Has the Wagner Group met their Götterdämmerung Russia’s ‘Elite’ Shadow Army Edges Into Complete Collapse
Story by Shannon Vavra • 4h ago
Tens of thousands of fighters rounded up to fight in
Ukraine for Wagner Group, the Russian private mercenary fighting corps, have gone missing or died, according to a Russian non-governmental organization.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images© Provided by The Daily Beast
While Wagner Group recruited approximately 50,000 fighters in recent months, including from prisons, only 10,000 fighters remain fighting at the front for Wagner, Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, told
My Russian Rights, according to
The Moscow Times. “According to our data, 42-43 thousand [prisoners] were recruited by the end of December. Now they are, most likely, already over 50,000,” Romanova said. “Of these, 10,000 are fighting at the front, because all the rest are either killed… or missing, or deserted, or surrendered.”
The statistic cited is just the latest indication that Wagner’s fighting force is falling apart in Ukraine, even as Russia works to secure wins on the battlefield almost one year since
the invasion of Ukraine. Wagner Group fighters have been involved in the heavy fighting in
Soledar in recent weeks, a town in which Russia has claimed victory. Wagner has also been largely responsible for gains made in Bakhmut nearby, “at an extraordinary cost,” given that many of the Wagner recruits had minimal training since Wagner recruited 40,000 convicts, John Kirby, a White House National Security Council coordinator, told reporters last week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted at the dramatic losses the Russians are sustaining in Soledar in a recent speech as well.
“The area near Soledar is covered with corpses of the invaders,” Zelensky said. “This is what madness looks like.”
The U.S. Department of Defense has also assessed that Russian forces and Wagner have both suffered a tremendous amount of losses.
