John Lechner
Death is Our Business
Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare
The shocking inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia's anti-Western foreign strategy.
"Extraordinary. . . Essential reading for understanding Russia and modern warfare."
— -CHRIS MILLER, New York Times bestselling author of Chip War and Putinomics
“John Lechner is an amazingly bold reporter who has been to the key places where the Wagner Group fought, interviewing members, veterans, and victims to deliver a shrewd, granular sense of how Russian mercenary forces operate.”
— ADAM HOCHSCHILD, bestselling author of King Leopold's Ghost
About John
John graduated from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown, John focused on security issues in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey; Russia, and the former Soviet Union. He is an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic).