Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Julia Daffy, and I wrote putin Chef, the
Speaker 1: man behind Russia's Shadow Army for Puck, and it's the
Speaker 1: story of the week. I used to have this basic rule.
Speaker 1: It works for dating, reporting, job interviews. A person's true
Speaker 1: character is revealed by how they treat their waiter. If
Speaker 1: someone's a jerk to their server, they're eventually going to
Speaker 1: do something bad to you. But three years ago I
Speaker 1: read a book that totally changed my mind. It's called
Speaker 1: How to Feed the Dictator, and this Polish journalist went
Speaker 1: around the world meeting former dictator chefs. Pol Pot, the
Speaker 1: Cambodian genocidist, was so sweet that Cook's called him Brother
Speaker 1: Mattress because he was soft spoken and calmed everyone down. Idiomine,
Speaker 1: who murdered half a million people, would thank Cook's five
Speaker 1: times and then give them envelopes full of extra cash
Speaker 1: when they made a good meal. Sodom Hussein bought his
Speaker 1: chefs a new car every year. Now, almost all these
Speaker 1: chefs were summoned to their jobs and obviously had to
Speaker 1: take it whether they wanted it or not. They were
Speaker 1: petrified of what their new lives would be like. In
Speaker 1: the palace, None of them sought this job out, but
Speaker 1: someone actually sought out providing food for Vladimir Putin. This
Speaker 1: guy's known as Putin's chef, and honestly he's way more
Speaker 1: insane and dangerous than you would assume. He is writing
Speaker 1: his hard who's got that kind of time when you're
Speaker 1: already busy trying to be John Stein until it turns
Speaker 1: on a mic made the twiddles enob because the journalist
Speaker 1: Rand's got in that Jule Jomeo sing will start me.
Speaker 1: Just listen to smart people speak conversation. There's probably no
Speaker 1: one in Russia who's worn as many hats as if
Speaker 1: Guinny Progosian. He's been called Putin chef because he runs
Speaker 1: a catering company that the Russian government contracts with. But
Speaker 1: he's a chef in the sense that Tony Soprano is
Speaker 1: a waste management consultant. It's far more accurate to say
Speaker 1: that Progosian is the head of a private mercenary company
Speaker 1: that's had soldiers all over the world, especially now in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And this company is supported directly by Vladimir Putin himself.
Speaker 1: Julia Yaffi reported this story for her publication Puck Juliette,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on. As you may know from
Speaker 1: my annoying emails over the years and tweets, I'm an
Speaker 1: enormous fan and read everything you write. So I'm really
Speaker 1: really excited. Thank you so much. And they are not
Speaker 1: at all in They're very flattering and funny. Don't encourage me.
Speaker 1: That's how you wind up having to be on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. Yeah, you grew up for your first
Speaker 1: seven years in the Soviet Union? What drew you to
Speaker 1: this particular story? For me, it's just a really good
Speaker 1: story in the sense that it is just fucking nuts.
Speaker 1: This guy is fucking nuts. He's a movie villain. He
Speaker 1: gives children dysentery, he sledgehammers people in the head, and
Speaker 1: he's recruiting prisoners to take over another country. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a good story at its root. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce Progosian's name, because I'm afraid I'll
Speaker 1: get it wrong and he'll kill me just like that.
Speaker 1: He'll kill you anyway. Yeah, Progosian, he really will. You
Speaker 1: look at his face and it's like if you were
Speaker 1: casting a show and you were casting a hit man
Speaker 1: and he showed up, you'd be like this is too
Speaker 1: on the nose. Yeah, and you'd be like, hey, writer's room,
Speaker 1: can you just kind of turn it down a few
Speaker 1: ches to really overwriting this character. He looks like Mike
Speaker 1: from Breaking Bad. He's got those droopy eyes, and he's bald,
Speaker 1: and he curses constantly. Yeah, but I think to a
Speaker 1: lot of Russians he looks weirdly familiar, you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of post Soviet everyman. He's a real mujik. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? A mujik is an alpha male kind
Speaker 1: of man. He's very physically strong, but he has a
Speaker 1: big heart. He's very loyal, he sticks up for his
Speaker 1: own he doesn't back away from a good and just fight.
Speaker 1: So a mujik is a very important thing in Russian
Speaker 1: culture and also in Russian politics, and in many ways
Speaker 1: he's out alpha mailing Putin, but he's made a lot
Speaker 1: of money off the Russian state, and in that way
Speaker 1: he is not at all like a Russian everyman. And
Speaker 1: how rich is burgos In? He's very rich. Russian independent
Speaker 1: journalists have shown his children on yachts and in big apartments.
Speaker 1: He's very very rich. And you said he grew up
Speaker 1: kind of tough and on the streets. But didn't you
Speaker 1: go to boarding school? And he was going to be
Speaker 1: a cross country skier. Okay, So boarding school in the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union is not boarding school in the US or
Speaker 1: the UK. Boarding school is where you go in the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union if as if you were very poor and
Speaker 1: if your parents cannot take care of you. It is
Speaker 1: something that is like a step above an orphanage. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's more missus Hannigan than Hogwarts. Correct. So after his
Speaker 1: stay with miss Hannigan, he falls in with a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys who commit a ton of crimes. So he
Speaker 1: falls in with a crowd that they're stealing things there.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly Soviet petty crime. Like they're breaking into people's
Speaker 1: apartments and stealing their crystal, you know, and their carpets.
Speaker 1: That's hard to think about people's carpets, you know, hanging
Speaker 1: on the wall, do you know what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you know, they're stealing jeans because denim is like
Speaker 1: incredibly rare in the Soviet Union, So they're stealing people's
Speaker 1: denim from their apartments and then selling it on the
Speaker 1: black market. Oh, they're also stealing electronics, like personal use electronics,
Speaker 1: from people's apartments, because that's also impossible to find in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, that in and of itself just like
Speaker 1: paints this picture of late Soviet life and the hardship
Speaker 1: that everybody was living through. But one night, they have
Speaker 1: a particularly good haul of crystal and rugs and home stereos,
Speaker 1: and they're at a restaurant, which is also like most
Speaker 1: Soviets did not go to restaurants. You had to have
Speaker 1: some kind of hook up to go there, and either
Speaker 1: you were some kind of communist party official, or you
Speaker 1: were a black market here and you had cash. And
Speaker 1: they spotted a woman who was wearing a nice coat,
Speaker 1: and when she walked out of the restaurant, go and
Speaker 1: walked up to her and asked her for a smoke,
Speaker 1: And as she reached into her purse to get him
Speaker 1: a cigarette, he started choking her, and as she started screaming,
Speaker 1: he started choking her even more forcefully, so forcefully that
Speaker 1: she passed out. And then she testified that when she
Speaker 1: came to her boots and her earrings were gone, he
Speaker 1: stole her boots. Wow. Yeah, And that is the one
Speaker 1: that where he got caught. So he spent basically his
Speaker 1: entire twenties in a Soviet prison. That crime. Like, he
Speaker 1: didn't need to choke her. It feels very clockwork orange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it kind of explains who Progosion is throughout right.
Speaker 1: It's just has that extra dash of brutality. Yeah, you're like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, this guy's nuts. Yes, just super violent, like
Speaker 1: even in the world of Russian mafia seems particularly scary. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: So he gets out of prison and the world's changed.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union's gone, it's collapsing, it's collapsing. He gets
Speaker 1: out at the very end. It's like eighty nine at
Speaker 1: the time. By the way, nobody thinks it's going to collapse.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks it's just changing, right, And he doesn't know
Speaker 1: what to do. And he gets in touch with a
Speaker 1: friend for the schoolmate of his, and he's like he
Speaker 1: brings them into the restaurant industry, which again is taking
Speaker 1: off because there weren't really any restaurants, like I think
Speaker 1: Moscow had like three restaurants. And he also gets into
Speaker 1: the hot dog business. He has a hot dog stand
Speaker 1: and he mixes mustard in his kitchen, which you know,
Speaker 1: he's still living with his mom at the time in
Speaker 1: her apartment. So he's like getting into the restaurant world.
Speaker 1: But the restaurant world is dominated by the mafia already
Speaker 1: by organized crime. Why is that? I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: like I guess that makes sense more than the garbage industry,
Speaker 1: Like why did they go into the restaurant industry? Cash?
Speaker 1: Cash flow, and also like they kind of knew how
Speaker 1: to do it, Like not a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the late Soviet era understood the concept of a free
Speaker 1: market and in general, how a non command economy worked.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you're selling stereo equipment, you're also going
Speaker 1: to know how to steal hot dogs. Yeah, And eventually
Speaker 1: he opens his own restaurant, and then another restaurant, and
Speaker 1: another restaurant. He opens this restaurant I'm kind of fascinated
Speaker 1: by because it had strippers in it, which it's very nineties.
Speaker 1: It's very nineties rush. Yeah. But then he opens one
Speaker 1: that's on a boat. Yeah, and it becomes popular with
Speaker 1: the elite of newly democratic Saint Petersburg, including the mayor
Speaker 1: and his then deputy, Vladimir Putin. He has George W.
Speaker 1: Bush and Laura Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell
Speaker 1: for dinner. You know, and if you go through old
Speaker 1: photos you just see kind of Progosion everywhere in the
Speaker 1: background at every banquet with his like fucking freaky bald
Speaker 1: head in the background with a platter right like I'm
Speaker 1: seeing the pictures. He's always kind of like serving something
Speaker 1: to the whoever the most powerful person is, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he looks like who's that Adams Family character? Oh,
Speaker 1: uncle Fester? Yeah, yeah, he's like Uncle Fester in the background,
Speaker 1: just like raw. Then in two thousand, Putin becomes president,
Speaker 1: which is great news for Progosion because Progosion has taken
Speaker 1: his restaurant industry expertise and started a catering business, which
Speaker 1: then gets contracts through Putin to cater state schools and
Speaker 1: most importantly, the entire military. Right, how were the Progosian
Speaker 1: school lunches? In one unbelievable case, Concord, Progosian's company had
Speaker 1: gotten a monopoly to cater to Moscow's schools, and literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of Moscow's elements entry school children came down with dysentery.
Speaker 1: But the reason for this, and the reason the food
Speaker 1: is so bad, is that around the time that Concord
Speaker 1: starts up, this little thing called Wagner starts up, so
Speaker 1: he's named it after a German composer he calls his
Speaker 1: fighter as musicians. He starts this Wagner Group, which doesn't
Speaker 1: seem connected to like restaurants are catering at all. So
Speaker 1: confusing because Wagner, beloved by Hitler, just seems like it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's also confusing to me, very confusing because Putin is
Speaker 1: not at all an ethno fascist who is using and
Speaker 1: rehashing and recycling a lot of Hitler's tactics and excuses
Speaker 1: for invading neighboring countries. So it is very strange. And
Speaker 1: what is this Wagner Group. Wagner Group, so Wagner is
Speaker 1: it's technically a private military company, which are illegal in
Speaker 1: Russia to this day and for a long time. Both
Speaker 1: Progosion denies its existence and his own connection to it,
Speaker 1: and the Russian government denies any connection to it. But
Speaker 1: what it really is is a way for the Kremlin
Speaker 1: to have boots on the ground and deny that they
Speaker 1: were in any way connected to the Kremlin. They popped
Speaker 1: up in places like the Central African Republic, where the
Speaker 1: Kremlin denied having anything to do with anything. I guess
Speaker 1: Wagner just grabs things for themselves and takes the profit
Speaker 1: from them. On one hand, Wagner's funded out the back
Speaker 1: door of Concord, which is why the food and Concord
Speaker 1: is so bad. Concord gets these insanely big contracts from
Speaker 1: the Russian government, but most of it goes right out
Speaker 1: the back door to fund Wagner, to create that veneer
Speaker 1: of plausible deniability, but also to keep progosion happy. Anywhere
Speaker 1: Wagner goes, they find some local renewable revenue streams. So
Speaker 1: we're in Africa, it might be a diamond mine or
Speaker 1: a cobalt mine, right, So it's just like stealing stereo equipment, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: except stereo. The stereo you can sell once. If it's
Speaker 1: a refinery, you can keep using it. If it's a
Speaker 1: diamond mine, you can keep using it. If it's the
Speaker 1: rights to if it's mineral rights to a piece of
Speaker 1: land somewhere in the Central African Republic, that will feed
Speaker 1: Wagner for a long time. And again the Kremlin can say, like,
Speaker 1: we're not funding this, Like show us where in the
Speaker 1: budget we're funding Wagner. In the meantime, Wagner is training
Speaker 1: on bases in Russia. In the meantime, they're getting all
Speaker 1: their weapons from the Defense Ministry of Russia. There's this
Speaker 1: one crazy scene in Syria that made me understand how
Speaker 1: Putin works. Wagner is trying to get hold of this
Speaker 1: oil field, but they do not have Putin's permission for this,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Progosion didn't have Queen's permission. He hadn't checked
Speaker 1: in with the Defense Ministry, who would have told him
Speaker 1: that this refinery is controlled by the Kurds, who are
Speaker 1: allies of the Americans, and that to get there they
Speaker 1: would have to cross through territory that is way too
Speaker 1: close to the American Special Forces, a base that the
Speaker 1: American Special Forces had there. And they went too close, right,
Speaker 1: They got two clothes and the Americans radio through the
Speaker 1: deconfliction channel to their Russian counterparts that the Russian Defense
Speaker 1: Ministry and said, hey, your guys are coming at us.
Speaker 1: They're getting too close. Get them away from us or
Speaker 1: we'll shoot. It's a lot of guys. It's like three
Speaker 1: hundred guys. Yeah, and they're heavily armed. They're not on foot,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not just on foot. They're like in
Speaker 1: APC's and they're heavily armed. They're not. They don't have
Speaker 1: just like pistols. And so the Russians did they call
Speaker 1: them back. No, the Russians said, what guys, those aren't
Speaker 1: our guys. But the Americans know that. Russians. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and they're like, as one person who was there in
Speaker 1: the room when they were talking to the Russian said, no,
Speaker 1: those are your fucking guys. Pull them back because we
Speaker 1: will shoot. And the Russian said, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And the Americans were like, okay, doak,
Speaker 1: that's what they do. They opened fire, and according to
Speaker 1: another person who witnessed this, it was like an advertisement
Speaker 1: for the American Defense catalog. They shot everything they had
Speaker 1: at them, drones, a jet, machine guns, artillery fire, and
Speaker 1: apparently the Americans would periodically stop, like pause and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pull back. No, Okay, we're gonna keep going.
Speaker 1: And they did that a couple of times, and they
Speaker 1: didn't pull back, and within a couple of minutes it
Speaker 1: was just, oh, they just completely wiped them out. And
Speaker 1: they had heard the Wagner guys screaming over the radios
Speaker 1: that they're letting us just die. Out here. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll find out how Progosion was involved in
Speaker 1: the Russian interference in the twenty sixteen presidential election, and
Speaker 1: how now he's playing a key role in the invasion
Speaker 1: of Ukraine. But first, our advertisers are going to sell
Speaker 1: you some stereo equipment that's totally in its original packaging
Speaker 1: and absolutely works. So, Julia, this guy, if getting Progosian
Speaker 1: has started a private militia that's funded by the Kremlin
Speaker 1: through a backdoor, which is his catering company. But if
Speaker 1: that's not enough, Progosian's also involved in the interference in
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen US presidential election. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: the Russian meddler. Yeah, and he admitted to it, for
Speaker 1: he was charged. He was charged in twenty eighteen by
Speaker 1: Robert Muller. He denied it forever, the Russian government denied
Speaker 1: it forever, And in twenty twenty two he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was me, and I'd do it again, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it again in twenty twenty four because I
Speaker 1: don't like the way you guys do your politics, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, you know, I'll engineer some shit in your
Speaker 1: political system to make sure it goes the right way.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Has he ever actually met Trump or he's
Speaker 1: just a fan from a distance. I don't know of
Speaker 1: him meeting Trump, but progosion unless he was in the
Speaker 1: background during the Miss Universe content, you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: sure somebody will find a photo of him just in
Speaker 1: the background. Like wa. How does he handle journalists that
Speaker 1: uncovers some of this stuff about him? He hires a chemist,
Speaker 1: and the chemist will like load up these syringes full
Speaker 1: of poison and they'll rove the streets and they'll just
Speaker 1: jab you know, journalists or critics of Pretagosha, and they'll
Speaker 1: just jump them with these syringes full of poison. They
Speaker 1: won't they didn't kill most of their people. They just
Speaker 1: you know, it was just to kind of scare them
Speaker 1: a bit. But you know, these people would end up
Speaker 1: in the hospital for a week. They're just like Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then the invasion of Ukraine happens, which is supposed to
Speaker 1: take a week, it starts to take a lot longer. Yep.
Speaker 1: Putin clearly politically a draft would be a disaster, so
Speaker 1: he starts to rely on Wagner, and Wagner has to
Speaker 1: come up with a way to get a lot of
Speaker 1: soldiers very quickly, and Progosion comes up with what seems
Speaker 1: like an insane plant. So Wagner participates in the invasion
Speaker 1: of Ukraine almost immediately because they have the most some
Speaker 1: of the most experienced soldiers. They remember, they've been fighting
Speaker 1: in eastern Ukraine, they've been fighting in Syria, they've been
Speaker 1: fighting in Libya, in other parts of Africa. They are seasoned,
Speaker 1: experienced soldiers as opposed to some of these eighteen year
Speaker 1: old conscripts that are just getting picked off by javelins
Speaker 1: in Ukrain Rain, and they're able to actually deliver some
Speaker 1: results early on in the war. And so Putin gives
Speaker 1: Progosion permission to recruit from his old stopping grounds from
Speaker 1: the jails. So Pogojan starts helicoptering into these prisons. Literally,
Speaker 1: he literally takes his helicopter like a bond villain. He
Speaker 1: would chop her into whatever penal, colony, number, whatever, and
Speaker 1: the prison guards would gather all the prisoners in the
Speaker 1: prison yard and make them listen to Progosian, who would
Speaker 1: deliver a speech in this language that you know he
Speaker 1: sounds like one of them, because he is one of them,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a language that's very heavily inflected
Speaker 1: with prison slang and that kind of prison yard swagger.
Speaker 1: And he's addressing his fellow mujiks and he's like, listen,
Speaker 1: you can die in prison, or you can die free.
Speaker 1: You can serve out your sentence for another ten years,
Speaker 1: or you can go fight and in six months, if
Speaker 1: you make it out alive, you're free, your record is expunged,
Speaker 1: and you'll get some money. And if you don't, we'll
Speaker 1: bear you like a hero. And people sign up. This
Speaker 1: is like the Hunger Games. Yeah, and also, just to
Speaker 1: be clear, for this to happen, you need to sign
Speaker 1: off at the very very very top of the Russian system.
Speaker 1: You could not chopper into a Russian penal colony and
Speaker 1: deliver the speech without Putin's explicit permission. And the reason
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, we can't do a draft right now.
Speaker 1: We're committed to a semblance of normalcy, especially in the
Speaker 1: big Russian cities, because this is not a war. This
Speaker 1: is a special military operation. We don't want people to
Speaker 1: think it's going to be a long war. So listen,
Speaker 1: nobody cares about prisoners. We need cannon fodder. Great and
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that Stalin did this in World War Two.
Speaker 1: They were called straffbat which means was short for which
Speaker 1: is a penal battalion. These were people from the Gulags
Speaker 1: who were sent in literally as cannon fodder, often without weapons.
Speaker 1: And these guys are too right, Oh yeah, the casual
Speaker 1: rates are how bad? Something like, oh my god? And
Speaker 1: what's crazy is that as this recruitment drive starts in
Speaker 1: the in the summer and we see these videos of
Speaker 1: Pen's pitch coming out Russian ngeo's notice that the Russian
Speaker 1: prison population just plummets by tens of thousands of prisoners.
Speaker 1: Does this scare the Russian people that they know these
Speaker 1: scary criminals might be coming back to their country alive
Speaker 1: and free. Well, nobody's asking them, but some people find
Speaker 1: this kind of distasteful, in part because of the Stalinists
Speaker 1: associations and because they're really poorly armed. They're really just
Speaker 1: being sent as cannon fodder. And pigoshan response to them
Speaker 1: on his social media channels and he says, look, assholes,
Speaker 1: and he calls the assholes. He's like, you want to
Speaker 1: drive around in your nice car with your napple leather
Speaker 1: and you want to carry around your snell bag while
Speaker 1: we fight in Ukraine and you don't want to send
Speaker 1: your sons to war, fine, then let me send these comics.
Speaker 1: Like you don't give a shit about them, They don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about themselves. I'm literally quoting him here.
Speaker 1: He says, So if you don't have another solution, sit down,
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up, and let me do my thing,
Speaker 1: because if you're not willing to send your son, then
Speaker 1: let me do this. Okay. If these soldiers try and
Speaker 1: quit in the war, as some have, how does Progosian
Speaker 1: handle that. The most famous case was a guy by
Speaker 1: the last name of Musion, and he ran over to
Speaker 1: the Ukraine because some people signed up with the express
Speaker 1: purpose of escaping immediately. Sure, yeah, because you don't want
Speaker 1: to be in jail. But a lot of these people
Speaker 1: were like, this is stupid war. Why are we fighting Ukraine?
Speaker 1: And as soon as they got to the front, they
Speaker 1: were like, well, this is fucking dumb and I don't
Speaker 1: want to die, like they're not. They're giving me a
Speaker 1: gun with three bullets and I'm supposed to charge a
Speaker 1: Himar's installation. Fuck that. So people deserted and what's crazy
Speaker 1: is that the Ukrainians would turn them over in these
Speaker 1: prisoner exchanges, which is terrible because Ukrainians from the beginning
Speaker 1: of the war have been encouraging Russian soldiers to desert
Speaker 1: on mass and saying we will treat you well. Come
Speaker 1: over to our side, lay down your arms, don't do this.
Speaker 1: And then what happened to Nusion is he was turned
Speaker 1: over by the Ukrainians in a prisoner exchange. He originally
Speaker 1: said that he was walking down the street in Kiev,
Speaker 1: felt a bump on his head and woke up in
Speaker 1: a Wagner basement in the dawn bass There's a videotaped confession.
Speaker 1: Then his head is taped to a cinder block with
Speaker 1: packing tape and he says, yeah, I'm guilty, I'm a deserter,
Speaker 1: and somebody smashes his head and with a sledgehammer, and
Speaker 1: then Wagner puts this video under the title of the
Speaker 1: Sledgehammer of Justice on their various telegram channels because they
Speaker 1: want it to be clear that this is what we
Speaker 1: do to deserters. And we have since heard from other
Speaker 1: people who have escaped, including Wagner officers, that this is
Speaker 1: a very common execution method for Wagner, this isis. It's
Speaker 1: like isisis and then Progosion puts it on his telegram
Speaker 1: channel like he's isis and he says, this is what
Speaker 1: this dog deserves. Well, he was worse. He wrote it
Speaker 1: seems to me that this film should be called A
Speaker 1: Dog Dies, a Dog's dea. It was an excellent directional
Speaker 1: piece of work watched in one breath. I hope no
Speaker 1: animals were harmed during filming like that, he's a shit beyond.
Speaker 1: It's the choking. Oh, it's the choking. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: you didn't have to do that extra thing, but you did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's even fucking crazier is that then Russian politicians
Speaker 1: and members of parliament have been posing on social media
Speaker 1: with sledge hammers that Progosian has given to them autographed.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with your old country? So many things,
Speaker 1: a hundred years of violent negative selection. What is Progosian's
Speaker 1: ambitions at this point? He's got his own army. He's
Speaker 1: not afraid to like sledge hammer people. It's not even
Speaker 1: that he's not afraid to sledge hammer people. It said,
Speaker 1: he's not afraid to fight the Defense minister publicly. He's
Speaker 1: not afraid to fight the mayor of Saint Petersburg publicly,
Speaker 1: he's publicly like saying bad things about Putin's buddies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's never gone after Putin personally, so he'll go.
Speaker 1: For example, right after the war started, Russia pass these
Speaker 1: military censorship laws saying that you go to jail forever
Speaker 1: if you discredit the armed forces of Russia. But Procosians
Speaker 1: out there saying this military campaign is fucking awful. It's
Speaker 1: being run by idiots. Defense Minister Shoigu is a fucking idiot.
Speaker 1: This general gets him is a fucking idiot. Oh. Also,
Speaker 1: our guys are fighting the hardest, We're the ones doing
Speaker 1: the real fighting, and you guys aren't giving us enough shells.
Speaker 1: Give us more artillery. I'm going to fucking light you
Speaker 1: on fire if you don't give me more shells. That
Speaker 1: doesn't go over well in Russia. No, it does not.
Speaker 1: It does not know. It's also a display of weakness
Speaker 1: because it looks like the Defense ministry has cut him
Speaker 1: off and is not giving him the weapons he needs
Speaker 1: because he's gotten a little too big for his breeches.
Speaker 1: So is Putin worried about progosion like his progosion about
Speaker 1: to fall out of a building somewhere he might. I
Speaker 1: think it is interesting. I mean, there was a period,
Speaker 1: especially in the fall, when people were like, is this
Speaker 1: a new power center? Is he going to contest Putin's power?
Speaker 1: You know, the Moscow rumor mill was talking about how
Speaker 1: he wanted a formal position in the Russian government and
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't settle for anything short of Defense minister,
Speaker 1: and I think people in the Kremlin were like, yeah, okay, buddy.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he unlike them, He has
Speaker 1: an army of tens of thousands of guys who are
Speaker 1: extremely loyal to him. Unlike Putin, he is constantly down
Speaker 1: on the front lines with them. The first rule of
Speaker 1: being a dictator is you don't let another guy have
Speaker 1: his own army, correct, right, But yeah, this guy has
Speaker 1: his own army, and these guys are really loyal to him,
Speaker 1: and they're also crazy and they know how to shoot guns.
Speaker 1: And you know, there were people who talk to Wagner
Speaker 1: fighters at the front and we're saying that these guys
Speaker 1: feel abandoned by Moscow, feel abandoned by the central leadership,
Speaker 1: and we're like, fuck it, We're going to march on Moscow. Oh,
Speaker 1: but I mean good luck getting to Moscow. Like Putin
Speaker 1: is surrounded in Moscow by like I would probably like
Speaker 1: fifty thousand well armed police, special police, National Guard, the
Speaker 1: equivalent of the Secret Service FSB, and they all hate progosion.
Speaker 1: So a Wagner too is unlikely for now, for now,
Speaker 1: but he is clearly making a political play. He is
Speaker 1: clearly building his own base of support, and he's out
Speaker 1: alpha mailing Putin. I say he's dead in six months,
Speaker 1: I hope. So are you afraid of writing stuff like this? No?
Speaker 1: Like for your own safety? No? No, I mean I
Speaker 1: can't go to Russia now for the foreseeable future. What's
Speaker 1: he going to do come to America? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You're so much tougher than me. Look, what I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of an America is not. What I'm afraid of an
Speaker 1: America is the right wing nuts who for years have
Speaker 1: sent me death threats, who can find my address online
Speaker 1: and who can buy an AAR fifteen and show up
Speaker 1: at my doorstep. But the chances of him getting somebody
Speaker 1: here to the US to offer me are very low.
Speaker 1: Compared to our podcast listeners, yea, the Steiny's They're so
Speaker 1: strong anti semi Yeah, Juliet Yaffi, you wrote this amazing
Speaker 1: story putin Chef for a puck. It scared me. It
Speaker 1: made me realize how crazy the world is and that
Speaker 1: I will never ever be able to go to Russia.
Speaker 1: It made you laugh, it made you cry well, I cried.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this, Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, Thanks for sharing the story. If you think
Speaker 1: putin Chef is dangerous, you do not want to know
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump's chef. This guy's a colonel from Kentucky,
Speaker 1: gotten a shootout with his local fried Chicken competitor over
Speaker 1: a sign, was friends with Jerry Folwell, wore the same
Speaker 1: white suit and black string tie every day and guarded
Speaker 1: his secret combination of eleven herbs and spices with his life.
Speaker 1: At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Speaker 1: Maybe he'll take a nap voke around online. Our Show
Speaker 1: Today was produced by Molaboard and Nisha Bencutt. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Lydia Gencott. Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Katherine Giradl and our theme
Speaker 1: song was written and performed by Jonathan Colton, and a
Speaker 1: special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and my
Speaker 1: consulting producer laurenz Elasnick. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is the
Speaker 1: story of the week. Next week, I learned why the
Speaker 1: journalist aj Jacobs is walking around Manhattan with a metal ladle.
Speaker 1: Here's a hint. It's not for soup. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: When I write a story, if I get like some
Speaker 1: bad comments, I'm like, you know, that's days of being
Speaker 1: a mess for me. I can't imagine if I knew
Speaker 1: that someone might like shoot me with a syringe in
Speaker 1: the middle of the street with poison. Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: right in the neck. Although honestly, that's what some of
Speaker 1: the comments feel like. Snowflake,