#195 Marat Gabidullin - Wagner Group Commander / Russian Mercenary

Shawn Ryan Show

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.9 • 38.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2025

⏱️ 103 minutes

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is my first ever interview with an enemy combatant, a commander from Russia's infamous
0:09.0	Wagner Group. It's a little bit of a language barrier with this one, so bear with us,
0:15.5	because there is some very interesting information in this episode. If you can bear with the language barrier,
0:22.6	I think you're going to get a lot out of this
0:24.6	and learn a lot about Wagner Group,
0:26.6	how they came about their training,
0:29.6	and the caliber of men that they had work in there.
0:33.6	Enjoy the show.
0:35.6	Marad? Enjoy the show.
0:43.3	Marat Gabadoulin. Welcome to the show.
0:44.3	Thank you.
0:46.3	Nice to meet you.
0:48.3	John, thank you for being here.
0:50.3	We wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier.
0:55.0	Sure.
0:55.2	Barack Gabudulin.
0:57.0	Born in Ural, you grew up in Uzbekistan and joined the Soviet military in 1984,
1:03.5	served as a paratrooper officer and commanded a recon company, then joined Russia's Wagner group
1:10.2	starting as a grunt fighting ISIS in Syria and rising
1:13.6	all the way to Commander. You worked closely with Wagner-Bosz Progossian advising the ISIS hunters in Syria
1:21.8	and fought in the battle of Kasham in 2018 against U.S. and Kurdish forces.
1:28.3	You then quit Wagner in 2019, authored a book about your time with Wagner, and since then
	...

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