Ex-Con Mercenaries, Wagner, Prigozhin, and th...

In 1992, the New York Mafia is falling apart. The Gambinos are in chaos, the Colombos are at war, the Genoveses are hiding behind Chin Gigante’s bathrobe act, and the Bonannos—the forgotten, disgraced family left for dead after the Donnie Brasco disaster—are waiting on one man: J ...  Show more

Born into a peasant family on the outskirts of Shanghai, Du Yuesheng grew up an inveterate gambler and opium addict. But as he forged alliances in the growing metropolis’ underworld, members of a secret society-turned-cartel saw promise. Before long, ‘Big Ears Du’ was running gam ...  Show more

The Wagner Group of mercenaries has been fighting in Ukraine since Russia's first invasion in 2014, but very little was known about the group, or its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, until the end of 2022 when he began speaking publicly. As the UK and EU prepare to declare the Wagner Gr ...  Show more

The Wagner Group is sometimes described as a paramilitary group, a private military company, or a loose group of mercenaries working directly for Russian President Vladimir Putin. While you may not have heard of them, they've been active in conflicts across the world, earning ...

Yevgeny Prigozhin rose from hot dog seller to top chef to Russia’s leading mercenary. Journalist Paul Wood and Harvard’s Timothy Colton explain why he turned on Vladimir Putin this weekend. This episode was produced by Siona Peterous and Hady Mawajdeh with help from Avishay Artsy ...  Show more

Day 258.Today, we discuss the brutal fighting in the centre of Ukraine; analyse the emergence from the shadows of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary army, the Wagner group; and Dom Nicholls takes us through the principles of a good defence as the Russian army digs-in, in the Sou ...  Show more