The murky, ruthless private army tycoon getting rich from Putin’s wars
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Summary
In this episode of Full Comment, we speak with Miles Johnson, a reporter with the Financial Times, about the mysterious and powerful private military group known as the Wagner Group. The group is run by a man who started his career selling hot dogs off a cart in St. Petersburg, and who is now one of the most powerful men in the world. It s a group that does the bidding of Vladimir Putin, and it s caught the eye of a lot of people, including many journalists.
Transcript
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different. Anyone following the war of Russia's invasion of Ukraine might have noticed that
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there are not just Russian troops involved. Of course, there's Belarusian as well, but
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also a private military outfit called the Wagner Group, or the Wagner Group, if you wish.
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It's a private military run by a friend of Vladimir Putin, and it's caught the eye of an awful lot of
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people, including our next guest, Miles Johnson, who is a writer with the Financial Times. But before
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we get to Miles, first off, welcome to Full Comment. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. But also, I want to
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remind you that you can subscribe to Full Comment, to any platform that you're listening to it on. Make sure
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you hit the subscribe button and don't miss an episode, whether it's on Amazon Music, or Apple,
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Spotify, what have you. Just make sure you hit the subscribe button, and of course, leave us a comment,
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because we hope you find these topics interesting. The Wagner Group, though, is immensely interesting,
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because it's a private military that is operating in many countries in the world now, not just Ukraine,
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that does the bidding of Vladimir Putin, and that is run by a guy who started his business career
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selling hot dogs off a cart in St. Petersburg. If that doesn't sound fascinating to you, then I don't
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know what does. Miles Johnson has not only written about Yevegni Prigozian, I think I'm saying the name
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right, he's also heard from him, because Prigozian was not happy with the fact he was being investigated
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by the Financial Times. Miles, thanks for the time today. Thank you for having me on. What was it like,
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take me to that moment when you're writing about Prigozian and his private military outfit and what
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it's doing around the world, and you realize that you've got a message from him. I think it was, was it
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Telegram you got the message on? What was it like looking and saying, oh, the thug has reached out to me?
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I mean, he's, he's an interesting, uh, as you say, he's got a very interesting background, um,
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interesting story. And this is a man who, um, he has a sort of, uh, sort of theatrical flourish,
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I guess, in his engagement with the media where, um, journalists, um, from around the world, um,
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can send him questions to his press service and, um, his press service sometimes, uh, answers those.
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And frequently, uh, he uses this, yeah, let's say colorful language, uh, when he responds to these
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inquiries. And, um, this one we weren't really expecting, but he, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's far
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less than, uh, he's done to other journalists. I mean, you know, it has to be stressed that, um,
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you know, there's been people who have been, um, investigating this man for years, uh, where,
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you know, their lives have been put in danger. You know, um, the, his organization has been
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connected with the murder of three Russian journalists, um, in Central African Republic.
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So, uh, the words are not so bad compared to some of the other things that, um, he's been connected
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to. Well, before we get in, into the story about the Wagner group, then, were there any times when
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you were investigating him that you felt that your life was in danger or that you were being
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threatened other than with scatological references and a telegram message?
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I think, uh, he's, um, someone who has a lot of, uh, plates. He needs to be spinning
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right now, um, in terms of, uh, uh, you know, his involvement in the war in Ukraine, but, um,
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he's, he's obviously, you know, his organization is dangerous. And, um, as I said, you know, they've,
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um, threatened and, um, you know, actually, uh, killed journalists before. So, so it's something
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that you have to consider. Um, but I mean, I mean, we'll get into some of the other tactics
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that he's used to intimidate, um, journalists, uh, both in Russia and, um, the West.
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Well, let's start a little bit at the beginning and, and try and explain who, uh, Prigozhin
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is. He, he was, uh, a convict who gets out of jail and starts running a hot dog cart on
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the streets of St. Petersburg. How do you go from that to running what's effectively a global
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cartel? He's got oil and gas interest, lumber interest, gold interest, and this private military
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Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting, uh, biography and it's sort of how, um, we were
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approaching the story because people have been writing about this man for a while, but you
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know, the, the key, um, sort of point, which the key change, which occurred was last year
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where up until last year, he had ferociously denied having anything to do with, you know,
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mercenary activity. And then he sort of, uh, you know, he effectively had a sort of Scooby-Doo
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moment pulled off the mask and said, Oh, actually I have been running the Wagner group for, you
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know, all of these years. So, um, we approached it from looking at it a bit like a business
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story. You know, this is a man who's a criminal entrepreneur and, um, you know, he began life,
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as you said, you know, um, he was born in Leningrad in the early 1960s, you know, obviously now
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St. Petersburg. And, um, you know, the sort of semi-official rendition of his biography
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is that, um, his father died when he was young and then he was sent off to, uh, prestigious,
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um, kind of, uh, boarding school for sports and athletics. But then he sort of had this
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misspent youth whereby the, um, the early eighties, he was actually thrown into a Soviet
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prison for being involved in the robbery of a woman. And so, um, he spent around a decade
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in prison. And then, as you said, um, you know, you know, the Soviet union then collapses
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and this man, um, you know, the story goes, uh, set up as hot dog stand and sort of managed
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somehow to, um, parlay this, uh, you know, fairly, uh, modest, uh, business venture into,
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um, uh, restaurant business, you know, where he started setting up, um, fashionable, uh,
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St. Petersburg restaurants. Um, and that was how, uh, he caught the eye of Vladimir Putin.
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So Putin sees him, likes his restaurants and effectively just makes him part of the
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of his entourage and, and, and he gets contracts in that very oligarchy kind of way. The, the
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friends of the leaders get powerful. Is that it? Well, I mean, it's sort of, uh, a lot of,
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you know, the details about exactly how these things happen, uh, still unclear, but, you know,
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we know that he, um, set up, uh, restaurants in Petersburg called new Island, which was on a
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boat. And, um, it was a sort of hit, it was a fashionable spot. And, um, you know, Putin,
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you know, around the turn of millennia, the millennium, when Putin had, you know, recently
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become, um, the president of Russia, he took sort of taking visiting foreign dignitaries
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there and leaders. So Jacques Chirac, then the president of France, you know, went there
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in 2001 with Putin. George W. Bush was a diner there, you know, the year later. And Putin
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was said himself to have celebrated his birthday at this restaurant. So clearly Prigozian was getting
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a lot of face time with Putin. Um, but then, um, you know, it's then said that, um, through
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that relationship, he began to, um, win state catering contracts. And that's really when the
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sort of, uh, money started to roll in, but, um, the exactly how you go from sort of running,
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um, restaurants in, uh, let's say, you know, the 1990s, obviously in Russia was a very tumultuous
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time. There was a huge amount of, um, uh, you know, organized criminal activity and stuff
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like that. And how you go from those wild West days, the 1990s running restaurants to,
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you know, at this point, uh, going into the private mercenary business is, um, is quite
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The, in addition to mercenary, um, he's known for running, uh, troll farms, uh, online troll
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farms. Was he actually involved in, in some of the campaigns aimed at influencing the,
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Yes. So, you know, that's another, um, interesting pivot that's occurred recently. So he was actually
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indicted by the department of justice, the U S department of justice for, um, his Concord,
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um, group, you know, his catering company is called Concord and it has, it's quite sprawling
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organization that has all of these different parts, but he was indicted for, um, yeah, running
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troll farms to interfere in the 2016 elections. And it was something that he vehemently denied.
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You know, he basically said it had nothing to do with it. He hired, you know, very expensive
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top, you know, top tier U S law firms to defend him. And, um, it was only recently after, um,
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the invasion of Ukraine that he came out and said, Oh yeah, actually it's true. I did interfere
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in the U S elections. Uh, much like, uh, the, the whole issue with Wagner group denied, denied,
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deny higher, high price lawyers. And I want to speak to you about that part of your fascinating
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story in the financial times in a bit, but let's stick on with him running all these different
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operations. And now he's running the Wagner group. They have become central to the Russian
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invasion of Ukraine. I know you've primarily focused on, uh, Bergogian and, and, and his
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criminal business element, but do you have any sense of why Putin, uh, and the Kremlin in general
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are, are using a private military instead of the red army? I mean, we, I grew up hearing stories
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about the red army. We were all worried about the red army in the cold war. Uh, you Russia's had a long
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proud military history and tradition. And now he's using a private army made up of people. He,
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until recently, he's just announced he's going to stop it, but he was recruiting people out of jail.
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Why are they doing that? Well, I think we have to go back to the sort of, um, the beginnings of,
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um, the, the Wagner group and sort of when it started first started to appear, which is around,
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um, you know, the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, but what, um, what you have. So if you have,
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um, you know, uh, an organization like that, it gives the Kremlin a lot of maneuverability that
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it wouldn't have if they were using, you know, Russian ministry of defense, um, operatives,
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you know, Russian, um, Russian military, because this is effectively an off balance sheet,
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private army. This is something where you can fulfill your, your strategic, um, you know,
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geopolitical goals in places like, uh, sub-Saharan Africa, but you also have deniability. So for years
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and years, you know, the Kremlin officially denied any connection to Wagner and obviously
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progress and denied having anything to do with it. And so there were these things happening where
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everyone knew that these were, you know, Russian speaking, you know, clearly, you know, well-trained,
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um, you know, sort of, uh, fighters, you know, mercenary operatives, but they were not officially
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to do with Russia. And, you know, you had a famous incident now where in Syria, you know,
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which was one of the main centers of operations for, um, you know, uh, Wagner, uh, where they
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were drafted into, uh, back, um, Bashar al-Assad, you know, in, um, the civil war there, there was
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a sort of military engagement between the U S military and Wagner fighters. And normally if they were
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Russian, you know, actual Russian official, um, soldiers, that would be a huge, uh, diplomatic
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incident, you know, that would effectively be, um, you know, potentially, um, you know, triggering a
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war between, um, uh, Russia and the United States, if there were, um, U S and Russian, uh, armies,
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you know, fight, you know, firing against each other, killing each other in Syria. But actually what
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happened was, you know, the Russian, the Russian ministry of defense basically just said, nope, we don't
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have anything to do with these guys. And, you know, the, so the story goes, you know, there's
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various conflicting accounts. There was recently, uh, um, Wagner sort of telegram affiliated telegram
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channel talking about this incident from the past, but the Wagner troops basically got blown to pieces
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by, um, U S, um, U S fighter jets. But that was a point where you can deploy these people to parts of
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the world and they can get into all sorts of trouble or do quite terrible things. And then when that
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happens, the Kremlin can say, Oh, they're not ours. We don't even know who they are. They might
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have this. So they've used them, um, in Ukraine when they invaded into Crimea, they've used them
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in Syria. And I understand that they're very big in the central African Republic, which, uh, you know,
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some have described as simply a vassal state for Putin's Kremlin. Yeah. So that's, um, you know,
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in terms of the places like, uh, Sudan and central African Republic, this is also an element where the,
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um, the Kremlin can kind of project power, um, especially post 2014 when it became increasingly
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internationally isolated and we're sort of looking for new friends, um, so to speak, and sort of trying
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to find different ways of, um, projecting power around the world, you know, by deploying, um, these
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sort of, uh, you know, mercenary groups to, to places like that, they can achieve a number of things
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all at the same time. Um, you know, they can, uh, basically strengthen, uh, their relationships with,
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you know, often pretty awful regimes and, um, also set up commercial ventures, you know, so the way we
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were sort of looking at this story was, um, you know, looking at this as a business operation,
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because in exchange for mercenary assistance in those countries, you know, Prigozin has been awarded
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natural resources concessions. So a big, you know, a big part of that was in Syria, you know, where,
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um, you know, Prigozin connected companies were being given, you know, really quite significant,
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um, uh, oil concessions. Um, you know, they would, uh, sort of fight against ISIS, you know,
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and retake large oil fields, and then they would sort of get the running of that field. Um, so there
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was a profit element where, um, they were being paid in kind and to some extent in things like,
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you know, there's a gold, um, uh, gold mine in Sudan, you know, there's all sorts of natural
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resources, which, um, sort of add to this international logistical complexity where you're
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sort of running an operation, which involves a military side, but you also have a business side.
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So he's literally going in conquering. It's like a mini empire within an empire conquers a piece of
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land and his reward is the natural resources that he are on the land. His mercenary group,
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just taken. Yes. I mean, it's sort of in a way, his edge, because if you can go into, um, places
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where lots of other, you know, companies and people just wouldn't want to go as in, they wouldn't want
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to necessarily deal with the regimes there, the security situation would be probably make it
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impossible to do that. And they would be able to engage in business practices, which basically no
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one else would really want to do or be able to do because they would be prosecuted. So it gives you
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a sort of, um, a leg up against the competition, uh, in so to speak, if you're, um, going into, uh,
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these locations. And I think it's very much a key part of the business model. Um, but at the same time,
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there are these other more intangible benefits, um, for the Kremlin, um, in having these people doing
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these things, the attempt to investigate him, uh, he denied doing certain things. Others have written
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about him. He's denied. In fact, he's, he sued people in British courts. And I want to ask you
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about that. The fact that both in Washington and in London, this man who is quite the thug, I mean,
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the Wagner group, I hesitate to call them soldiers, troops have been accused of all kinds of atrocities,
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human rights abuses, um, you know, dismembering bodies, uh, horrific things that I've just thought
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about and realized I don't want to say out loud. Um, and yet for people talking about that, they face
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lawsuits and British and American lawyers at high priced top flight firms defended this man.
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Is there any blowback on these firms for defending, uh, the, the rights of a, a thug like Purgosian?
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I mean, this is a sort of fascinating part of the story where if we flash back to just a year ago,
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he was still engaged. So basically what happened, the background to this story, as you mentioned,
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is that, um, you know, there were these, um, very, um, intricate and amazing investigations into
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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
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listeners would have heard of like Bellingcat, you know, who were doing, um, you know, really amazing
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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,
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something which no one was expecting, he, um, hired very expensive lawyers in London to sue Elliot
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Higgins, who is the founder of Bellingcat, um, for defaming him. And basically in, in, in the court
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claim, he said he'd suffered severe emotional damage for these horrible things that Elliot
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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
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this. But, um, there was never really a case as egregious as this, because obviously it transpired,
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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,
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
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
00:26:00.180
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.
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
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00:39:29.720
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