John Lechner Explores Role of Russian Mercenaries in 'Death is Our Business'

Journalist and independent researcher, John Lechner, talks with Writer’s Voices to discuss his compelling new book, Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare. His book tells the intriguing story of Russia’s well-known private military company, The Wagner Group, and begins with its arrival in Ukraine in 2014 and follows their missions through high-conflict areas, such as the Middle East and Africa. Filled with interviews of over 30 Wagner Group soldiers, Death Is Our Business gives in-depth accounts from its members and others who participated in the group’s controversial military operations. Lechner, who speaks a slew of various languages including Russian, French, Turkish, and Georgian, remarked on what piqued his interest in this particular topic, “I think my greatest passion in life is actually languages… ever since I was a little, little kid I was always fascinated by foreign languages and have always been trying to learn as many languages as possible, and that first took me to Russia where I lived for a little while before going to college. I was a Russian Studies major… eventually I realized that… the way that I could more closely match what I do for work with what I read in my free time was to become a writer and a journalist… and so when there were first reports of Russian mercenaries showing up in the Central African Republic around 2018, this to me was a confluence of my major interests… I just wanted to cover it and understand what happens when these two very disparate groups of societies come together and how do they interact, adapt, or not adapt, to each other.”