Full Comment - The murky, ruthless private army tycoon getting rich from Putin’s wars

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00:01:18.760 different. Anyone following the war of Russia's invasion of Ukraine might have noticed that

00:01:33.420 there are not just Russian troops involved. Of course, there's Belarusian as well, but

00:01:37.780 also a private military outfit called the Wagner Group, or the Wagner Group, if you wish.

00:01:43.300 It's a private military run by a friend of Vladimir Putin, and it's caught the eye of an awful lot of

00:01:50.660 people, including our next guest, Miles Johnson, who is a writer with the Financial Times. But before

00:01:56.220 we get to Miles, first off, welcome to Full Comment. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. But also, I want to

00:02:02.120 remind you that you can subscribe to Full Comment, to any platform that you're listening to it on. Make sure

00:02:07.680 you hit the subscribe button and don't miss an episode, whether it's on Amazon Music, or Apple,

00:02:14.000 Spotify, what have you. Just make sure you hit the subscribe button, and of course, leave us a comment,

00:02:19.700 because we hope you find these topics interesting. The Wagner Group, though, is immensely interesting,

00:02:25.160 because it's a private military that is operating in many countries in the world now, not just Ukraine,

00:02:30.280 that does the bidding of Vladimir Putin, and that is run by a guy who started his business career

00:02:37.840 selling hot dogs off a cart in St. Petersburg. If that doesn't sound fascinating to you, then I don't

00:02:44.600 know what does. Miles Johnson has not only written about Yevegni Prigozian, I think I'm saying the name

00:02:51.120 right, he's also heard from him, because Prigozian was not happy with the fact he was being investigated

00:02:57.860 by the Financial Times. Miles, thanks for the time today. Thank you for having me on. What was it like,

00:03:04.820 take me to that moment when you're writing about Prigozian and his private military outfit and what

00:03:12.220 it's doing around the world, and you realize that you've got a message from him. I think it was, was it

00:03:20.480 Telegram you got the message on? What was it like looking and saying, oh, the thug has reached out to me?

00:03:27.860 I mean, he's, he's an interesting, uh, as you say, he's got a very interesting background, um,

00:03:33.260 interesting story. And this is a man who, um, he has a sort of, uh, sort of theatrical flourish,

00:03:39.400 I guess, in his engagement with the media where, um, journalists, um, from around the world, um,

00:03:44.840 can send him questions to his press service and, um, his press service sometimes, uh, answers those.

00:03:50.940 And frequently, uh, he uses this, yeah, let's say colorful language, uh, when he responds to these

00:03:57.580 inquiries. And, um, this one we weren't really expecting, but he, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's far

00:04:04.060 less than, uh, he's done to other journalists. I mean, you know, it has to be stressed that, um,

00:04:08.480 you know, there's been people who have been, um, investigating this man for years, uh, where,

00:04:14.700 you know, their lives have been put in danger. You know, um, the, his organization has been

00:04:18.740 connected with the murder of three Russian journalists, um, in Central African Republic.

00:04:23.020 So, uh, the words are not so bad compared to some of the other things that, um, he's been connected

00:04:29.100 to. Well, before we get in, into the story about the Wagner group, then, were there any times when

00:04:34.520 you were investigating him that you felt that your life was in danger or that you were being

00:04:40.020 threatened other than with scatological references and a telegram message?

00:04:44.180 I think, uh, he's, um, someone who has a lot of, uh, plates. He needs to be spinning

00:04:49.440 right now, um, in terms of, uh, uh, you know, his involvement in the war in Ukraine, but, um,

00:04:55.620 he's, he's obviously, you know, his organization is dangerous. And, um, as I said, you know, they've,

00:04:59.300 um, threatened and, um, you know, actually, uh, killed journalists before. So, so it's something

00:05:04.800 that you have to consider. Um, but I mean, I mean, we'll get into some of the other tactics

00:05:09.800 that he's used to intimidate, um, journalists, uh, both in Russia and, um, the West.

00:05:15.140 Well, let's start a little bit at the beginning and, and try and explain who, uh, Prigozhin 0.91

00:05:20.440 is. He, he was, uh, a convict who gets out of jail and starts running a hot dog cart on

00:05:27.400 the streets of St. Petersburg. How do you go from that to running what's effectively a global

00:05:33.120 cartel? He's got oil and gas interest, lumber interest, gold interest, and this private military

00:05:39.280 group.

00:05:39.800 Uh, how did he become so big, so powerful?

00:05:44.180 Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting, uh, biography and it's sort of how, um, we were

00:05:49.360 approaching the story because people have been writing about this man for a while, but you

00:05:54.600 know, the, the key, um, sort of point, which the key change, which occurred was last year

00:06:00.120 where up until last year, he had ferociously denied having anything to do with, you know,

00:06:06.920 mercenary activity. And then he sort of, uh, you know, he effectively had a sort of Scooby-Doo

00:06:11.860 moment pulled off the mask and said, Oh, actually I have been running the Wagner group for, you

00:06:17.740 know, all of these years. So, um, we approached it from looking at it a bit like a business

00:06:22.660 story. You know, this is a man who's a criminal entrepreneur and, um, you know, he began life,

00:06:27.940 as you said, you know, um, he was born in Leningrad in the early 1960s, you know, obviously now

00:06:33.380 St. Petersburg. And, um, you know, the sort of semi-official rendition of his biography

00:06:38.940 is that, um, his father died when he was young and then he was sent off to, uh, prestigious,

00:06:45.020 um, kind of, uh, boarding school for sports and athletics. But then he sort of had this

00:06:49.880 misspent youth whereby the, um, the early eighties, he was actually thrown into a Soviet

00:06:56.460 prison for being involved in the robbery of a woman. And so, um, he spent around a decade

00:07:01.480 in prison. And then, as you said, um, you know, you know, the Soviet union then collapses

00:07:06.560 and this man, um, you know, the story goes, uh, set up as hot dog stand and sort of managed

00:07:13.380 somehow to, um, parlay this, uh, you know, fairly, uh, modest, uh, business venture into,

00:07:19.980 um, uh, restaurant business, you know, where he started setting up, um, fashionable, uh,

00:07:26.580 St. Petersburg restaurants. Um, and that was how, uh, he caught the eye of Vladimir Putin.

00:07:34.420 So Putin sees him, likes his restaurants and effectively just makes him part of the

00:07:43.380 of his entourage and, and, and he gets contracts in that very oligarchy kind of way. The, the

00:07:49.400 friends of the leaders get powerful. Is that it? Well, I mean, it's sort of, uh, a lot of,

00:07:55.420 you know, the details about exactly how these things happen, uh, still unclear, but, you know,

00:07:59.600 we know that he, um, set up, uh, restaurants in Petersburg called new Island, which was on a

00:08:05.860 boat. And, um, it was a sort of hit, it was a fashionable spot. And, um, you know, Putin,

00:08:11.440 you know, around the turn of millennia, the millennium, when Putin had, you know, recently

00:08:15.480 become, um, the president of Russia, he took sort of taking visiting foreign dignitaries

00:08:19.760 there and leaders. So Jacques Chirac, then the president of France, you know, went there

00:08:24.300 in 2001 with Putin. George W. Bush was a diner there, you know, the year later. And Putin

00:08:30.280 was said himself to have celebrated his birthday at this restaurant. So clearly Prigozian was getting 1.00

00:08:35.080 a lot of face time with Putin. Um, but then, um, you know, it's then said that, um, through

00:08:42.560 that relationship, he began to, um, win state catering contracts. And that's really when the

00:08:47.760 sort of, uh, money started to roll in, but, um, the exactly how you go from sort of running,

00:08:54.760 um, restaurants in, uh, let's say, you know, the 1990s, obviously in Russia was a very tumultuous

00:09:01.520 time. There was a huge amount of, um, uh, you know, organized criminal activity and stuff

00:09:06.700 like that. And how you go from those wild West days, the 1990s running restaurants to,

00:09:11.840 you know, at this point, uh, going into the private mercenary business is, um, is quite

00:09:17.540 a jump.

00:09:20.140 The, in addition to mercenary, um, he's known for running, uh, troll farms, uh, online troll

00:09:28.040 farms. Was he actually involved in, in some of the campaigns aimed at influencing the,

00:09:34.960 the 2016 U S election?

00:09:37.320 Yes. So, you know, that's another, um, interesting pivot that's occurred recently. So he was actually

00:09:42.460 indicted by the department of justice, the U S department of justice for, um, his Concord,

00:09:48.360 um, group, you know, his catering company is called Concord and it has, it's quite sprawling

00:09:52.020 organization that has all of these different parts, but he was indicted for, um, yeah, running

00:09:57.040 troll farms to interfere in the 2016 elections. And it was something that he vehemently denied.

00:10:02.320 You know, he basically said it had nothing to do with it. He hired, you know, very expensive

00:10:07.160 top, you know, top tier U S law firms to defend him. And, um, it was only recently after, um,

00:10:14.940 the invasion of Ukraine that he came out and said, Oh yeah, actually it's true. I did interfere 0.97

00:10:19.500 in the U S elections. Uh, much like, uh, the, the whole issue with Wagner group denied, denied,

00:10:26.420 deny higher, high price lawyers. And I want to speak to you about that part of your fascinating

00:10:30.980 story in the financial times in a bit, but let's stick on with him running all these different

00:10:36.920 operations. And now he's running the Wagner group. They have become central to the Russian

00:10:44.500 invasion of Ukraine. I know you've primarily focused on, uh, Bergogian and, and, and his

00:10:51.640 criminal business element, but do you have any sense of why Putin, uh, and the Kremlin in general

00:10:59.780 are, are using a private military instead of the red army? I mean, we, I grew up hearing stories

00:11:08.320 about the red army. We were all worried about the red army in the cold war. Uh, you Russia's had a long

00:11:13.880 proud military history and tradition. And now he's using a private army made up of people. He,

00:11:19.720 until recently, he's just announced he's going to stop it, but he was recruiting people out of jail.

00:11:26.220 Why are they doing that? Well, I think we have to go back to the sort of, um, the beginnings of,

00:11:32.180 um, the, the Wagner group and sort of when it started first started to appear, which is around,

00:11:36.300 um, you know, the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, but what, um, what you have. So if you have,

00:11:43.880 um, you know, uh, an organization like that, it gives the Kremlin a lot of maneuverability that

00:11:49.920 it wouldn't have if they were using, you know, Russian ministry of defense, um, operatives,

00:11:56.020 you know, Russian, um, Russian military, because this is effectively an off balance sheet,

00:12:00.600 private army. This is something where you can fulfill your, your strategic, um, you know,

00:12:08.060 geopolitical goals in places like, uh, sub-Saharan Africa, but you also have deniability. So for years

00:12:16.320 and years, you know, the Kremlin officially denied any connection to Wagner and obviously

00:12:20.840 progress and denied having anything to do with it. And so there were these things happening where

00:12:25.520 everyone knew that these were, you know, Russian speaking, you know, clearly, you know, well-trained,

00:12:31.960 um, you know, sort of, uh, fighters, you know, mercenary operatives, but they were not officially

00:12:37.240 to do with Russia. And, you know, you had a famous incident now where in Syria, you know,

00:12:41.660 which was one of the main centers of operations for, um, you know, uh, Wagner, uh, where they

00:12:47.680 were drafted into, uh, back, um, Bashar al-Assad, you know, in, um, the civil war there, there was

00:12:54.580 a sort of military engagement between the U S military and Wagner fighters. And normally if they were

00:13:01.180 Russian, you know, actual Russian official, um, soldiers, that would be a huge, uh, diplomatic

00:13:08.400 incident, you know, that would effectively be, um, you know, potentially, um, you know, triggering a

00:13:13.320 war between, um, uh, Russia and the United States, if there were, um, U S and Russian, uh, armies,

00:13:19.980 you know, fight, you know, firing against each other, killing each other in Syria. But actually what

00:13:24.220 happened was, you know, the Russian, the Russian ministry of defense basically just said, nope, we don't

00:13:27.860 have anything to do with these guys. And, you know, the, so the story goes, you know, there's

00:13:31.980 various conflicting accounts. There was recently, uh, um, Wagner sort of telegram affiliated telegram

00:13:37.560 channel talking about this incident from the past, but the Wagner troops basically got blown to pieces

00:13:41.860 by, um, U S, um, U S fighter jets. But that was a point where you can deploy these people to parts of

00:13:49.980 the world and they can get into all sorts of trouble or do quite terrible things. And then when that

00:13:55.120 happens, the Kremlin can say, Oh, they're not ours. We don't even know who they are. They might

00:13:59.820 have this. So they've used them, um, in Ukraine when they invaded into Crimea, they've used them

00:14:06.340 in Syria. And I understand that they're very big in the central African Republic, which, uh, you know,

00:14:13.180 some have described as simply a vassal state for Putin's Kremlin. Yeah. So that's, um, you know,

00:14:19.200 in terms of the places like, uh, Sudan and central African Republic, this is also an element where the,

00:14:23.940 um, the Kremlin can kind of project power, um, especially post 2014 when it became increasingly

00:14:30.660 internationally isolated and we're sort of looking for new friends, um, so to speak, and sort of trying

00:14:35.840 to find different ways of, um, projecting power around the world, you know, by deploying, um, these

00:14:42.480 sort of, uh, you know, mercenary groups to, to places like that, they can achieve a number of things

00:14:49.260 all at the same time. Um, you know, they can, uh, basically strengthen, uh, their relationships with,

00:14:55.920 you know, often pretty awful regimes and, um, also set up commercial ventures, you know, so the way we

00:15:02.440 were sort of looking at this story was, um, you know, looking at this as a business operation,

00:15:06.980 because in exchange for mercenary assistance in those countries, you know, Prigozin has been awarded

00:15:13.260 natural resources concessions. So a big, you know, a big part of that was in Syria, you know, where,

00:15:18.520 um, you know, Prigozin connected companies were being given, you know, really quite significant,

00:15:22.900 um, uh, oil concessions. Um, you know, they would, uh, sort of fight against ISIS, you know,

00:15:29.460 and retake large oil fields, and then they would sort of get the running of that field. Um, so there

00:15:33.920 was a profit element where, um, they were being paid in kind and to some extent in things like,

00:15:39.740 you know, there's a gold, um, uh, gold mine in Sudan, you know, there's all sorts of natural

00:15:44.560 resources, which, um, sort of add to this international logistical complexity where you're

00:15:50.300 sort of running an operation, which involves a military side, but you also have a business side.

00:15:55.760 So he's literally going in conquering. It's like a mini empire within an empire conquers a piece of

00:16:02.980 land and his reward is the natural resources that he are on the land. His mercenary group,

00:16:09.740 just taken. Yes. I mean, it's sort of in a way, his edge, because if you can go into, um, places

00:16:18.920 where lots of other, you know, companies and people just wouldn't want to go as in, they wouldn't want

00:16:24.920 to necessarily deal with the regimes there, the security situation would be probably make it

00:16:30.500 impossible to do that. And they would be able to engage in business practices, which basically no

00:16:36.820 one else would really want to do or be able to do because they would be prosecuted. So it gives you

00:16:41.480 a sort of, um, a leg up against the competition, uh, in so to speak, if you're, um, going into, uh,

00:16:47.480 these locations. And I think it's very much a key part of the business model. Um, but at the same time,

00:16:53.760 there are these other more intangible benefits, um, for the Kremlin, um, in having these people doing

00:17:01.200 these things, the attempt to investigate him, uh, he denied doing certain things. Others have written

00:17:11.700 about him. He's denied. In fact, he's, he sued people in British courts. And I want to ask you

00:17:17.440 about that. The fact that both in Washington and in London, this man who is quite the thug, I mean,

00:17:25.940 the Wagner group, I hesitate to call them soldiers, troops have been accused of all kinds of atrocities,

00:17:33.760 human rights abuses, um, you know, dismembering bodies, uh, horrific things that I've just thought

00:17:43.720 about and realized I don't want to say out loud. Um, and yet for people talking about that, they face

00:17:50.400 lawsuits and British and American lawyers at high priced top flight firms defended this man.

00:17:59.560 Is there any blowback on these firms for defending, uh, the, the rights of a, a thug like Purgosian? 0.97

00:18:09.000 I mean, this is a sort of fascinating part of the story where if we flash back to just a year ago,

00:18:16.320 he was still engaged. So basically what happened, the background to this story, as you mentioned,

00:18:20.980 is that, um, you know, there were these, um, very, um, intricate and amazing investigations into

00:18:27.060 the Wagner group over the years where he still maintained, they were all lies and it had nothing

00:18:33.360 to do with him, but, but, you know, there were outlets, which, um, I'm sure, you know, some of your

00:18:36.720 listeners would have heard of like Bellingcat, you know, who were doing, um, you know, really amazing

00:18:41.160 work into him and lots of Russian, um, independent media too. And, um, what happened is that, um,

00:18:46.960 around in 2021. So, you know, before the invasion of Ukraine was, you know, a reality and, you know,

00:18:54.940 something which no one was expecting, he, um, hired very expensive lawyers in London to sue Elliot

00:19:00.760 Higgins, who is the founder of Bellingcat, um, for defaming him. And basically in, in, in the court

00:19:07.220 claim, he said he'd suffered severe emotional damage for these horrible things that Elliot

00:19:13.480 Higgins was meant to have accused him of. Um, and it was completely ridiculous, the idea that he had

00:19:18.420 anything to do with any Russian mercenary activity. And this was a kind of fascinating case because,

00:19:23.460 you know, British libel law is known around the world to be very stringent and it's, um, at times

00:19:29.160 quite controversial and it, um, puts a huge, um, burden on reporters who are looking at things like

00:19:35.700 this. But, um, there was never really a case as egregious as this, because obviously it transpired,

00:19:44.420 you know, so flash, you know, forward from that case being filed against Elliot Higgins in London,

00:19:50.120 if you sort of, you know, whenever it was, I think it was around October last year, um, in 2022,

00:19:55.700 that was the moment when Progozin finally said, ha ha ha, actually I really did found the Wagner group.

00:20:02.260 So he was basically saying that all of the things he'd said in this court, you know, submission to,

00:20:06.700 um, the English court were complete and outright lies. And it raised this problem that if you are

00:20:15.120 dealing with people like Progozin, they are, you know, a threat and they raise lots of questions

00:20:21.000 about the rule of law because lawyers will say everyone deserves representation. You know, the worst

00:20:27.580 people in the world, no matter who are, whoever they are, you know, war criminals, mass murderers, 0.91

00:20:32.620 they have the right to have a lawyer. And that's the foundation of the rule of law in civilized

00:20:37.320 countries. But then if you have a man like that, who is someone who not on the one hand, he murders

00:20:45.900 journalists, you know, his people have murdered journalists in, um, in, in Central African Republic.

00:20:50.940 And on the other hand, he's hiring the most expensive, uh, lawyers, you know, to sort of go

00:20:57.460 after journalists. Um, he is using, or there's a very large risk that he is using, um, courts as a

00:21:04.680 tool of asymmetric warfare. And that is not necessarily, necessarily something that, um, you know, Western

00:21:11.140 courts are equipped to deal with. They're not equipped to deal with people who act in the way that this man

00:21:17.360 acts and think how he thinks. I completely agree, Miles, that everyone is entitled to a lawyer, uh, for

00:21:24.760 their defense, but this is essentially using courts as an offensive weapon, uh, isn't it?

00:21:31.820 Exactly. Uh, it is. And that's the sort of real problem here and something which there is still a very

00:21:38.400 lively debate in happening in, um, in the UK about how to solve this problem. Uh, it's just that in

00:21:44.720 previous instances, you know, we've had, you know, for a very long time, English courts have been used,

00:21:49.960 um, you know, by wealthy, um, you know, powerful people to sort of, um, you know, uh, go after

00:21:58.120 journalists who've written things that they don't like, but this is a particularly egregious, almost

00:22:03.300 unique, um, uh, case in terms of how brazen and barefaced it was. And so it's sort of, um, it was a sort

00:22:10.780 of fascinating, um, juxtaposition between a man who was releasing social media posts laughing

00:22:20.280 about, you know, uh, videos which appeared to show his fighters, you know, murdering someone,

00:22:27.920 bludgeoning them to death with a sledgehammer. And at the other end of the spectrum, he was hiring

00:22:32.780 very fancy, very expensive lawyers who, you know, sort of white shoe law firms who would not in the

00:22:41.540 morning when they wake up and eat their breakfast cereal would like to think, Oh, you know what I'm

00:22:45.740 doing today? I'm representing a man who's accused of, you know, war, war crimes around the world.

00:22:53.060 We'll get into more about, uh, what's happening with those law firms. Are those lawyers having second

00:22:58.500 thoughts, uh, when we return? My name's Brian Lilly. This is full comment podcast back in moments.

00:23:05.220 The story, if you haven't read it yet is titled Wagner Inc, a Russian warlord and his lawyers in

00:23:11.460 the financial times by miles Johnson and miles, uh, you're writing the piece about how there's some

00:23:20.900 in the British legal system, some in British society who, uh, take issue with the way that,

00:23:26.480 uh, Pregosian and the head of the Wagner group used the British court system to protect himself from 0.71

00:23:33.400 criticism. Um, but there was a government panel that looked into this and some of the lawyers that

00:23:38.500 defended them said, Oh no, everything's just fine here. This is all hunky dory, nothing to change.

00:23:43.220 Tell me a bit about that. Yeah, I was quite struck by that when I was researching the story because

00:23:48.500 basically there have been a number of high profile cases in, um, in England, um, obviously, you know,

00:23:55.440 the English legal system is, is separate within, um, the UK. Um, but basically there were, there've

00:24:01.860 been a number of these cases where Russian oligarchs have sued British journalists. Um, um, they have,

00:24:09.840 you know, started a big debate about whether if you are, if you have a system which allows people

00:24:17.580 who are very, very wealthy to, um, impose massive costs on journalists who write about them,

00:24:22.960 are you effectively, you know, severely, um, diminishing free speech and, um, you know,

00:24:29.460 without wanting to go into a massive amount of detail about the UK libel system, um, it's a big,

00:24:34.020 big sort of a threat because the costs of these cases can potentially run into vast sums, you know,

00:24:41.380 hundreds of thousands, even millions sometimes of pounds. And so for an oligarch, that's pocket change.

00:24:48.660 That's sort of, you know, what they'd spend for breakfast, but for a media organization, it can be

00:24:53.260 hugely, uh, damaging. And so, um, that started a big debate after the invasion of our courts, you know,

00:25:00.200 our, um, our media law is basically just not equipped to deal with this. But then the Pregosan case is

00:25:07.480 really unique because in most of these other cases, there's some element of ambiguity or there's some

00:25:16.100 element of, um, you know, both sides can sort of, you know, if someone wanted to try and back,

00:25:21.280 you know, some of the oligarchs, they say, Oh, but you know, this part was a little bit unclear or

00:25:25.660 whatever in this, there was no ambiguity at all. This was a man who was suing a journalist for saying

00:25:30.720 that he ran a mercenary organization. And then eventually after years of lying about it, he admitted

00:25:38.000 he did run the mercenary organization. So it was an outright lie. And, um, the debate hasn't really

00:25:44.720 sort of factored in that possibility that people do that sort of thing.

00:25:49.280 And the man behind it, uh, Elliot Higgins, uh, use out some 70,000 pounds, um, for defending

00:25:58.380 himself for saying the truth.

00:26:00.180 Yeah. And I mean, Elliot probably is relatively lucky in the sense of, uh, it could have cost him

00:26:05.800 a lot more, you know, in an alternate reality where, um, you know, uh, Putin hadn't invaded Ukraine

00:26:11.720 and maybe the sort of revulsion that what was happening wasn't so high. Um, because

00:26:16.160 sorry, in that case, his lawyers, Pugosin's lawyers applied to actually drop, like leave

00:26:21.800 the case. So around in March, you know, just, you know, a month or so after the invasion,

00:26:26.120 the lawyer sort of dropped out of the case and that meant the case fell apart, but that

00:26:30.400 may not have happened in an alternate reality where, um, the invasion hadn't taken place.

00:26:34.540 So it's sort of, um, what this really shows is also it's, it's, it is a story, which

00:26:40.400 is trying to also examine the sort of moral limits of law and corporate law and sort of

00:26:47.400 really the point when a lawyer would say, I don't want to represent this person. And as

00:26:54.100 you know, you know, there is this debate, you know, about when someone should have legal

00:26:58.600 representation and, you know, surely everyone should have the right to a lawyer, but should

00:27:02.560 they always have a right to a lawyer in this instance when they are bringing cases against

00:27:06.580 journalists? And that's something which I think, um, is highly debatable.

00:27:09.640 Well, I think it's definitely an ethical question for the law firms, wouldn't it be? I mean,

00:27:15.420 I would think some of the firms at a certain point would just say, all right, well, we defend

00:27:21.040 all kinds of people, but warlords accused of war crimes, that's a bridge too far.

00:27:27.460 Absolutely. And there's also the, the question of when do you cross the line from defending

00:27:34.300 someone in a legitimate case to actually enabling their crimes? You know, in the case of someone

00:27:40.300 who in this instance was running an international criminal organization, you know, the Wagner group

00:27:47.420 has been labeled by the U S government now as a transnational criminal organization. As you know,

00:27:52.420 you said, it's been accused of the most horrific war crimes, you know, murder, rape, you know,

00:27:58.620 sort of torture the worst crimes imaginable. And these lawyers were serving this man at a time

00:28:05.680 when those activities were occurring. And so if they had been successful, is that something where

00:28:13.140 they are facilitating those crimes themselves? And that's something which is a really, really

00:28:18.500 important ethical question for lawyers in the West to grapple with, especially in the sort of

00:28:23.400 increasingly chaotic and sort of multipolar world that we're operating in.

00:28:29.080 I get a sense that British libel law, which I admittedly have not studied in journalism school,

00:28:35.720 I had to study Canadian libel law, but it sounds like yours is not as friendly to journalists. I mean,

00:28:41.000 my sense would be that, um, we are perhaps, um, between where English law is and where American law is

00:28:50.620 closer to American where there is much more of a free for all, but is it particularly easy to get

00:28:57.900 sued in the UK? Well, I think in obviously, well, in the UK, one of the first things is, you know,

00:29:03.660 we don't have a constitutional, um, protection of freedom of speech. And, uh, but in terms of our

00:29:11.260 libel law, the burden of proof is on the defendant, so to speak. So if I bring a libel claim against you

00:29:18.220 and say, you have defamed me because in an article, you said I was running an international criminal

00:29:24.500 organization, you would have to prove, depending on the defense you picked, there are other defenses,

00:29:29.840 but you know, you would have to kind of prove that that was true. And in these very, very complicated

00:29:36.600 international sort of corruption and criminal sort of stories, it's quite hard to definitively prove

00:29:44.380 things. When you have someone like Purgosin, who's just saying, nope, it's not true. Nope. I have

00:29:49.680 nothing to do with the Varder group. It's not true. It's not true. And just saying that over and over

00:29:52.920 again, um, you know, you, the burden of proof to prove that actually he's lying and he really is

00:29:59.440 running, um, you know, uh, uh, illegal mercenary operation around the world is very, very high.

00:30:05.940 And there was a huge amount of evidence out there to show that he was, you have to think that at the

00:30:10.720 time this man launched this case, he was, um, I think he was at that time on the FBI's most wanted

00:30:16.980 list. You know, so this is a sort of international fugitive. He had been sanctioned by the U S he'd

00:30:23.040 been sanctioned by the European union. So, you know, it's, it's not like this was a guy who no one had

00:30:27.940 heard of. And, you know, he was just sort of being accused by a lone media outlet of a crime. This is

00:30:34.180 someone who was a sort of increasingly becoming a notorious sort of international criminal, yet

00:30:40.820 that wasn't enough to deter him from launching this case. So it shows you how high the bar has

00:30:47.480 to be and how it's extremely difficult to report on this stuff. So he's gone from suing people for

00:30:54.460 saying he runs the, the Wagner group to reveling in it. They've even opened a new headquarters in

00:31:01.640 St. Petersburg with big glass windows. He's openly boasting about it. Uh, yesterday, uh, an announcement

00:31:10.140 that, um, he's no longer recruiting in Russian prisons, uh, that he, I guess part of the deal

00:31:17.220 was if you, um, if you agreed to go fight for them, uh, you, you know, you wouldn't serve the rest of your

00:31:23.200 sentence. I can't imagine that people were signing up, uh, you know, based to go on a battlefield based

00:31:29.100 on a four month sentence for shoplifting. So these were some pretty hard men that were, were signed

00:31:34.560 up for it. He's also now arguing with journalists, as I mentioned earlier, arguing with, uh, CNN's

00:31:41.360 Anderson Cooper, uh, publicly about the activities of, of the Wagner group. So it's, it's, it's a definite

00:31:47.180 change. Uh, this, you know, this puts him in a position, I, I guess, where he would really just be

00:31:57.300 restricted to living in Russia and not traveling internationally because most other countries

00:32:03.580 would, would be on the lookout for him, I would guess. I mean, absolutely now, but now, you know,

00:32:10.340 he has, um, you know, he's sort of crossed the Rubicon. He can't, he can't, um, sort of, uh, go back.

00:32:15.900 I mean, in terms of, you know, it's indicative of the fact, the fact that he was suing a journalist,

00:32:21.280 um, in London, even, you know, as late as, uh, early 2022, you know, just in the months before

00:32:28.020 the invasion showed that at that point, he still wanted to preserve the semblance of him being a

00:32:34.680 legitimate businessman and just a sort of, um, a normal guy, so to speak. And, um, that obviously

00:32:40.400 has been completely discarded. You know, he has been doing, um, as you said, you know, he's, he's

00:32:45.320 opened a corporate headquarters for an organization that he said didn't even exist. Um, you know,

00:32:50.920 a year ago, uh, but he's also becoming increasingly grotesque in, um, and, you know, sort of in the

00:32:57.560 violence he's celebrating, um, and his sort of social media signaling. So, you know, after a video

00:33:04.100 emerged, which, uh, purported to show, uh, defector from his, you know, mercenary outfit being murdered,

00:33:12.140 uh, with a sledgehammer by other mercenaries, he celebrated it online. Uh, then he also,

00:33:19.140 uh, someone put up a video, which, you know, again, not clear if it really happened, but,

00:33:25.220 you know, of him sending a sledgehammer, a bloodied sledgehammer in a violin case embossed

00:33:31.420 with a Wagner logo to the European parliament, you know, so he is almost, uh, like reveling in this

00:33:38.200 sort of, um, you know, this almost kind of pantomime evil, uh, in a way, which, uh, means there's

00:33:44.360 certainly no way back for him into, uh, respectable society. Um, but it is kind of remarkable that that

00:33:50.840 only happened after the invasion, you know, so basically before the invasion, um, yes, he was

00:33:56.660 sanctioned, uh, you know, and increasingly the sort of the, you know, the, the screws were tightened

00:34:02.360 on him, uh, and, you know, the U S you know, were sort of, um, sanctioning his, uh, private jets,

00:34:08.360 which were always held through shell companies and basically making life quite annoying for him.

00:34:13.000 Um, but he was largely able to kind of live relatively unmolested in terms of his, um,

00:34:19.400 his travel and, um, his family as well. And so it basically shows that up until then, the price

00:34:24.800 for running a sort of a murderous, uh, international criminal organization wasn't actually that high.

00:34:30.340 Right. And has it gotten higher in the last few months? Is he, or is he still traveling

00:34:35.560 freely in a evading, uh, attempts to pin him down? I mean, no, he, he can't, um, you know,

00:34:42.220 he can't travel to, um, outside of, you know, he can't travel to, um, the European union or anything

00:34:47.480 like that at the moment. But, um, but there is definitely another element, which is that as he's

00:34:52.420 now become an increasingly prominent public figure in Russia, it becomes much more of a high wire act

00:34:58.380 for him where, you know, he's been, he's been quite vocal and sort of stirring up a lot of trouble by

00:35:06.340 calling out, for example, the Russian minister of defense and criticizing generals and criticizing

00:35:12.720 the way the war's going and generally, uh, making himself probably quite unpopular with some pretty

00:35:18.880 powerful people who are very unlikely to sympathize with a man like him because, you know, the sort of

00:35:25.720 the powerful, you know, the security man in, um, you know, the people in the intelligence services and

00:35:31.660 the military in Russia, you know, he is not one of them. He is, uh, you know, a catering entrepreneur,

00:35:38.560 um, you know, instead of being a kind of street thug who has emerged into this strategic role in, um,

00:35:45.920 the Russian, um, invasion. But, um, by calling out, they will probably not, um, look on him very

00:35:52.100 favorably. And so he's making clearly making some powerful enemies. And I think the news that

00:35:56.960 the, um, Wagner group is no longer recruiting prisoners is very interesting because there's

00:36:01.980 a number of ways that that can be interpreted. Uh, obviously the, the, um, that was actually when

00:36:08.220 he first sort of broke cover was when, uh, a video surfaced, um, late last year of him in a prison

00:36:15.720 pitching the Wagner group to a bunch of prisoners and basically telling them the conditions of, um,

00:36:21.460 you know, what, what the deal would be. Um, and obviously the deal is that, um, no matter

00:36:26.020 how serious a crime you've committed, if you go and serve with them, and I think it's for

00:36:30.280 if you survive, I think for six months, then you get pardoned. Um, but the fatality rate

00:36:35.180 is huge. You know, this is a meat grinder. These people are being sent to the front and basically

00:36:39.780 just thrown over the top and, you know, being, um, you know, shot to pieces. And so, so many

00:36:45.580 people are dying out of those battalions that, um, it is understandable why prisoners might

00:36:51.440 say, well, you know, I've got, uh, another 15 years to serve on my sentence. I'd probably rather

00:36:56.500 just stay here. I think that's where I would be at. Do you have a sense of who would win in a battle

00:37:02.340 between, um, Prigozian and, and the people who serve directly under, uh, Vladimir Putin? Because

00:37:09.640 obviously he's a friend of Putin. So he's an ally of Putin. He's valuable to him. Which,

00:37:15.680 which group of thugs comes out on top in a dispute like this?

00:37:21.220 I think it would be fair to say that, um, ultimately, uh, you know, Prigozian is an outsider. 1.00

00:37:30.060 Um, and he's not going, he's not part of the, if you look at, um, Vladimir Putin, um, and the people

00:37:35.920 who've been close to him, they are all people, uh, they tend to be people with very similar backgrounds

00:37:40.600 to Putin as in people who served in the KGB, um, you know, people with a sort of, um, you know,

00:37:46.440 uh, intelligence officer sort of, um, hard mentality where, um, who sort of risen through

00:37:52.940 the apparatus in that way, whereas Prigozian is an outsider. And so I think he, um, it doesn't seem

00:37:58.400 plausible to me that he would ever be able to really, um, sort of gain power, um, or more influence

00:38:06.260 in Russia beyond what he really has. And maybe, you know, there's a point where there's, you know,

00:38:10.520 potentially we've seen his peak. I mean, you know, it's, uh, the fact that, um, you know,

00:38:16.600 if these reports are, you know, the way they're being interpreted is correct of the prisoners, um,

00:38:21.060 uh, not wanting to serve him anymore, how much more usefulness does he have? You know,

00:38:27.420 does he have a monopoly on private military companies? There are a number of, uh, Russian

00:38:31.900 private military companies. His is the most infamous, um, but he could probably quite easily

00:38:37.880 be replaced and he's annoyed quite a lot of people. So, um, I think, uh, it's going to be

00:38:44.460 very interesting to see what happens to him in the next six months to a year.

00:38:49.240 I'm sure either way, we will be hearing about it because as you say, he, um, he likes to make

00:38:54.300 a splash. He likes to be public these days with journalists. If you have not read the story yet,

00:39:00.240 it is Wagner Inc, a Russian warlord and his lawyers in the financial times from Miles Johnson. Miles,

00:39:06.480 thanks so much for your time today. Thank you. The full comment is a post media podcast. My name

00:39:12.600 is Brian Lilly, your host. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin

00:39:18.580 Libin is the executive producer. Remember you can subscribe to full comment on Apple podcasts,

00:39:24.220 Google Spotify, Amazon music, what have you make sure you give us a rating, leave a review and tell

00:39:29.720 your friends all about us. Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - February 21, 2023

The murky, ruthless private army tycoon getting rich from Putin’s wars

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