meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
From Our Own Correspondent

Wagner Group: Business as Usual?

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kate Adie presents stories exploring events in Russia, the United States, Mexico, Lanzarote and South Africa. After its failed march on Moscow, the Wagner Group was supposedly going to be disbanded and its leader exiled to Belarus. But as our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford found out, this mercenary army still appears to be recruiting new members to its ranks. Across the United States, tens of millions of Americans still believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election - some of them are serving in public office. Mike Wendling is just back from Iowa, where he met one former conspiracy theorist whose own political appointment is causing friction among local Democrats and Republicans. The Tren Maya project is a huge looping railway line, nearly a thousand miles long, which (if completed) would connect the dots in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula - once the heartland of Mayan civilisation. As with any groundbreaking transport works, not everyone is happy - there have been objections over its potential environmental impact. Louise Morris recently followed the journey of a convoy which aimed to stiffen resistance to the project. The Canary Islands were well known to ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean. There are accounts of Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians all reaching the islands, as they hunted for valuable plants which were sources of red dye for fabrics. These days, the islands belong to Spain and among them is Lanzarote - a popular destination for European sun-seekers. But beyond its tourist hotels and restaurants, Charles Emmerson stumbled across the origins of one modern European empire. In South Africa, questions over the nation’s education system can get seriously heated. Decades after the end of apartheid, many people argue that South Africa’s schoolrooms are still far too focused on European scholarship - so does that explain the indifference to one of the country's most valuable literary treasures? Oxford Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Emma Smith, finds herself the only one excited by a rare copy of Shakespeare's first folio. Producer: Polly Hope Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:05.4

Today, American politics are getting rougher and ruder all the time.

0:10.1

The partisan passions on display in the Midwest and state of Iowa.

0:14.9

The divisions in Mexico over the Tren Maya project, which is driving a railway through

0:20.0

the rainforest of the Yucatan.

0:22.8

How the island of Lanzarote became Spain's first exercise in colonial dominance.

0:28.8

And what does Shakespeare's first folio have to say to today's South Africa, there's

0:33.6

a library in Cape Town which holds the only copy on the whole continent?

0:39.2

First to Russia.

0:40.6

In June when armed men from the Wagner group began marching on Moscow, Vladimir Putin's

0:45.8

authority was shaken in a way never seen before.

0:49.5

These fighters for hire had been on the front line of the so-called special military operation

0:54.4

in Ukraine, and portrayed as heroes at home in Russia, but now they were challenging the

1:00.2

very basis of the war and those commanding it.

1:03.5

The immediate crisis was diffused with a lightning deal that was supposed to see the Wagner

1:08.4

group disbanded, and its leader move across the border to Belarus with any troops who wanted

1:14.0

to follow him.

1:15.5

Weeks on, the Evgeny Pregosian remains a free man.

1:19.7

As our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford found out, this mercenary army still

1:25.1

appears to be recruiting new members to its ranks.

1:29.0

The night I heard Evgeny Pregosian declared that he'd sent a band of armed men marching

1:33.7

on Moscow I didn't expect him or them to survive until morning.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.