Marat Gabidullin, born in Siberia and raised in Uzbekistan, served in Soviet airborne forces until 1994, then spent three years in prison for shooting a crime boss. After security work in Russia, he joined the Wagner Group in 2015, rose to lead a reconnaissance company, and was badly wounded near Palmyra in 2016. He later advised the ISIS Hunters Battalion and fought at Khasham, but quit Wagner in 2019, briefly ran a Redut detachment in Syria, and left disillusioned. Gabidullin’s 2022 memoir denounced Wagner and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; he now lives in France. Journalist and researcher John Lechner reports from conflict zones and specializes in Russian PMCs. His book Death Is Our Business (Bloomsbury, 2025) charts the rise of Wagner, following earlier work such as Beginner’s Chechen and upcoming Circassian and Sango language texts. A former policy analyst for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and an emerging-markets banker at Deutsche Bank and Lazard, Lechner holds degrees from Harvard (Slavic Languages) and Georgetown (MSFS). Fluent in five languages and conversant in several others, he is a recognized expert on Russian foreign policy and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Washington, DC. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.roka.com - USE CODE SRS https://www.americanfinancing.net/SRS NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://www.expressvpn.com/SRS https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.hillsdale.edu/SRS https://www.shopify.com/SRS https://trueclassic.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Guest Links: Marat Gabidullin FB - https://www.facebook.com/share/15TBVmf2mt/ Book - Moi, Marat, ex-commandant de l'armée Wagner - Les dessous de l'armée secrète de Poutine enfin révélé https://a.co/d/csNMjFH Book - Ma vérité https://a.co/d/bLZYssf John Lechner X - https://x.com/JohnLechner1 IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnalechner/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/john.lechner.5 Book - Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare https://a.co/d/7rKXhnI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Marat Gabidullin and what is his background?
This is my first ever interview with an enemy combatant, a commander from Russia's infamous Wagner Group. There's a little bit of a language barrier with this one, so bear with us, because there is some very interesting information in this episode.
If you can bear with the language barrier, I think you're going to get a lot out of this and learn a lot about Wagner Group, how they came about, their training, and the caliber of men that they had working there. Enjoy the show. Murat Gabidullin, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to meet you. John, thank you for being here.
Wanted to bring you on here to fill in a couple of gaps with the language barrier. Sure. Murat Gabidullin. Born in Ural, you grew up in Uzbekistan and joined the Soviet military in 1984. Served as a paratrooper officer and commanded a recon company. Then joined Russia's Wagner Group, starting as a grunt, fighting ISIS in Syria and rising all the way to commander.
You worked closely with Wagner boss Prigozhin, advising the ISIS hunters in Syria and fought in the battle of Kasham in 2018 against U.S. in Kurdish forces. You then quit Wagner in 2019, authored a book about your time with Wagner, and since then you have moved to France, where you are now seeking asylum. This interview has taken place in Paris.
Obviously, we couldn't get you to the US, so we came here to meet you. It's really weird for me to say this, but you are an enemy combatant. He fought in a skirmish in Syria against 40 US soldiers. Special Forces soldiers and I'm friends with a couple of those guys and heard their account of that battle. And then we ran into your friend, John Lechner, and asked to be connected with you.
So I just want to thank John. A freelance journalist, writer and researcher who's been in conflict zones across the globe. Author of the book, Death Is Our Business, Russian Mercenaries in the New Era of Private Warfare. Expert on Russia's moves in Africa. their foreign policy, and private military companies. So thank you again for being here. Thanks for having me.
I want to dive in on a little bit of the history of Wagner Group. And so how did it start?
Well, so as Murat was telling you, Wagner really began in 2014. And Murat, as he was saying, he joined the company, as they call it, they only on the inside call it the company, Wagner Group Group. itself as an entity never existed. It was sort of just a nickname that was given to it.
Some of my friends told me that in Russia emerged some kind of structure where I can start my life from the very beginning.
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Chapter 2: How did the Wagner Group come into existence?
That's generally the sentiment. I mean, these guys are at war. That's what they want to do.
And they did it. And you said, I mean, the U.S. brought in like two Apaches.
Two Apaches and two Spectre gunships.
And Spectre gunship is?
Russian generals. Russian generals was completely confused. by this situation. Russian generals didn't have an ability to take responsibility and to make a decision independently. And when he encountered this situation, he was confused, absolutely.
Because the question is, right, why did the Russian Ministry of Defense deny that it was Russians who were attacking? And their... There is an argument, I think, to be made. Like, Prigozhin, his gamble in trying to take Conoco was that when the Americans saw that it was Russians coming, the Americans would want to avoid any direct confrontation, World War III.
And they would back away and retreat along with the Kurds. And he was incredibly mistaken in that calculation. And what I think he wasn't counting on and what Murad is saying is that when the Americans were calling into the Ministry of Defense, you have some poor guy on the line who is also not going to be responsible for World War III.
And so the quickest thing that you're going to do is not say, yeah, those are my guys attacking U.S. soldiers. They're going to say, don't know anything about it, don't know what you're talking about, and try to go to your higher-ups to cover your own butt.
And so ultimately it was probably, he probably got, Provozhin probably had kind of a wink and a nod from the Ministry of Defense that he was going to try to do this. And if it worked out, it's a great Russian victory for everybody, Assad, the Russians, Prigozhin. And if it doesn't, in the Ministry of Defense's mind, it's just Wagner guys who are getting killed.
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Chapter 3: What was Wagner's role in the Syrian conflict?
Oh, so he was there for the ceremony of the burial. Ah, burial.
Yeah, before we get there, what ended it? Why did they stop? If they didn't kill everybody, what stopped it?
After I coming back from this battle, I gave an order to send my people to bring a body and a weapon on the battlefield, brought from this area all body and all weapons that was left on this area during the battle.
So eventually in the morning, the Ministry of Defense got in touch with the Americans and it was agreed, the Americans agreed to a two hour pause so that the Russians could collect weapons and dead.
So if the Ministry of Defense of Russia initially denied this three different times, then how do they contact the US to ask to clean up the bodies?
they can they could say that said so in the very beginning and if they say yes okay we i I will give an order to retreat. And if Russian generals gave an order to retreat, nothing happened. Everything will be fine. But Russian generals didn't know what to do in this situation.
But eventually they told the Americans, we need to go collect. So eventually they said there might be some Russians there, to the Americans.
The thing is, it has already happened.
Yeah, there's no denying it anymore.
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Chapter 4: What happened during the Battle of Khasham?
As you can imagine, it's a huge front line now, right, in Ukraine. In the beginning, the first phase of the war in Donbas, you know, it's a little section of the Donbas region. Now it's... you know, like a thousand kilometers long maybe or something. And so he's also engaged with the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians are sending some of their best guys to defend Bakhmut.
While for the Russian government, they're losing, in their mind, some of the worst people in society, right? These convicts. And so, you know, it's like a four to one ratio in terms of losses. but it's something that the Russians and Progozhin are willing to do for the reasons that Murat said.
But, you know, at this point, though, Progozhin is like an internet... Like, we all know who Progozhin is, right? During the Bakhmut campaign. He becomes, like, the face of the war itself. CNN is trying to reach him. The New York Times is trying to reach him for an interview. He's, you know, he's huge back home in Russia. He's, like, finally everything that he...
you know, his ego is matched now by his popularity.
Yes, in this term, the Wagner Group completely faltered his mission in this war. They achieved their goals that would stand before them. They... attract many, a lot of Ukrainian forces and give the opportunity for the Russian army to prepare mobilizing reserve and to build the defensive line in the area of Zaporozhskaya district.
But still, I mean, there's still a lot of enmity between the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and Prigozhin. And so at some point, inevitably, especially since Prigozhin is having all of this success like Murat mentioned, the Ministry of Defense is going to want to check him. And so the first way that they do it is they start cutting off Prigozhin from convict recruitment.
So he's promised to Putin, I'm gonna take Bakhmut, but his means of doing so now is disappearing. He needs a lot of bodies to take Bakhmut. The Ministry of Defense is cutting him off of those bodies. Not because they're against prisoner recruitment, they just start doing it themselves.
But the difference is, and this is always the issue for Prigozhin, is when he was doing it, he had the permission by like a wink and a nod from the presidential administration. When the Ministry of Defense does it, Russian Parliament officially makes it legal for them to recruit from prison. So there's always a way that Prokhorin can get screwed over in whatever he's doing.
So he's getting cut off. And so now he starts going public with the Ministry of Defense saying, I'm not getting enough ammunition. for what we're trying to do. And the Ministry of Defense is screwing over Wagner by not giving us enough ammunition that we need. And so, now this spat starts going very public over social media.
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