Our Business is Death

Zusatztext

"A book of astonishing detail and depth, by the best reporters on the subject. For those interested in the rise and fall of Wagner, this is a fascinating, necessary work of journalism and history". JOSHUA YAFFA, Correspondent for The New Yorker The name Wagner stands for a infamous private military company that serves the interests of Russian officials while exploiting and hurting locals in numerous African countries, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. The troopers call themselves musicians, but this orchestra would be impossible without a skilled conductor: Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a convicted criminal who managed to enter Vladimir Putin's inner circle, became a billionaire through corruption, and later went rogue, attempting a military coup against the Kremlin. The private military was just one part of his empire, capable of things such as serving dinners to European politicians and meddling inthe US elections. This book is written by two journalists who were the first to report on the existence of the Wagner Group and then followed their actions for years: Ilya Barabanov and Denis Korotkov. Over time, they collected a trove of exclusive documents, spoke with dozens of sources inside the PMC, uncovered numerous crimes committed by Wagner operatives, and received numerous death threats ¿ ultimately forcing the authors to leave Russia. This is the most realand hands-on account of the brightest career imaginable in a mafia-state ¿ a career that ended with a bang. The original manuscript and this translation are published with the support of the StraightForward Foundation, which promotes truthful accounts about Russia worldwide. We fight Kremlin narratives and Putin's attempts to silence dissent by creating and distributing selected nonfiction books on contemporary affairs.

Autorenportrait

In 2014-2015, Ilya Barabanov, as a special correspondent of Kommersant, had reported first-hand from the fronts in Eastern Ukraine and witnessed the consequences of the first Wagner group actions. For the past six years, as a special correspondent on BBC Russian Service, he has been reporting on the Wagner Group's actions in Syria, Africa and Russia, being the first journalist to uncover many of the group's deeds and crimes. Barabanov is a recipient of the Peter Mackler Award from Reporters without Borders. Denis Korotkov has been writing about paramilitary groups since 2013. As a reporter for Fontanka.Ru, Novaya Gazeta and the Dossier Center, he published many articles implicating Prigozhin and the Wagner Group in breaking international laws. For this, Korotkov received death threats. In 2016 and 2017, Korotkov's stories were awarded with Redkollegia, the biggest Russian independent journalist award. He is also a recipient of the "Profession: Journalist" award (2016), "the Golden Quill" (2017) and the Andrei Sakharov Award (2017). In 2019, he became a finalist for the Global Shining Light International Award for investigative journalism.

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