when Prigozhin goes 00:22:43.579 --> 00:22:45.759 public that you start to understand that he's 00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:48.920 worried. He's worried about losing his empire, 00:22:49.019 --> 00:22:52.039 losing grip on this, you know, mercenary army 00:22:52.039 --> 00:22:53.880 that he's built and everything that's come with 00:22:53.880 --> 00:22:56.799 it, including, you know, hundreds of millions 00:22:56.799 --> 00:23:02.400 of dollars from laundering gold, diamonds, etc., 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:05.160 taken from Africa, oil, gas from the Middle East, 00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:09.640 from Syria, from Libya. And so it's the fact 00:23:09.640 --> 00:23:11.599 that he actually steps out of the shadows that 00:23:11.599 --> 00:23:15.240 kind of signals, you know, he's worried. And 00:23:15.240 --> 00:23:17.839 then progressively we see this campaign of leaks 00:23:17.839 --> 00:23:21.720 and attempts to damage him as he battles in Baku. 00:23:21.779 --> 00:23:23.940 He's raging against this and this is all happening 00:23:23.940 --> 00:23:26.099 on social media. It's all happening on YouTube, 00:23:26.279 --> 00:23:30.539 on Telegram. But the real moment... I think the 00:23:30.539 --> 00:23:32.180 one that's sort of like, oh yeah, this guy is 00:23:32.180 --> 00:23:35.160 going to go down, or at least he's going to burn 00:23:35.160 --> 00:23:37.859 up his capital in some sort of clash, was when 00:23:37.859 --> 00:23:42.019 in April 2023, and we're really in the middle 00:23:42.019 --> 00:23:44.920 of the Bachmute battle now, things are not going 00:23:44.920 --> 00:23:46.680 super well for the Wagner group, even though 00:23:46.680 --> 00:23:51.819 there's progress. And there's a bomb that goes 00:23:51.819 --> 00:23:55.839 off in St. Petersburg at his cafe. It was a cafe 00:23:55.839 --> 00:24:00.019 that not many people knew was actually his. and 00:24:00.019 --> 00:24:03.259 it was an assassination against one of his sort 00:24:03.259 --> 00:24:05.920 of fanboy military bloggers who he'd lent the 00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:09.920 cafe to. This was happening on Prigozhin's territory, 00:24:10.119 --> 00:24:12.460 his home turf, a place that really only somebody 00:24:12.460 --> 00:24:16.279 who knew him well would have hit to send a message. 00:24:16.299 --> 00:24:18.480 And that's when you knew Prigozhin was probably 00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:21.480 gonna go down. To kind of touch a little bit 00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:26.420 more on the horrific war crimes, about three 00:24:26.420 --> 00:24:29.500 questions around that. During your investigation, 00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:32.480 has there been any moments that you discovered 00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:35.980 that really, really disturbed you? Oh, yeah. 00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:38.079 There's so many moments. I mean, the one that 00:24:38.079 --> 00:24:41.579 really stands out and I do, I meditated on a 00:24:41.579 --> 00:24:44.279 lot and I think about it does give me flashbacks 00:24:44.279 --> 00:24:47.380 is one I write about in the book. And it was 00:24:47.380 --> 00:24:51.859 in June of 2017. There was this video that appeared 00:24:51.859 --> 00:24:55.180 online. It was kind of this viral video. it first 00:24:55.180 --> 00:24:58.180 appeared I think on Telegram and then kind of 00:24:58.180 --> 00:25:01.559 made its way around to Twitter and a couple other 00:25:01.559 --> 00:25:04.720 sites. And the video was a really short clip 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:08.759 in some sort of desert landscape, you know, where 00:25:08.759 --> 00:25:15.859 these guys in kind of gray, beige camo with their 00:25:15.859 --> 00:25:21.380 masks on their face, you know, AK -47 rifles 00:25:21.380 --> 00:25:24.940 in hand. were beating the hell out of a guy on 00:25:24.940 --> 00:25:28.019 the ground. An unarmed civilian turned out to 00:25:28.019 --> 00:25:33.819 be a Syrian national who had left the country 00:25:33.819 --> 00:25:37.880 and come back to reconnect with family and then 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:42.900 somehow got sucked into fighting on behalf of 00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:46.799 Bashar al -Assad's army through several militias 00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:48.619 that were run by the Wagner group. And then he 00:25:48.619 --> 00:25:51.640 somehow escaped. Nobody knew this, of course, 00:25:51.640 --> 00:25:56.160 at the time, but this moment on camera was so 00:25:56.160 --> 00:25:59.920 vivid, so graphic. They were beating him with 00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:03.019 a sledgehammer while he was crying out in pain, 00:26:03.420 --> 00:26:06.920 and later they dismembered him and beheaded him, 00:26:06.920 --> 00:26:09.819 and then set his body on fire. It was like one 00:26:09.819 --> 00:26:12.819 of the most horrific scenes that I had ever seen. 00:26:12.839 --> 00:26:16.099 I've seen a lot of things in my time. I reported 00:26:16.099 --> 00:26:18.279 on 9 -11 right after the collapse of the World 00:26:18.279 --> 00:26:21.210 Trade Towers. I've been in Afghanistan and Pakistan 00:26:21.210 --> 00:26:24.710 at suicide bombings. And I was up front for those 00:26:24.710 --> 00:26:27.309 things. But this one, for some reason, just the 00:26:27.309 --> 00:26:30.190 graphicness of it really stuck with me. And it 00:26:30.190 --> 00:26:33.390 was the first war crime that I became obsessed 00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:37.470 with trying to solve. Has there been any global 00:26:37.470 --> 00:26:42.029 reaction from formal institutions in places like 00:26:42.029 --> 00:26:46.940 Syria, Ukraine, Mali? to the atrocities committed 00:26:46.940 --> 00:26:50.960 by Wagner, and is there any local resistance 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:53.859 to their presence? Yeah, that's a good question. 00:26:54.819 --> 00:26:59.420 So over time we've seen, you know, Wagner appears 00:26:59.420 --> 00:27:01.559 more or less officially on the scene in summer 00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:04.779 2014, but there are other iterations of a kind 00:27:04.779 --> 00:27:09.740 of Wagner light in 2013 that were in Syria, but 00:27:09.740 --> 00:27:12.799 it starts to kind of accumulate. more mass and 00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:16.000 power and momentum from roughly 2015 forward 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:19.339 when Russia officially announces its entry into 00:27:19.339 --> 00:27:22.200 the war in Syria. It's at that stage that it 00:27:22.200 --> 00:27:24.920 starts to spread, right? It moves from Syria, 00:27:25.220 --> 00:27:27.420 they open a base in Central African Republic, 00:27:27.599 --> 00:27:31.099 Sudan, and then there's the offensive in Libya. 00:27:32.420 --> 00:27:35.359 The Wagner Group is basically catching fire as 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:39.640 a business enterprise for Russia. And along the 00:27:39.640 --> 00:27:43.740 way, there are just countless war crimes that 00:27:43.740 --> 00:27:47.900 are documented by human rights groups, witnessed 00:27:47.900 --> 00:27:51.319 by locals. The place that stands out to me where 00:27:51.319 --> 00:27:53.700 there was considerable resistance to the Wagner 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:56.759 Group's presence at first was in the Central 00:27:56.759 --> 00:27:59.740 African Republic, where there had been an ongoing 00:27:59.740 --> 00:28:02.839 civil war from 2012. And by the time the Wagner 00:28:02.839 --> 00:28:09.690 Group arrived in early in late 2017, early 2018, 00:28:10.549 --> 00:28:12.630 and began to deploy as kind of training instructors 00:28:12.630 --> 00:28:16.250 for the local forces, you know, things were kind 00:28:16.250 --> 00:28:18.970 of on fire. And there were pockets of resistance 00:28:18.970 --> 00:28:22.650 all over the country. Eventually, you know, Wagner 00:28:22.650 --> 00:28:26.009 did accumulate a lot of popularity while in Central 00:28:26.009 --> 00:28:28.869 African Republic. But along the way, there were 00:28:28.869 --> 00:28:32.089 a lot of atrocity incidents. One of the more 00:28:32.089 --> 00:28:33.470 notable ones that everybody kind of knows about 00:28:33.470 --> 00:28:35.190 is the killing of three Russian journalists. 00:28:35.420 --> 00:28:38.160 who went there to Central African Republic to 00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:42.880 document what was happening in 2018. While those 00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:47.299 things were unfolding, the UN expert group on 00:28:47.299 --> 00:28:51.299 mercenaries opened a couple of inquiries and 00:28:51.299 --> 00:28:54.220 did a couple of studies looking at atrocities 00:28:54.220 --> 00:28:56.400 linked to the Wagner group in all of these different 00:28:56.400 --> 00:28:59.700 places. And of course, human rights group in 00:28:59.700 --> 00:29:02.519 Ukraine have been very closely documenting the 00:29:02.519 --> 00:29:04.000 activities of the Wagner group all the way since 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:07.680 2014. I remember visiting a place in Kiev and 00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:10.599 talking to human rights experts there about sort 00:29:10.599 --> 00:29:12.420 of what they had seen and it was quite evident, 00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:15.200 you know, they've been linked to so many different, 00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:17.480 you know, atrocity incidents and that people 00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:20.420 were keeping track. We haven't seen anything 00:29:20.420 --> 00:29:23.019 officially from the ICC, the International Criminal 00:29:23.019 --> 00:29:25.799 Court. What we have seen and what we do know 00:29:25.799 --> 00:29:29.410 about is there was an civil society organization 00:29:29.410 --> 00:29:34.490 that lodged a pretty robust complaint describing 00:29:34.490 --> 00:29:37.910 the Wagner Group's war crimes that are often 00:29:37.910 --> 00:29:42.710 shown online on Telegram and kind of bandied 00:29:42.710 --> 00:29:46.690 about in Mali. And this involved the killing 00:29:46.690 --> 00:29:50.369 of multiple civilians who were unarmed all across 00:29:50.369 --> 00:29:55.380 Mali. Brief that was issued. It's called an article 00:29:55.380 --> 00:29:59.000 15 brief Described some pretty horrific crimes 00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:02.359 and so far The International Criminal Court hasn't 00:30:02.359 --> 00:30:05.759 really acted on it But there are there have been 00:30:05.759 --> 00:30:09.440 since then calls in the Council of Europe for 00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:12.740 a special tribunal for the Wagner group Do you 00:30:12.740 --> 00:30:16.240 believe the West? adequately understands the 00:30:16.240 --> 00:30:19.720 dangers posed by groups like Wagner or is there 00:30:19.720 --> 00:30:23.670 still a tendency to view them as Like a Russia's 00:30:23.670 --> 00:30:26.849 problem Yeah, I think there has been an evolution 00:30:26.849 --> 00:30:31.049 of thinking in the West certainly about how the 00:30:31.049 --> 00:30:33.970 Wagner group and proxy forces like it could really 00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:38.589 pose a danger to stability and security in the 00:30:38.589 --> 00:30:41.430 international arena some of those lessons have 00:30:41.430 --> 00:30:45.390 been learned the hard way from You know some 00:30:45.390 --> 00:30:48.690 instances of direct engagements between US special 00:30:48.690 --> 00:30:52.869 forces and Wagner forces in Syria, for instance, 00:30:52.910 --> 00:30:56.849 in early 2018. That was a very historic moment 00:30:56.849 --> 00:31:00.309 when something like 200 Wagner forces were killed 00:31:00.309 --> 00:31:02.730 in that engage. It was the first time Russian 00:31:02.730 --> 00:31:06.230 -American soldiers had gone at it on the battlefield 00:31:06.230 --> 00:31:10.349 since the Vietnam War. So the escalation risks 00:31:10.349 --> 00:31:13.049 certainly were, I think, known and understood 00:31:13.049 --> 00:31:17.190 by the US government, but the response was always 00:31:17.190 --> 00:31:21.059 a little bit muddled. And Europe was extremely 00:31:21.059 --> 00:31:23.599 divided on responding to the rise of the Wagner 00:31:23.599 --> 00:31:28.700 Group. Some countries wanted to see Yevgeny Prigozhin 00:31:28.700 --> 00:31:32.640 put on the sanctions list as early as 2014, 2015. 00:31:33.960 --> 00:31:37.019 Some wanted to see his compatriots and his businesses 00:31:37.019 --> 00:31:39.559 put on the sanctions list. But it wasn't really 00:31:39.559 --> 00:31:42.980 until 2022 that there was this kind of precipitating 00:31:42.980 --> 00:31:46.799 cause, the invasion of Ukraine, that really forced 00:31:47.039 --> 00:31:51.779 and catalyzed actual policy action. Fast forward 00:31:51.779 --> 00:31:57.900 to 2023, 2024, we've now seen some additional 00:31:57.900 --> 00:31:59.720 understanding, I think, take place in the sense 00:31:59.720 --> 00:32:04.259 of the Wagner Group is this arm of Russia's military 00:32:04.259 --> 00:32:08.940 that's on a very long leash. So long, in fact, 00:32:09.180 --> 00:32:12.420 that it's even difficult for the Kremlin to kind 00:32:12.420 --> 00:32:15.960 of rein it in. And we saw the prosecution of 00:32:15.960 --> 00:32:21.480 a Wagner group affiliated soldier in Norway recently, 00:32:21.599 --> 00:32:24.799 sorry, in Finland recently. And then we've also 00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:29.400 seen the potential for a case in Norway. And 00:32:29.400 --> 00:32:33.400 we've also seen actually some other Wagner group 00:32:33.400 --> 00:32:38.349 affiliated. Operatives in Poland also come under 00:32:38.349 --> 00:32:42.829 scrutiny and in the UK as well. So the wagon 00:32:42.829 --> 00:32:45.450 group might be dead as a kind of as an actual 00:32:45.450 --> 00:32:49.470 organization, right? Since the implosion of the 00:32:49.470 --> 00:32:52.329 wagon group after mutiny in 2023, but the brand 00:32:52.329 --> 00:32:55.329 still lives on and apparently somebody in Russia 00:32:55.329 --> 00:32:58.890 in the Kremlin still thinks it's useful. Do you 00:32:58.890 --> 00:33:03.410 think the wagoner group is just unique to Russia? 00:33:03.759 --> 00:33:07.400 Do you think also they're sort of like other 00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:10.420 states, like the US or China, pursuing similar 00:33:10.420 --> 00:33:13.259 shadow strategies through privatized violence? 00:33:13.819 --> 00:33:16.680 Well, I mean, you know, we're talking right now, 00:33:16.799 --> 00:33:20.740 AR, and we've just learned about, you know, this 00:33:20.740 --> 00:33:24.200 apparent story involving potential associates 00:33:24.200 --> 00:33:26.200 of the Trump administration or Trump himself 00:33:26.200 --> 00:33:30.059 who have been caught out in Greenland. Trying 00:33:30.059 --> 00:33:33.940 to Foment some sort of influence campaign there. 00:33:33.940 --> 00:33:35.940 Yeah, they seem to be also special operators 00:33:35.940 --> 00:33:37.960 We don't really know much about the story yet. 00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:42.759 But what it what seems likely here is is that 00:33:42.759 --> 00:33:44.579 Strangely the Trump administration has taken 00:33:44.579 --> 00:33:46.700 a page taken a page from the Kremlin playbook 00:33:46.700 --> 00:33:49.940 and tried to roll it out in Greenland and kind 00:33:49.940 --> 00:33:53.940 of you know Put its own Wagner group like organization 00:33:53.940 --> 00:33:58.869 into play China does have you know, of course, 00:33:59.069 --> 00:34:01.269 and does use private military security forces, 00:34:01.309 --> 00:34:03.150 but usually on contract from other countries. 00:34:03.650 --> 00:34:06.849 So notoriously, for instance, a lot of Wagner 00:34:06.849 --> 00:34:11.170 operatives have worked on contract on Belt and 00:34:11.170 --> 00:34:14.030 Road initiative projects in places like Pakistan 00:34:14.030 --> 00:34:20.130 or Afghanistan, Central Asia. And so, you know, 00:34:20.429 --> 00:34:22.449 there has been some experience and some crossover 00:34:22.449 --> 00:34:24.789 there. The place where people like to kind of 00:34:24.789 --> 00:34:27.579 make the comparison is in the South China Sea 00:34:27.579 --> 00:34:30.480 where you have these kind of what they call little 00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:37.679 blue men who act as proxies in the waterway battlefields, 00:34:37.679 --> 00:34:41.639 you know, over the South China Sea. So, but nobody 00:34:41.639 --> 00:34:44.980 has been as successful as Russia in kind of transforming 00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:49.639 this narrative of historic political collapse 00:34:49.639 --> 00:34:52.940 into a revival of an empire, right? I mean, that's 00:34:52.940 --> 00:34:56.090 kind of the sweep of what Wagner brings to the 00:34:56.090 --> 00:35:00.710 table is really, it's magic secret sauce. Okay, 00:35:00.750 --> 00:35:03.570 we talked about Wagner, what they were, or who 00:35:03.570 --> 00:35:07.869 they are, their influence across Russia's actions. 00:35:08.469 --> 00:35:10.469 And like I mentioned earlier, there, we just 00:35:10.469 --> 00:35:12.570 I don't feel like the the average voter American 00:35:12.570 --> 00:35:15.210 voter American citizen just doesn't know much 00:35:15.210 --> 00:35:17.329 about Wagner, we just see what we see on social 00:35:17.329 --> 00:35:20.429 media or mainstream media. So for the everyday 00:35:20.429 --> 00:35:22.610 Americans trying to understand this conflict. 00:35:22.920 --> 00:35:25.500 What is the single most important thing about 00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:28.039 Wagner Group that they need to know, if there 00:35:28.039 --> 00:35:31.900 is just one? There could be more. Maybe the top 00:35:31.900 --> 00:35:34.780 takeaway is the Wagner Group is a barometer for 00:35:34.780 --> 00:35:38.360 how committed Vladimir Putin is to extending 00:35:38.360 --> 00:35:41.559 the reach of Russia beyond its own borders. When 00:35:41.559 --> 00:35:45.019 you expend that kind of money, billions of dollars, 00:35:45.340 --> 00:35:48.239 to raise up a ghost army that's deployed around 00:35:48.239 --> 00:35:52.260 the world, that commits, you know, we don't know. 00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:55.679 probably hundreds of war crimes and atrocities, 00:35:55.980 --> 00:36:00.760 but then documents them online and trots them 00:36:00.760 --> 00:36:04.599 out on social media apps like their trophies 00:36:04.599 --> 00:36:09.059 or medals or badges of honor. We should all be 00:36:09.059 --> 00:36:12.820 really worried about a country as adversarial 00:36:12.820 --> 00:36:16.300 to Western interests as Russia because the wagon 00:36:16.300 --> 00:36:19.579 group, what it really tells us is Putin is prepared 00:36:19.579 --> 00:36:23.030 to go to any kind of extreme. in pursuing its 00:36:23.030 --> 00:36:27.010 ends. And that militarism in Russia is going 00:36:27.010 --> 00:36:31.050 to be a long -standing issue. Even if tomorrow 00:36:31.050 --> 00:36:37.010 Donald Trump magically is able to suture together 00:36:37.010 --> 00:36:40.449 a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, Zelensky 00:36:40.449 --> 00:36:43.329 and Putin shake hands, the one thing that will 00:36:43.329 --> 00:36:47.309 not go away is this. high octane militarism that 00:36:47.309 --> 00:36:49.769 really fed the rise of the Wagner Group. And 00:36:49.769 --> 00:36:51.690 that is going to be a perennial problem in Russia 00:36:51.690 --> 00:36:54.969 that is going to be kind of a challenge for the 00:36:54.969 --> 00:36:58.530 West to manage for a long time to come. To go 00:36:58.530 --> 00:37:01.510 off of that, Trump's interaction and Trump's, 00:37:01.510 --> 00:37:03.809 you know, attempt at peace negotiation during 00:37:03.809 --> 00:37:07.429 his term to achieve just any sort of settlement 00:37:07.429 --> 00:37:10.369 agreement. You had mentioned that Trump has a 00:37:10.369 --> 00:37:12.849 complicated relationship with the Russian power 00:37:12.849 --> 00:37:17.159 players. So what concrete examples illustrate 00:37:17.159 --> 00:37:20.639 this connection that us voters, us citizens should 00:37:20.639 --> 00:37:23.659 understand? Yeah, well, let me start with the 00:37:23.659 --> 00:37:25.619 one that most people know or think they know, 00:37:25.639 --> 00:37:29.579 but maybe, like, they don't know, right? Let's 00:37:29.579 --> 00:37:33.699 dial back to 2015. Donald Trump is coming down 00:37:33.699 --> 00:37:36.539 that golden escalator. He's announcing his candidacy 00:37:36.539 --> 00:37:41.219 for the presidency for the 2016 elections. Everybody's 00:37:41.219 --> 00:37:44.519 surprised. Most people shrug. Nobody takes it 00:37:44.519 --> 00:37:48.619 seriously until it does get serious with the 00:37:48.619 --> 00:37:53.139 primaries, not that many months later. He's a 00:37:53.139 --> 00:37:57.460 loud, brash, bold political candidate, the kind 00:37:57.460 --> 00:38:00.219 of which really the Republican Party hadn't seen 00:38:00.219 --> 00:38:04.159 since Ronald Reagan ran for office. And at the 00:38:04.159 --> 00:38:07.389 same time, The social media environment, the 00:38:07.389 --> 00:38:09.610 internet and how we experience it just as everyday 00:38:09.610 --> 00:38:13.829 Americans is totally changing. We're moving from 00:38:13.829 --> 00:38:18.250 Facebook 1 .0, which is kind of glitchy, to a 00:38:18.250 --> 00:38:21.690 little bit slicker Facebook 2 .0. More and more 00:38:21.690 --> 00:38:24.809 people of different generations, different backgrounds 00:38:24.809 --> 00:38:27.650 are using social media. And it's there that the 00:38:27.650 --> 00:38:32.170 roads between Russian influence, Trump's connections, 00:38:32.519 --> 00:38:34.900 the wagon group, and you have getting precocious 00:38:34.900 --> 00:38:38.400 meat. With this massive social media influence 00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:41.480 campaign, where the Internet Research Agency, 00:38:41.920 --> 00:38:45.659 which is, you know, aka the troll farm, is deployed 00:38:45.659 --> 00:38:51.840 to foment this kind of faux polarization between 00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:55.619 different parts of online America. Many people 00:38:55.619 --> 00:38:57.480 remember like Black Lives Matter was just getting 00:38:57.480 --> 00:39:00.760 its start then. And so, you know, Internet Research 00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:06.250 Agency would start these Black Lives Matter groups 00:39:06.250 --> 00:39:10.449 and then spew all this pro -leftist really extreme 00:39:10.449 --> 00:39:15.750 kind of rhetoric aimed at, you know, inflaming 00:39:15.750 --> 00:39:18.389 opinions on the other side, the pro -police, 00:39:18.389 --> 00:39:22.349 you know, back the blue forces, right? And we 00:39:22.349 --> 00:39:24.309 saw those clashes play out not only online, but 00:39:24.309 --> 00:39:26.369 the Internet Research Agency was able to get 00:39:26.369 --> 00:39:30.630 people to be, to show up for rallies where it 00:39:30.630 --> 00:39:34.340 was like, support Trump down with Clinton, you 00:39:34.340 --> 00:39:37.300 know, and all of this was sort of manufactured 00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:39.260 online with for just a couple hundred thousand 00:39:39.260 --> 00:39:42.559 dollars. And that was, you know, Yevgeny Pugosian. 00:39:42.639 --> 00:39:44.860 That was the man behind the wagon group was the 00:39:44.860 --> 00:39:47.519 same man who was behind fomenting this social 00:39:47.519 --> 00:39:50.820 media campaign, by the way, which also targeted 00:39:50.820 --> 00:39:54.300 the UK and was is largely credited for being 00:39:54.300 --> 00:39:56.739 extremely influential in swaying the campaign 00:39:56.739 --> 00:40:01.360 and the and the Brexit vote. that followed just 00:40:01.360 --> 00:40:04.219 soon after that. And of course, there are many 00:40:04.219 --> 00:40:06.760 other instances that you can look at where the 00:40:06.760 --> 00:40:09.880 internet research agency was deployed around 00:40:09.880 --> 00:40:14.699 the world to either foment polarization and discord 00:40:14.699 --> 00:40:19.699 in democracies or encourage a kind of pro -authoritarian 00:40:19.699 --> 00:40:22.559 stance. So that's what Americans really need 00:40:22.559 --> 00:40:25.239 to understand is that there's a lot of connectivity 00:40:25.239 --> 00:40:31.440 between Online proxy warfare via Facebook and 00:40:31.440 --> 00:40:35.099 Twitter and YouTube and social media and real 00:40:35.099 --> 00:40:38.920 world proxy warfare where you're shooting guns 00:40:38.920 --> 00:40:43.159 and trying to take territory and seize the initiative 00:40:43.159 --> 00:40:47.599 from a rival state Yeah from 2015 onward. It 00:40:47.599 --> 00:40:50.670 seems like there was sort of this For a lack 00:40:50.670 --> 00:40:53.630 of better words civil war between just divided 00:40:53.630 --> 00:40:56.449 groups. You said people You know came one point 00:40:56.449 --> 00:40:58.650 black lives matter people supporting police and 00:40:58.650 --> 00:41:01.190 then it sort of is like kind of like a cloud 00:41:01.190 --> 00:41:03.090 Just getting more expansive expansive expansive 00:41:03.090 --> 00:41:06.090 over time up till now to before I answer before 00:41:06.090 --> 00:41:08.730 I ask this one question To go on per goes in 00:41:08.730 --> 00:41:13.409 just a little bit his his rise and fall What 00:41:13.409 --> 00:41:17.389 does that whole story reveal about the loyalty 00:41:17.389 --> 00:41:21.139 and betrayal? in Putin's inner circle. Is it 00:41:21.139 --> 00:41:22.920 like sort of like this kind of tornado or like 00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:25.000 cloud forming, where it's just getting bigger, 00:41:25.099 --> 00:41:27.059 bigger, bigger, splitting, sort of like that 00:41:27.059 --> 00:41:30.139 analogy that you mentioned? Yeah, every time 00:41:30.139 --> 00:41:33.780 I like, I think about Yevgeny Prigozhin and his 00:41:33.780 --> 00:41:36.340 relationship with Putin, it's a little bit kind 00:41:36.340 --> 00:41:38.519 of like how I think about the conversation between, 00:41:38.519 --> 00:41:40.280 you know, James Comey and Donald Trump. It's 00:41:40.280 --> 00:41:43.300 like, I hear that song, Kendrick Lamar, loyalty, 00:41:43.420 --> 00:41:48.260 loyalty, loyalty. It's all about like, you know, 00:41:48.480 --> 00:41:50.579 what would you do for the ones you're loyal to? 00:41:51.679 --> 00:41:54.940 And the pre -Gosian story is just like 100 % 00:41:54.940 --> 00:42:00.659 about that, you know, omerta, mafia, deep cuts, 00:42:00.739 --> 00:42:04.300 loyalty. I'll hide your secrets, you scratch 00:42:04.300 --> 00:42:08.159 my back, you know, I'll do for you what nobody 00:42:08.159 --> 00:42:10.840 else will do. And you're going to make sure that 00:42:10.840 --> 00:42:13.219 I'm okay. That's the relationship with pre -Gosian 00:42:13.219 --> 00:42:15.559 Putin. It's complicated, you know, it's not like 00:42:15.559 --> 00:42:19.769 they're best friends. But Putin knows that among 00:42:19.769 --> 00:42:23.489 the many people in his inner circle that will 00:42:23.489 --> 00:42:26.050 keep his confidence when he's sitting at a table 00:42:26.050 --> 00:42:28.530 full of diplomats or a table full of heads of 00:42:28.530 --> 00:42:32.590 state, it will be Yevgeny Pugosian. When he wants 00:42:32.590 --> 00:42:35.449 somebody to spy on those people at that table, 00:42:35.750 --> 00:42:39.030 it will be Yevgeny Pugosian. And their relationship 00:42:39.030 --> 00:42:42.570 becomes one of master and servant, a little bit 00:42:42.570 --> 00:42:46.099 kind of like, you know, king and sort of top 00:42:46.099 --> 00:42:49.860 butler in a way. But in this instance, top chef. 00:42:50.679 --> 00:42:55.280 That loyalty is so key. And it also is the recipe 00:42:55.280 --> 00:42:58.559 that ultimately kind of brings Prigozhin down 00:42:58.559 --> 00:43:01.360 because, you know, Prigozhin expects because 00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:03.599 he comes from this kind of criminal background, 00:43:03.820 --> 00:43:07.840 right? He spent 10 years almost in prison for 00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:13.579 thuggery and robbery and assault. He expects 00:43:13.579 --> 00:43:16.900 that the rules, the mafia rules, are the ones 00:43:16.900 --> 00:43:19.739 that are going to keep everything on an even 00:43:19.739 --> 00:43:23.280 plane. What he doesn't realize is it's Putin's 00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:27.019 rules, right? It's the master's rules that ultimately 00:43:27.019 --> 00:43:30.460 determine what loyalty really means. And they're 00:43:30.460 --> 00:43:32.360 both feeling a sense of betrayal by the end of 00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:36.300 their story. Thank you for expounding upon that. 00:43:36.539 --> 00:43:40.840 Okay, so before Trump's rise in the second term, 00:43:41.039 --> 00:43:43.380 And even up till now, we just hear a lot about 00:43:43.380 --> 00:43:46.480 peace negotiations. But based on your research, 00:43:46.920 --> 00:43:50.219 how does the Wagner factor put into Putin's plan 00:43:50.219 --> 00:43:54.199 B? And please explain that to even while diplomats 00:43:54.199 --> 00:43:57.440 are talking. Yeah, if you would ask me this question, 00:43:57.639 --> 00:44:01.039 A .R., like maybe a year ago before Donald Trump 00:44:01.039 --> 00:44:03.460 was reelected to office, I would have said that 00:44:03.460 --> 00:44:07.090 the Wagner Group's atrocities would factor into 00:44:07.090 --> 00:44:09.150 the end game for negotiations between Russia 00:44:09.150 --> 00:44:15.550 and Ukraine. No depth, right? Because I've met 00:44:15.550 --> 00:44:18.630 enough Ukrainians who have been at the sticky 00:44:18.630 --> 00:44:24.010 end of Wagner Group operations to know that people 00:44:24.010 --> 00:44:26.070 are not going to forget very easily what happened 00:44:26.070 --> 00:44:30.230 in Ukraine. And they will long remember Wagner 00:44:30.230 --> 00:44:33.130 Group's role. I'm going to point to one, OK, 00:44:33.190 --> 00:44:37.170 that some people may remember, but probably is 00:44:37.170 --> 00:44:39.730 a little obscure. And this was the battle for 00:44:39.730 --> 00:44:44.050 the as of stall steel plant, which was really 00:44:44.050 --> 00:44:46.230 epic at the beginning of the war. And the Wagner 00:44:46.230 --> 00:44:49.230 group was there on on site. Part of that battle, 00:44:49.449 --> 00:44:51.590 there was a whole movie that Prigozhin made about 00:44:51.590 --> 00:44:55.929 it, a lot of propaganda. And they were responsible 00:44:55.929 --> 00:45:01.190 for managing the prisoner exchange and detainees 00:45:01.190 --> 00:45:03.329 that came out of the deal between Russia and 00:45:03.329 --> 00:45:07.250 Ukraine that resulted in a ceasefire briefly 00:45:07.250 --> 00:45:12.889 at the Azostal planet. And many human rights 00:45:12.889 --> 00:45:16.730 activists in Ukraine and frankly in Europe have 00:45:16.730 --> 00:45:19.230 pointed to that moment and one that happened 00:45:19.230 --> 00:45:22.090 soon after that was the firebombing of the prison. 00:45:22.949 --> 00:45:27.869 where you had a couple hundred Ukrainian detainees 00:45:27.869 --> 00:45:31.769 who were incinerated, basically. Some survived, 00:45:32.050 --> 00:45:36.269 but it was a really massive casualty event. So 00:45:36.269 --> 00:45:39.110 there are just so many instances like that where, 00:45:39.429 --> 00:45:42.750 again, I would have said a year ago, Zelensky 00:45:42.750 --> 00:45:44.110 is never going to be in a position to be able 00:45:44.110 --> 00:45:47.409 to say, yes, we're going to write that one off. 00:45:48.389 --> 00:45:50.980 And the Wagner group doesn't really matter. and 00:45:50.980 --> 00:45:52.619 the atrocities that they committed didn't matter. 00:45:53.139 --> 00:45:56.860 Now, it's interesting that here we are now. Trump 00:45:56.860 --> 00:45:58.760 is trying to negotiate with Putin, Zelensky. 00:45:59.239 --> 00:46:02.360 The question of human rights and atrocities really 00:46:02.360 --> 00:46:04.579 hasn't come up. Now, the question of children 00:46:04.579 --> 00:46:08.079 who have been taken from Ukraine into Russia 00:46:08.079 --> 00:46:11.599 or into Belarus has come up repeatedly as a negotiating 00:46:11.599 --> 00:46:14.920 point. But I think it's really interesting that 00:46:14.920 --> 00:46:18.360 somehow even Zelensky has kind of shifted the 00:46:18.360 --> 00:46:24.489 priority list in terms of reparations and recompense 00:46:24.489 --> 00:46:27.650 for atrocities committed, and justice and accountability 00:46:27.650 --> 00:46:29.710 for atrocities committed in Ukraine, not just 00:46:29.710 --> 00:46:31.869 by the Wagner Group, but other organizations 00:46:31.869 --> 00:46:35.170 and other outfits that have been operating there. 00:46:35.889 --> 00:46:38.289 To touch on Zelensky just a little bit further, 00:46:38.690 --> 00:46:42.170 as you watched him come into power, evolve as 00:46:42.170 --> 00:46:44.489 a wartime leader, has there been any moments 00:46:44.489 --> 00:46:47.030 that showed you that he truly understood the 00:46:47.030 --> 00:46:50.300 Wagner threat? That in a way that his advisors 00:46:50.300 --> 00:46:54.760 didn't. Yeah, there is this signal moment. I'm 00:46:54.760 --> 00:46:57.039 not sure. I think that there was a real debate 00:46:57.039 --> 00:47:01.380 specifically over Bachmut within the Zelensky 00:47:01.380 --> 00:47:06.280 administration. And you might remember General 00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:10.420 Zaluzhny was then in charge of military operations 00:47:10.420 --> 00:47:16.780 for Ukraine. He's kind of an older, you know, 00:47:16.860 --> 00:47:19.760 Ukrainian. officer with a little bit more experience 00:47:19.760 --> 00:47:22.119 from the Soviet times. Some people kind of cast 00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:25.000 him as a little bit old school. And he became 00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.699 quite determined to clash with Wagner at Bachmut. 00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:32.659 In the meantime, there was this, I think, internal 00:47:32.659 --> 00:47:36.059 debate amongst Zelensky's advisors about whether 00:47:36.059 --> 00:47:40.079 that was a good idea. At the same time, you know, 00:47:40.099 --> 00:47:43.519 there was this backstory of Wagner and the hostage 00:47:43.519 --> 00:47:46.920 thing that happened in 2019, right? And then 00:47:47.260 --> 00:47:51.380 this other threat from Wagner as a potential 00:47:51.380 --> 00:47:55.079 assassination threat to Zelensky. And I do think 00:47:55.079 --> 00:47:57.980 that the battle of Bakhmut, I think there was 00:47:57.980 --> 00:48:01.239 a lot of debate, but maybe Zelensky missed his 00:48:01.239 --> 00:48:03.760 chance to quash that debate and actually turn 00:48:03.760 --> 00:48:06.119 the tables. Because I think many people look 00:48:06.119 --> 00:48:08.800 at Bakhmut as a signal failure on the part of 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:11.719 the Ukrainian military in terms of the strategic 00:48:11.719 --> 00:48:15.420 losses there and the actual value of the actual 00:48:15.420 --> 00:48:20.039 territory. I have just questions clustered into 00:48:20.039 --> 00:48:23.139 two sections, and then I believe we can wrap 00:48:23.139 --> 00:48:26.260 this up. For people who think mercenaries are 00:48:26.260 --> 00:48:29.659 just guns for hire, what's the bigger game Wagner 00:48:29.659 --> 00:48:33.900 is playing that threatens global security? Well, 00:48:34.139 --> 00:48:36.500 I mean, guns for hire is not necessarily a good 00:48:36.500 --> 00:48:40.639 thing if guns for hire are not accountable to 00:48:40.639 --> 00:48:43.360 the clients that sponsor them. And importantly, 00:48:43.840 --> 00:48:47.800 if they don't... adhere to international and 00:48:47.800 --> 00:48:51.320 local laws, that's always a problem. Nobody wants 00:48:51.320 --> 00:48:54.940 guns for hire out there. I mean, what's the difference 00:48:54.940 --> 00:48:57.659 between guns for hire that are called mercenaries 00:48:57.659 --> 00:49:01.360 and guns for hire that are organized crime mafia 00:49:01.360 --> 00:49:05.400 bosses, right? Like, I mean, not a lot. So just 00:49:05.400 --> 00:49:08.179 number one at base, guns for hire are problematic 00:49:08.179 --> 00:49:11.000 because they're often difficult to control and 00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:14.059 often difficult to hold to account. And you don't 00:49:14.059 --> 00:49:17.280 really want that in any environment, least of 00:49:17.280 --> 00:49:19.739 all an environment where there are warring factions. 00:49:20.159 --> 00:49:21.699 And often that's of course where they're the 00:49:21.699 --> 00:49:25.239 most useful. The second issue with mercenaries 00:49:25.239 --> 00:49:27.579 that people need to understand and organizations 00:49:27.579 --> 00:49:31.519 like the Wagner Group is they do a lot of laundering 00:49:31.519 --> 00:49:35.380 of money, oftentimes. Oftentimes some of their 00:49:35.380 --> 00:49:39.179 payment and the recompense comes from very shady 00:49:39.179 --> 00:49:42.059 arrangements between either states, or state 00:49:42.059 --> 00:49:45.460 enterprises, or big corporations that help states 00:49:45.460 --> 00:49:48.800 survive and kind of elevate the economies of 00:49:48.800 --> 00:49:53.340 states who can't otherwise do business in a given 00:49:53.340 --> 00:49:55.699 territory, but want to do it because it's going 00:49:55.699 --> 00:49:58.280 to be really lucrative, and mercenaries paper 00:49:58.280 --> 00:50:01.599 that over. So kind of dangerous, right? Because 00:50:01.599 --> 00:50:03.440 when you don't know where money's coming from, 00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:07.440 it can have a lot of dark influences. And the 00:50:07.440 --> 00:50:11.260 other, I guess, is people need to understand 00:50:12.110 --> 00:50:14.329 But mercenaries are addicted to the lifestyle 00:50:14.329 --> 00:50:20.530 too. And the addiction isn't just to that freewheeling 00:50:20.530 --> 00:50:23.210 adventurism, it's also an addiction to the violence. 00:50:23.969 --> 00:50:27.150 And we all have to ask ourselves, is that okay? 00:50:28.670 --> 00:50:31.889 When does that become a problem in a setting 00:50:31.889 --> 00:50:34.050 where people are trying to figure out a way toward 00:50:34.050 --> 00:50:38.469 peace? Yeah, okay. Still on this kind of topic 00:50:38.469 --> 00:50:41.460 of like the future of wartime. or warfare in 00:50:41.460 --> 00:50:43.960 governance. So seeing that you studied Putin 00:50:43.960 --> 00:50:47.500 for years, and could there possibly be just another, 00:50:47.500 --> 00:50:51.639 you know, state actor might be replicating the 00:50:51.639 --> 00:50:56.500 same thing. What does his reliance and or, you 00:50:56.500 --> 00:50:58.340 know, mentioning other people, other people's 00:50:58.340 --> 00:51:01.639 reliances on mercenary fighters, which tell us 00:51:01.639 --> 00:51:04.860 about who those people really are, like the Putin 00:51:04.860 --> 00:51:09.179 and other state actors behind a strongman image? 00:51:09.679 --> 00:51:14.639 Yeah. So the one takeaway I have from studying 00:51:14.639 --> 00:51:19.860 the wagon group, Putin, the rise is the people 00:51:19.860 --> 00:51:24.300 who are close to Putin, many of them are former 00:51:24.300 --> 00:51:29.760 KGB agents, right? They kind of view the idea 00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:32.500 of military power as something where you just, 00:51:32.739 --> 00:51:36.099 you know, people are expendable. You know, people 00:51:36.099 --> 00:51:40.030 who fight on behalf. of Russia are expendable, 00:51:40.369 --> 00:51:43.909 people who are at the other end of Russia's targeting 00:51:43.909 --> 00:51:48.050 are expendable. And so that's one is that their 00:51:48.050 --> 00:51:52.130 attitudes toward human lives are pretty callous. 00:51:53.050 --> 00:51:54.949 They just, they don't care and they're willing 00:51:54.949 --> 00:51:58.670 to exploit the vulnerability of a population. 00:51:58.909 --> 00:52:01.050 In this instance, oftentimes veterans who are 00:52:01.050 --> 00:52:06.519 out of work and kind of out of sorts. to turn 00:52:06.519 --> 00:52:09.099 that around and use it as a weapon of war, essentially. 00:52:09.860 --> 00:52:11.480 And that says a lot about what they think about 00:52:11.480 --> 00:52:13.900 their own people. It says a lot about what they 00:52:13.900 --> 00:52:17.260 think about the lack of capacity within their 00:52:17.260 --> 00:52:22.559 own conventional military to execute strategic 00:52:22.559 --> 00:52:26.179 aims on behalf of Russia. It clearly, I think, 00:52:26.500 --> 00:52:30.940 shows that a dissatisfaction with the way the 00:52:30.940 --> 00:52:36.750 Russian military is run, million -man army and 00:52:36.750 --> 00:52:40.250 you need to raise this other kind of paper proxy 00:52:40.250 --> 00:52:44.409 army, you know, to the tune of pennies on the 00:52:44.409 --> 00:52:45.949 dollar compared to what you might pay for the 00:52:45.949 --> 00:52:48.710 military. What that says is that Russia can't 00:52:48.710 --> 00:52:54.389 do what it needs to do without way overpaying 00:52:54.389 --> 00:52:58.750 for military services. It doesn't have enough 00:52:58.750 --> 00:53:01.710 men. It doesn't have enough political will amongst 00:53:01.710 --> 00:53:04.869 its population. And importantly, it doesn't have 00:53:04.869 --> 00:53:08.130 the staying capacity to fight a war against even 00:53:08.130 --> 00:53:10.809 a smaller neighboring state like Ukraine and 00:53:10.809 --> 00:53:13.630 actually win it quickly without the assistance 00:53:13.630 --> 00:53:17.989 of mercenary forces. That's pretty telling. And 00:53:17.989 --> 00:53:20.030 instead of looking at Russia as this kind of 00:53:20.030 --> 00:53:23.650 giant rival to the United States, second largest 00:53:23.650 --> 00:53:26.929 military in the world, we might need to reassess 00:53:26.929 --> 00:53:30.590 our understanding. of Russian capacity to fight 00:53:30.590 --> 00:53:35.269 wars. Are we heading into a new era of mercenary 00:53:35.269 --> 00:53:38.630 -dominated conflict? And if so, what does that 00:53:38.630 --> 00:53:42.610 mean for international law or peacekeeping? We 00:53:42.610 --> 00:53:46.610 are definitely in a new era of conflict, where 00:53:46.610 --> 00:53:50.449 we see the rise and proliferation of mercenary 00:53:50.449 --> 00:53:53.710 forces. Some are on a much smaller scale than 00:53:53.710 --> 00:53:57.030 the Wagner Group. Even now in Africa, we've seen 00:53:57.679 --> 00:54:01.280 you know, Romanian or Indian mercenary forces. 00:54:02.260 --> 00:54:04.980 We've seen all kinds of things happening. We've 00:54:04.980 --> 00:54:08.500 seen Americans in Venezuela trying to foment 00:54:08.500 --> 00:54:10.539 a coup. I mean, we've seen all kinds of things 00:54:10.539 --> 00:54:15.840 where privatized, contracted mercenary forces 00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:19.820 have been deployed to project power, to extend 00:54:19.820 --> 00:54:23.920 the strategic reach of states. In some cases, 00:54:24.199 --> 00:54:27.320 it states who are aligned with certain industries. 00:54:27.500 --> 00:54:29.280 And I think one thing that we really have to 00:54:29.280 --> 00:54:32.179 look out for is the ways in which the changes 00:54:32.179 --> 00:54:36.260 in the fossil fuel industry could actually accelerate 00:54:36.260 --> 00:54:40.559 the resort to proliferation of mercenary forces. 00:54:41.320 --> 00:54:45.920 The more there is this kind of tension around 00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:50.159 the switch from fossil fuels, oil and gas, to 00:54:50.159 --> 00:54:53.349 potentially battery powered technologies and 00:54:53.349 --> 00:54:57.329 renewables that rely on critical minerals, the 00:54:57.329 --> 00:54:59.670 more we're going to see, I think, a real tension 00:54:59.670 --> 00:55:03.050 in the industry to kind of maintain its hold 00:55:03.050 --> 00:55:05.210 on the infrastructure and territory that it's 00:55:05.210 --> 00:55:07.690 built over many, many years. And that is one 00:55:07.690 --> 00:55:09.210 reason for the rise of the waggon group, for 00:55:09.210 --> 00:55:12.269 sure. It's just the oil and gas industry. And 00:55:12.269 --> 00:55:15.110 I wonder, actually, if there won't be a moment, 00:55:15.329 --> 00:55:19.639 maybe in the next 30, 40 years, when there are 00:55:19.639 --> 00:55:22.719 more electric cars on the roads, less fossil 00:55:22.719 --> 00:55:26.280 fuel cars on the roads, if then critical minerals 00:55:26.280 --> 00:55:30.199 that are located in Latin America, that are located 00:55:30.199 --> 00:55:33.139 in Sub -Saharan Africa and parts of the Pacific 00:55:33.139 --> 00:55:37.239 don't become the new vector for mercenary operations. 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:41.639 Do you think AI or digital surveillance plays 00:55:41.639 --> 00:55:45.440 a role or will play a role in the future evolution 00:55:45.440 --> 00:55:49.239 of groups like Wagner? That is a very good question. 00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:51.940 What we have seen is that what the wagon group 00:55:51.940 --> 00:55:54.800 offered wasn't just mercenary services. It wasn't 00:55:54.800 --> 00:55:57.059 just muscle, right? It wasn't just military muscle. 00:55:57.119 --> 00:56:02.059 It was also political subterfuge online. We saw 00:56:02.059 --> 00:56:04.940 that with the, you know, political influence 00:56:04.940 --> 00:56:07.840 campaign in 2016 in the US presidential elections. 00:56:08.519 --> 00:56:11.840 And we also know that there's a lot of overlap 00:56:11.840 --> 00:56:16.679 or kind of integration between mercenary hackers 00:56:16.679 --> 00:56:22.320 for hire. and those on the kind of more pointy 00:56:22.320 --> 00:56:25.860 end of the spear in proxy warfare. And I do think 00:56:25.860 --> 00:56:27.420 we're going to see a fusion of that. And I do 00:56:27.420 --> 00:56:32.000 think that hackers in general are going to use 00:56:32.000 --> 00:56:35.960 AI to do all kinds of nefarious things, because 00:56:35.960 --> 00:56:37.940 they won't have to think really hard. They'll 00:56:37.940 --> 00:56:40.500 just type some prompts to develop the kind of 00:56:40.500 --> 00:56:45.460 code that would exploit a zero -day gap and vulnerability. 00:56:47.179 --> 00:56:50.380 Yes, in a kind of indirect way, I think there 00:56:50.380 --> 00:56:54.079 probably will be some integration. And just to 00:56:54.079 --> 00:56:56.679 go off of one more cluster of questions in one 00:56:56.679 --> 00:57:00.280 group on the process of getting this information. 00:57:01.099 --> 00:57:03.880 Halfway through the book, I suggested to a friend 00:57:03.880 --> 00:57:06.079 to read the book too, and she got it. And she 00:57:06.079 --> 00:57:09.239 made me, it would bother her if I didn't ask 00:57:09.239 --> 00:57:10.900 these two questions. So this is on behalf of 00:57:10.900 --> 00:57:15.349 her. What were the biggest journalistic or safety 00:57:15.349 --> 00:57:18.630 risks you encountered while researching and writing 00:57:18.630 --> 00:57:22.309 this book? I get asked that question a lot and 00:57:22.309 --> 00:57:24.750 I don't like talking about it too openly because 00:57:24.750 --> 00:57:28.170 then you make yourself more vulnerable. I will 00:57:28.170 --> 00:57:30.150 say reporting on Russia always makes everybody 00:57:30.150 --> 00:57:32.010 nervous. Like if you ever spend time in Russia, 00:57:32.210 --> 00:57:35.610 if you know kind of the maximum Moscow rules, 00:57:35.630 --> 00:57:37.909 which is like don't... don't talk unless you're 00:57:37.909 --> 00:57:39.610 walking and you're outside and you're far away 00:57:39.610 --> 00:57:41.250 from any microphones that might pick up your 00:57:41.250 --> 00:57:43.489 voice. Yeah, I mean, you're always paranoid, 00:57:43.630 --> 00:57:46.070 right? And I certainly have been always paranoid 00:57:46.070 --> 00:57:48.289 about my security, about penetration, about hacking. 00:57:49.190 --> 00:57:51.690 My phone was hacked once. You know, I pretty 00:57:51.690 --> 00:57:56.789 much suspect it was probably Russians. Pretty 00:57:56.789 --> 00:57:58.610 good evidence for that, I would say. And that 00:57:58.610 --> 00:58:00.789 was early on in my research, even before I started 00:58:00.789 --> 00:58:04.050 working on the book itself. So I always worry 00:58:04.050 --> 00:58:07.679 about, you know, information risks for sure. 00:58:08.480 --> 00:58:12.260 On the other hand, I have lived and worked in 00:58:12.260 --> 00:58:15.360 lots of kind of crazy places, including Afghanistan, 00:58:15.579 --> 00:58:17.159 including Pakistan, and I've seen a lot of stuff. 00:58:17.659 --> 00:58:19.860 And I don't want to sound callous or like I'm 00:58:19.860 --> 00:58:23.599 inured to the possibility of risk, but how much 00:58:23.599 --> 00:58:25.960 more risky can it be for me than it is for the 00:58:25.960 --> 00:58:29.500 many, many civilians who are exposed to everyday 00:58:29.500 --> 00:58:32.820 hazards in places like Gaza, places like Ukraine, 00:58:32.900 --> 00:58:37.940 in places like Afghanistan? Sure, sometimes I'm 00:58:37.940 --> 00:58:39.840 paranoid about it, and I know my family is too 00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:43.679 sometimes, but you know, these are the risks 00:58:43.679 --> 00:58:46.400 that come with the job. Yeah, yeah. As I mentioned 00:58:46.400 --> 00:58:47.920 to you before the recording, I mean, being halfway 00:58:47.920 --> 00:58:50.199 around the world, across the world, definitely 00:58:50.199 --> 00:58:54.239 share some similarities with that. So the second 00:58:54.239 --> 00:58:56.460 question is, how did you gain access to some 00:58:56.460 --> 00:58:58.900 of the more sensitive or classified materials 00:58:58.900 --> 00:59:00.699 and sources? And if you don't need to, if you 00:59:00.699 --> 00:59:02.980 don't want to wish to expand on that, that's 00:59:02.980 --> 00:59:05.940 completely fine, too. No, I mean I do work in 00:59:05.940 --> 00:59:09.800 the open in fact like really Unlike a lot of 00:59:09.800 --> 00:59:12.019 folks. I really I really believe in transparency 00:59:12.019 --> 00:59:13.780 and showing your work and talking about kind 00:59:13.780 --> 00:59:16.860 of your methods one If anything, you know, it 00:59:16.860 --> 00:59:18.800 protects you from any kind of you know false 00:59:18.800 --> 00:59:22.280 accusations about your own ethics and your integrity 00:59:22.280 --> 00:59:25.579 Yeah, but but to I think it really I think it's 00:59:25.579 --> 00:59:28.860 important for other journalists other activists 00:59:28.860 --> 00:59:33.000 researchers to understand if you want to do you 00:59:33.000 --> 00:59:36.420 know hard things, ask hard questions about hard 00:59:36.420 --> 00:59:38.820 places that are difficult to reach, you're going 00:59:38.820 --> 00:59:44.039 to have to get really creative. So early on when 00:59:44.039 --> 00:59:45.719 I'm starting to research the Wagner Group, and 00:59:45.719 --> 00:59:48.719 this is around 2018, I took a course with Bellingcat, 00:59:48.860 --> 00:59:52.400 which is an open source research collective. 00:59:52.480 --> 00:59:55.019 They use a lot of online techniques to piece 00:59:55.019 --> 00:59:58.400 together kind of the footprint of people online, 00:59:58.500 --> 01:00:00.679 as well as kind of look at and reconstruct events 01:00:00.679 --> 01:00:03.320 from digital. breadcrumbs, and they're super 01:00:03.320 --> 01:00:05.940 famous for that. So I took a course with them 01:00:05.940 --> 01:00:08.119 and I learned a little bit about how to use those 01:00:08.119 --> 01:00:11.559 tools to better understand this wild world out 01:00:11.559 --> 01:00:15.139 there where Russia kind of does this nefarious 01:00:15.139 --> 01:00:17.920 stuff. And that was hugely important. But the 01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:19.460 second thing that kind of distinguished, I guess, 01:00:19.980 --> 01:00:23.400 my work from maybe Bellingcat and the work that 01:00:23.400 --> 01:00:25.619 we've done at Future Frontlines, the organization 01:00:25.619 --> 01:00:29.369 that I run at New America, is we combine those 01:00:29.369 --> 01:00:32.190 techniques of open source with big data analysis. 01:00:32.809 --> 01:00:35.789 So we started to kind of experiment and explore 01:00:35.789 --> 01:00:39.289 a network analysis of these large scale social 01:00:39.289 --> 01:00:41.829 media groups where Wagner was like kind of the 01:00:41.829 --> 01:00:46.570 central focus of the channels. And there we were 01:00:46.570 --> 01:00:48.610 able to kind of piece together a sense of the 01:00:48.610 --> 01:00:52.030 culture and the kind of the social movement aspects 01:00:52.030 --> 01:00:55.130 of the Wagner group. And then the last and probably 01:00:55.130 --> 01:00:58.690 the most important is We have always mined open 01:00:58.690 --> 01:01:02.090 source, open data from, you know, from leaked 01:01:02.090 --> 01:01:05.929 sources. Very, you know, long into the writing 01:01:05.929 --> 01:01:10.050 of the book, an organization called C4ADS here 01:01:10.050 --> 01:01:13.829 in Washington offered us a chance to examine 01:01:13.829 --> 01:01:17.030 about 130 ,000 leaked files from, you know, getting 01:01:17.030 --> 01:01:20.130 Pugosian's businesses. And that was super eye 01:01:20.130 --> 01:01:22.710 -opening. It wasn't like, oh, this is all new. 01:01:22.829 --> 01:01:25.599 It was more like, oh, yep. This confirms that, 01:01:25.780 --> 01:01:28.760 right? Or this connects those dots that we weren't 01:01:28.760 --> 01:01:31.480 able to really connect before. So those three 01:01:31.480 --> 01:01:33.480 things, the kind of open source, kind of manual 01:01:33.480 --> 01:01:36.960 stuff, old fashioned investigation, big data 01:01:36.960 --> 01:01:38.920 science, and then getting, you know, exploiting 01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:42.900 the documents were really important. And if there's, 01:01:42.920 --> 01:01:46.159 if there is one misconception about Putin or 01:01:46.159 --> 01:01:48.619 Wagner that you would like to, I guess, shatter 01:01:48.619 --> 01:01:51.840 for readers, what would it be? The Wagner Group 01:01:51.840 --> 01:01:54.880 is not a company. It's not a unitary organization. 01:01:55.420 --> 01:01:58.119 It's not in any corporate registry. It's not 01:01:58.119 --> 01:02:00.920 like Blackwater. It's not like McDonald's. It's 01:02:00.920 --> 01:02:03.480 not like any other organization you could possibly 01:02:03.480 --> 01:02:07.360 think of. It is a network of shell companies 01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:10.360 and individuals who profit from those shell companies 01:02:10.360 --> 01:02:14.340 linked to Russia's military security intelligence 01:02:14.340 --> 01:02:18.900 enterprise. That's it. It's not a company and 01:02:18.900 --> 01:02:21.940 it ain't private. Yeah, that's something that 01:02:21.940 --> 01:02:24.000 that's a something that most Americans should 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:26.920 be aware of, if not all of them. For sure. That 01:02:26.920 --> 01:02:29.340 is all the questions I have. I appreciate you 01:02:29.340 --> 01:02:32.320 so much for coming on and answering all these 01:02:32.320 --> 01:02:34.099 questions. Thank you, thank you, thank you so 01:02:34.099 --> 01:02:36.420 much. Thank you. You ask good questions, thanks. 01:02:36.880 --> 01:02:40.099 Appreciate it. Guys, don't forget to like and 01:02:40.099 --> 01:02:43.739 subscribe. Links to her book will be in the description 01:02:43.739 --> 01:02:47.900 below. And there's any parting words or last 01:02:47.900 --> 01:02:52.460 words that you'd like to say. Please do so. Yeah. 01:02:52.719 --> 01:02:56.079 Keep fighting for the truth. Awesome. Awesome. 01:02:56.659 --> 01:02:59.820 Alright. Thank you, Candice. I appreciate you 01:02:59.820 --> 01:03:03.840 again for coming out. And yeah, guys. Show her 01:03:03.840 --> 01:03:07.219 some love. Support the book. Support her. Everything 01:03:07.219 --> 01:03:10.539 will be in the description below. And yeah. Thank 01:03:10.539 --> 01:03:11.820 you. Thank you.