Life Inside Wagner Before and After Prigozhin

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com

For mercenaries, death is a business. It’s all about finding the right market. Wagner and other Russian mercenary groups have found willing markets in Africa. Journalist John Lechner spent years in Africa among the mercenaries and he’s on the show today to tell us about what he learned.

Lechner tells us how Wagner’s men think the U.S. media killed Prigozhin, why every theater (or market) is different, and the training regimen of a fresh convict recruit. It’s all in his new book Death Is Our Business: Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare.

The threats change…but the mercenaries stay the same.

Interlinking militant Islam and the rise of modern mercenaries
Russian mercenaries before Wagner
Prigozhin rising
Putin’s Chef was the father of ‘Hybrid War’
Wagner in Africa
‘No one said mercenary life was gonna be easy.’
Life inside Wagner
‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’
You can’t judge intent by results
The Russian “royal” court is full of self starters and entrepreneurs

The Tip of Russia’s Spear

Death Is Our Business

Pardoned for Serving in Ukraine, They Return to Russia to Kill Again

Taliban Bureaucrats Hate Working Online All Day, ‘Miss the Days of Jihad’

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast.
0:02.0	Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature.
0:05.4	It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.1	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:17.6	Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet.
0:21.5	I am Matthew Galt.
0:23.0	And I'm Jason Fields.
0:24.6	And we are going to talk about mercenaries today.
0:27.0	I read a really incredible piece in the baffler titled The Tip of Russia's Spear, which is about progoshin, about Bogdor, but more broadly about mercenaries in the modern world.
0:41.8	And then I got to the bottom of the piece and I was delighted to find out that it was an excerpt from a book,
0:46.9	which I have not read yet, but I have ordered, called Death is Our Business, Russian mercenaries and the new private era of warfare.
0:54.1	And we have the author with us today. Sir, can you introduce yourself? Yes. called Death is Our Business, Russian Mercenaries, and the new private era of warfare.
0:55.5	And we have the author with us today.
0:57.9	Sir, can you introduce yourself?
0:59.0	Yeah, sure.
1:00.2	Thank you for having me on.
1:02.0	My name's John Lechner.
1:04.7	I'm a writer and researcher.
1:12.3	Largely focused on conflict in Central Africa, the Sahel, in the former Soviet Union.
1:19.6	And my book on Russian mercenaries in Wagner Group has just come out with Bloomsbury about two weeks ago.
1:20.8	As you mentioned, death is our business.
1:23.9	So I've got friends, other journalist friends, other defense journalist friends that are saying that we are entering the golden age of mercenaries.
	...

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