152. The Power of Prigozhin

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0:50Welcome to the Rests' Politics with me, Rory Stewart And me, Anastagambo And today we have a very special guest which is Richard Engel. So Richard and I have known each other for some years, but most recently we bumped into each other on another airplane and he had just come back from an extraordinary series of meetings and encounters as we've been following the figure of pregozion. Pregozion just for mindlessness is of course the head of the Wagner group, the man that recently led a musony against Vladimir Putin. And Richard had been bringing this documentary together over a couple of years following the story through, he was in Syria, he was in the Central African Republic, going to Ukraine and expecting to bring it out in the autumn and was beginning to worry that people weren't really going to be that interested in who Progoshin was or who the Valken group was, when suddenly this whole story broke and we're very lucky to have Richard with us today because I didn't know anyone who knows more about Progusion.

1:53So thank you Richard for joining us. It's a real pleasure. Thank you very much. It was extraordinary. I've been covering Progusion following this guy. He was first was in the shadows and then burst into sort of the public domain during the latest war in Ukraine. And we were working on it and we had been in Africa and we had the material and we're starting to go through it and process it and write it. And then suddenly we look around and he's crossed the border from Ukraine into Russia as better on the attack and they're marching toward Moscow. And we all look and they said, okay, well, this is just changed, this is real.

2:35We gotta get this out immediately. So we crashed together, we had the material, a lot of the material already, and suddenly it became immensely timely. So it's just coincidence would have it, you know, we were following this guy because we thought he was an interesting and Important and he had an important network. So Richard you're a long -term foreign correspondent with NBC and this is already gone out on NBC and we're gonna Put this interview out when it goes out online so that our listeners all over the place can can see it You very kindly sent us a link. So I got up very very early to watch it But how on earth has this happened that this guy and this set of mercenaries that he's kind of dragged around from here than everywhere?

3:21There would become so powerful in so many different places. So what's your answer to that? How has this happened? I think you need to understand the nature of the Russian state. And the nature of the Russian state, as it was described to me by many people who have spent their years, but their career is writing about it and thinking about it and going there. And I've spent quite a bit of time in Russia as well over the years as a mafia state, where you have Vladimir Putin at the center of a syndicate, the godfather, some people called him. So most people imagine a state or a company where you have the boss and then all the other people are employees of the boss, but in a mafia family it's slightly different.

4:09So you have the Kapo Dutti Kapi, who's the head of all the other heads is literally what that means, and that's a different kind of power structure than, you know, the you have a CEO of a company and then he has all of his his or her team underneath them who get together and follow their orders and try and act a plan. When you have a boss of bosses, each one of these families, each one of these syndicates has their own network and their own business and Progosian was one of them. He had his own operations and there was a mutually beneficial relationship between Progosian and Putin. Richard, let's take it right back to the start.

4:48So one of the things you talk about is his early life. And tell us about the first time we noticed him, the crime and being sent off to this penal colony in 10 years, he spent in prison. I just had a complete terrifying thing. Then what he did in prison. So, 10 years of hard labor. So, we have to go back to St. Petersburg in the 1980s. So, in the 1980s, everyone remembers this decline of the Soviet Union. It would ultimately implode first from the outside and then within 1991, from the 1989 -91, the whole sort of disruptive period of history, as the Soviet Union was collapsing onto itself because of its corruption and inefficiency and the Cold War pressure.

5:30So in the 80s he's a in St. Petersburg which has been let's say you think of it as Chicago in the 1920s. It's a rough town, lots of gangsters already in the 80s under this declining Soviet Union. And that's where Pregozion is. He lives in the city and he's a crook. He's a criminal and he and some friends get into an armed robbery. They rob a woman on the streets. He nearly strangles her to death. takes her belongings, takes her boots, and gets arrested. Does nearly 10 years of hard labor. But was he known to the police as a crook? You know what? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised, but it was this crime that pushed it over.

6:17I don't know how much of a record he had previously, but it 10 years is a lot. But if you nearly kill someone in an unprovoked attack. So just to cover it and that's ten years in Siberia in a sort of I mean this is like this is like the life of Ivan Denisovich Ten tough years which According to people with the biographers or people who had already been looking into him He likes he likes it. He gets into it. He appreciates the the the the work ethic and the discipline and He gets out and okay. He's arrested in in the very early eighties. He gets out 81 what period are we in now? were in exactly the collapse of the Soviet Union.

6:58So he gets out of jail after he's been breaking rocks or presumably whatever they're doing in the jail making radios or whatever hard labor at the time involved, but this penal colony was quite rigorous for its amount of work that they made you do. He gets out and now in St. Petersburg, which already had this, was already kind of a mafia town, the state is gone. So the Mafia is the only thing left. So he goes into business and he grows this one hot dog stand into it mysteriously gets into a chain of restaurants very quickly in prime locations in where in the nicest sort of real estate spots in St.

7:42Petersburg. So he quickly has this empire. So he's a he's certainly a connected guy and knows how to operate in this world of St. Petersburg that is now a real, it was a gangster town before and now very much so. There's a clip in the documentary that I almost jumped out of my seat because I've seen the pictures of pregoesion serving food to George Bush. But then suddenly I see my old boss Tony Blair there as well. And I've tried to think when was that? Was that in St. Peter's book? Because I do remember going to St. Peter's book and having dinners there, the summits that were going on there. Something God did.

8:20I missed this guy. So a lot of people missed this guy. He was very discreet. He was quiet. He was in the background. Sometimes he's described as Putin's chef. He's not a chef. He doesn't, I mean, maybe he knows how to make an omelette or something, but he's not a cook. He doesn't wear the white jacket and make food. He's a restaurant tour. He's a caterer. And it is in St. Petersburg in this time when he and Putin come into contact because he's got the nicest rest and that becomes Putin's hangout as Putin is a rising star. An unfulssed system, people who have a chance to watch this amazing documentary.

8:55What I'm a sister referring to is that you see again and again, people like George W. Bush and Tony Blass sitting down at the table to have these formal state dinners. That's not an APtersburg. So you have to jump ahead. So St. Petersburg they meet. Putin is a advisor to the mayor. He's a mid -level intelligence officer, KGB. KGB later converts to the FSB and had Putin not had this spectacular rise, we'd never heard of pregoation. Right. Maybe own a bunch of restaurants in St. Petersburg. He wasn't an oligarch in the sense that we've understood the oligarchs, the barrios offskis and these guys.

9:33He wasn't like that. He was more like a low level guy who got himself into Putin. I think Putin's system is more, less like when you think of oligarch, it gives the idea of a business tycoon. And you had business tycoons, but then you had an inner circle of fixers. So to go back to the Mafia analogy, which was used to me time and time again, is you have the boss of bosses and then each guy has his own syndicate. So I don't want to cast aspersions, but if this was the deal, I'm the boss of bosses. Okay, Rory, you've got your own businesses, some legitimate and some illegitimate illegal. And you run that and that money goes to you and you, Alistair, have your own separate syndicate.

10:24So your rivals, you're not all employees of me. And then you're, you earn for yourself and I make sure that you all get top cover and that you don't fight among yourselves. But then the something extraordinary happens. 2000 Putin becomes president. So all of these people are now hyper empowered because now I have super connections. All of you can be useful to me if I ever ask you a favor and then he becomes the caterer. So once he becomes president now as I go back to your question where all those extraordinary pictures were, he became the official caterer for the armed forces. He became the caterer for the Kremlin.

11:03He became, he rose up from someone who was restaurants running the hangout where these guys were to now he's the official state caterer, which is a very lucrative job. It's some very reminiscent, I think, of what happens in medieval courts as well. So Henry the eighth has this figure, Thomas Cromwell, who's basically a sort of working -class fixer who is so reliable. He doesn't get things done for him in a whole series of different areas. That eventually he makes him, you know, Lord Chancellor of England. So, progoation, you get the sense, he's trusted to run a good meal. He's trusted to make sure that Tony Blair is sat properly, that the wine's coming, the food's coming.

11:43But Putin is also relying on him to do many other things. So he's beginning to develop a small security company. He's running his chain of restaurants. And the line between public procurement, private business activity is very, very blurred. You know, how exactly did he get this contract? And that means just to jump you forward in the story. When Putin is then looking for a chance for somebody to help him in an incredible context, which is Syria, he turns to this guy who he thinks is a kind of reliable fixer. Yes, so he's now a contractor, if you will, who's got his own business network, and first he relies on them for a variety of things.

12:24So Pregozion has this network of businesses, one of them is catering. He also forms a private security company called Wagner and he wants you know, imagine guys Bodyguard services people you know big guys earpieces khaki shirts and he's gonna use them To provide security services, but they don't really have a purpose yet They start getting used in Ukraine after the takeover of Crimea and Dumbass don't have a very significant role. There are a player among players there, but they start to get some military experience. And then 2015, if you remember what Syria was like in 2015, mess, it was total chaos.

13:10You had ISIS, you had a coalition of rebel groups backed by different countries, the United States, UK, everybody seemed to Arab states were backing them. People didn't know exactly who they were backing. that some of these rebel groups would get back and then collapse and join sides. It was one of the most chaotic periods of conflicts that I've ever covered. And Richard, let's just bring in the personal effort for a second before we jump at progression. You were in and out of that period. What are your memories of what it felt like on the ground? What it was it like for the Syrian people? What were the expectations?

13:45Did people think that Bashar and us as regime was going to collapse? What was your feeling at the time? Very much so. It was very, very chaotic. It was one of the strangest periods that I've covered. I was kidnapped in Syria during this period. There were so many different factions that couldn't necessarily be trusted. And there were lots of interplay. You'd have one faction, then they would change sides, and then they would rename themselves and somewhere backed by the government, and then they'd bring in Islamists, and then they would fight among themselves. And Bashar al -Assad was barely clinging to power.

14:19And is at this stage, he reaches out to Russia for help. And Assad goes to Damascus. It says, please, I need help. And Bashar al -Assad is clinging for power. And Putin says, yes, I back my allies. I don't turn my back on like the Americans, unlike these other people who abandoned their allies, not me. But he doesn't want to get bogged down like other countries have done in Iraq. So he, like the United States and the UK and the whole coalition got stuck in Iraq. So he sends warplanes to bomb Assad's targets. But instead of sending ground troops, pregozion, we've got a mission for you. Take this Wagner force and go there and prop up the Assad regime.

15:05And he's got an incentive. That stage, the soldiers that Pregozion has with it, where are they coming from? And who's paying for them? Who's paying for them? I'll get to in a second because effectively they pay themselves by seaving and raiding land and all that stuff. By oil, and this document we come across, that Pregozion was given a 25 % cut of oil and gas facilities that he was able to take control of. So, nominally to reclaim them for the Syrian government, and hey, if you get to reclaim them from the government, from these rebel groups, or ISIS, or whatever, you get a 25 % cut. Richard, just again, you're being very modest about yourself from this whole story, because you're telling a story of Procasion, but just for this instance, Richard is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC.

15:54He had covered the Iraq war. He was tear gasped during the Arab Spring in Cairo. he speaks good Arabic and you were kidnapped in Syria, you escaped after five days. So you were right in the heart of all this. When did you personally first start hearing rumors about Russian mercenaries at the Wagon Group? Well, hold on, before that Richard, we've just seen there, we've got a little divergence in our pockets. I say Wagner, he says Wagner, what should we be saying? Probably Wagner with a V. Yeah. And where did it come from? It didn't come from the composer, exactly. It was the nickname of one of the sort of co -founders of the group with Pregozion.

16:30It was his call sign. And that I assume came from Wagner, the composer. So it's kind of of the composer, but one degree is separated. It was the call sign of some of the else. Okay. So just to be clear, though, Roy, from now on in, you've introduced Richard as the expert on this guy. So we say Wagner, okay? I don't think Pregozion's going to care right now. He has big fish to fry at the moment. But so they set up this operation in Syriansura really becomes the model. You go in, you prop up the dictator and you take what you want and take what you can get. And how many truths did he have with him at that time?

17:13And you asked earlier where they come from. So I can give you an anecdote because I spoke with one of the guys who was early and early recruit and he was sort of a typical recruit for Vogue during this period. it. And he had, he was an older, older guy, not old, but certainly an adult, not a kid. He was in his 40s at the stage. He had been a soldier, a kind of a non -commissioned officer, he commanded troops, sergeant type level rank. And he had been in the Soviet army, was good at it, liked it, liked his job and commanding men. Then the Soviet army collapses. So he's got nothing to do. And in this chaotic period, he, like many other people, start working for low -level gangsters and he ends up becoming a bodyguard for some local hoodlum and doesn't particularly like it.

18:08He ends up murdering someone because that happens all the time. These gangs are killing each other. He spends time in jail, three years in jail, gets out, goes to work as a bodyguard for some other hoodlum. He doesn't particularly like it. He's drinking himself to death, and pregozion comes and taps on him and said, hey, I need you. I need you for my army. I'm putting together this private militia group and it's going to be the best of the best. And this guy said, yes, yes, of course loves it. Loves pregozion. So it's this group of second chances and hard cases who, if they get killed, nobody's going to say anything.

18:48They're from deep in central Russia. I went deep into central Russia to go to some of their funerals because it was all hush hush. And the reason it was convenient for Putin to do it this way is he doesn't have to commit real Russian troops. He can send these, these nobodies, these has -bins, these hard cases who already get the rules. So they go there, they fight, they get their money, they get paid, great. But if they get killed, they get buried somewhere in Russia. their families and their families don't say anything about it. Now, Richard, we now jump forward to Africa. We saw you in Syria during the documentary, and then you moved on to the Central African Republic, where you interviewed the leader of the Central African Republic.

19:32Tell us what the Wagner group was then doing in the Central African Republic, and then eventually in Marley, Mozambique, Bikina Faso, give us a sense of that, and give us a sense of the politics going on there. So, Syria, even though there was one horrific battle where Progoshin totally overestimated his own strength and he tries to take an oil facility, oil and gas facility in Syria and doesn't realize that there's some very elite or realizes but underestimates some that there's these very elite American special forces on this base and gets totally decimated. So in Syria he's still a learning, getting combat experience with mistakes along the way, including this one incident, about 300 of his men were just an allied local Syrian militia, were totally decimated by the Americans.

20:25And Richard, this was the first time the US troops have been fighting Russians since Vietnam. Yes. So just to finish the Syria story, he tries to attack this base because they had this incentive 25 % of any oil and gas so that you can take his yours, pay yourself. He goes after this one base, whoops, there's a small contingent of very elite, very well -armed, very angry American special troops who don't like to be attacked by some mercenaries and wipes them out. So he's getting better through errors in Syria. After Syria, just to answer your question to Africa, he's kind of now established a model.

21:08So the president of the Central African Republic, Faustienne Tuardera, he is, his country is facing terrible civil war. They imagine a Syria kind of situation, terrible civil war, the rebels are at the gates of the city and he controls, according to him and his advisors, 20 % of the country, the rebels control 80%. And nobody's gonna help, nobody wants to help him. He claims he told me the president told me and others he went around and he's asking for help. Nobody want nobody cares. Putin says, I will help you. That's who we are. We help allies. We help people in need. Same deal. He doesn't want to send ground troops to some central African nation.

21:48He sends Wagner and Wagner does a good job. Good job from his perspective. He kills lots of rebels, secures the capital, flips it. So government now has 80 % the rebels still have 20%. But what does he do? He takes all the gold and mine sites over. We have satellite imagery that showed before and after, what it was like when the Wagner people showed up, how they abused the locals in order to get them to run away from these mine sites. And there's no foreign troops there, so it's relatively more more easy. So now he's got a country, and he affects effective control of the country with the governments inviting him in.

22:25But Richard, to do that, to go in where the government is telling you, we need help here, and we've lost control of 80 % of our own country. To flip that, he must have a military structure, a military numbers that maybe we don't even countenance as being a mercenary army. It's not so much, you know, we're not talking tens of thousands, we're talking a few thousand, hundreds or a few thousand. And they operate there as trainers and advisors. So what they do in the Central African Republic is they go in and then they train and work with the local army. So they have extra, extra manpower from the local militia and the local army.

23:05So he's getting good people, he's getting good military operatives. Well, clearly they weren't that good, they'd lost 80 % of the country, but he has, he has, they have clay, they have people who they can work with. I think what I'm just to mean is that his people are good. I mean, obviously the Central Afconami were not doing that well. They're getting, they're getting better. They're learning. by now they're starting to become real because they fought in Syria and Actually, they start recruiting locally. They take some Syrians with them and they enforce discipline with savage brutality there was a a deserter in Syria man named Hamdi Bhuta and He Deserted from the force because even in Syria they worked with Syrians.

23:47That's why you don't need as many numbers of them because You send advisors 15, 20, 30 and then they work with perhaps a hundred Syrian advisors and command work over them So they become what's called a force multiplier to use military jargon same kind of of model in Africa They go in they they use the resources the very few resources that this very poor army can provide in terms of Vehicles and trucks and things and they bring in more equipment and they fight off the rebels and the rebels are also very poorly armed So they have a technological superiority and they have some combat experience from other conflicts.

24:29Richard, Roy, we'll just take a quick break and we'll be back in a second.

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25:47There were a couple of moments in that Central African Republic and part that really kind of struck with me. First was very moving interview with the widow of a guy who'd been a minor, who'd be fat to be wiped out because they wanted the locals out the way so they could raid all the, I think it was gold at the time. Goldmine, yeah. Right, and the second thing that really struck me was the interview you did with the president who it seemed to me completely changed his body language and his demeanor, wouldn't even bring himself to use the word Wagner. Was almost I felt, well, am I right in thinking he was maybe a little bit scared of the Wagner group at this point?

26:22Well, I think it was, and his name is President Faust, and I was wondering if he had made a deal with the devil. He, he, he Faustian Tvadera is his name. So he brought in Wagner forces to prop up his government and now They are his bodyguard services. So when I went to go see him you have to go through Wagner They're as part of the security. They were all over the palace his national security advisor is a Wagner Russian guy The embassy there according to diplomats. They're all populated with Wagner So you invited them in yes, they they fought back the rebels and now they keep you in power but they have dominance in the country.