Marat Gabidullin is the first combatant from private Russian paramilitary company Wagner to break rank and talk publicly about the secretive organisation. He recounts his four years as a mercenary in eastern Ukraine and Syria in his memoir In the Same River Twice, now available in French.
Gabidullin, 55, a Russian veteran with the airborne forces and a former bodyguard, joined Wagner in 2015. Injured in Palmyra, Syria, in 2016, he quit the unit in 2019. His memoir relates the battles waged by the Wagner Group in Donbas, Syria and on the Africa continent.
