Marat Gabidullin
Marat was born in 1966 in Sterlitamak, Bashkortostan, and spent his childhood in Central Asia, completing his secondary education in Zarafshan (Uzbekistan). In 1984 he entered the Ryazan Higher Military Airborne School, graduating as an officer and serving in the Soviet and later Russian airborne forces. His final military appointment was as commander of a reconnaissance company within a parachute regiment.
Following his discharge from military service due to a bureaucratic error, Marat attempted unsuccessfully to be reinstated. After serving a three-year prison sentence in the mid-1990s, he built a long career in the private security sector, working as a bodyguard and later holding senior positions in personal, corporate, and large-scale project security.
In 2015 he joined the Wagner Group, initially serving as a private soldier before rising to command a reconnaissance company. He was seriously wounded near Palmyra in 2016 but continued to work with Wagner as an assistant to the chief of staff of an assault detachment. In September 2017 he was appointed assistant to the head of the organisation, Yevgeny Prigozhin, for tactical matters, working from the company’s central office in St Petersburg. In early 2018 he became senior adviser to the ISIS Hunters Battalion.
Marat resigned from the Wagner Group in early 2019, citing fundamental disagreements with its internal policies and leadership. In 2020 he worked with the Redut (Redoubt) organisation, commanding a security unit at a chemical fertiliser plant in Homs, Syria, before leaving that role as it no longer matched his professional temperament.
His first book was published in January 2022. The following month he spoke out publicly against the war in Ukraine, and shortly thereafter left Russia for France, where he now lives.'
Books
- Inside Wagner : A First-Hand Account of Russia's Mercenary Wars in Syria, Africa and Ukraine Author
