Surviving fighters from the Wagner group repeatedly reported how they had been sent on extremely dangerous missions in which the majority of their comrades were killed. Information from the US government confirms that the private army mainly throws ex-convicts "literally in a meat grinder".
According to estimates by the US government, around 9,000 soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group have already been killed in Russia's war against Ukraine. About half the men have fallen since mid-December, National Security Council communications director John Kirby said at the White House. According to US intelligence, around 30,000 Wagner troops have been wounded or killed since the war began almost a year ago. Information from the war zone can often hardly be verified by an independent party.
Kirby said of the Wagner troupe, which is led by Russian Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of President Vladimir Putin: "They treat their recruits - mostly convicts - basically like cannon fodder. They literally throw them in a meat grinder, in an inhuman way without hesitation." The Wagner Group fighters are at the forefront of Moscow's offensive in Ukraine, currently in the battle for the town of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have been unsuccessfully trying to capture since the summer. Before the conflict in Ukraine, Wagner mercenaries had been seen in Syria, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic.
According to estimates, around 90 percent of the Wagner fighters killed in Ukraine in December alone were convicts. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had recruited new fighters, especially in prisons. Survivors repeatedly reported that they had been forced into extremely costly operations in which a large proportion of their convict units had been killed. Fighters who refused or hesitated were said to have been killed on orders from their superiors.
The British Ministry of Defense on Friday gave the number of 40,000 to 60,000 soldiers killed on the Russian side since the beginning of the war. The total number of dead or injured on the Russian side was put by London at 175,000 to 200,000. The "loss rate" for the Wagner mercenaries was probably up to 50 percent.
