The fate of the Wagner army in Ukraine and the role of its mercenaries in the war on the epoch of war
The Ukrainians’ bodies lay side-by-side on the grass, next to a crater. Dragged to the spot by Russian mercenaries, the victims’ arms pointed to where they had died.
One of the Ukrainian soldiers who will come to collect the bodies says there is no need for a grenade. The mercenaries realize they have run out of bullets.
Wagner is often described as Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
The group has been aided by limited official information about the organization and long-standing denials of its existence by the Russian state.
Life as a Russian mercenary is no longer as appealing as it used to be due to Russia’s prospects for victory in Ukranian.
They have more meaningful experience than the army. The army are young soldiers who were forced to sign a contract, they have no experience,” he said.
There is a myth about a strong Russian army and it cannot be handled without the help of mercenaries.
The two Wagner prisoners interviewed this week by CNN spoke of huge losses as they were sent to storm Ukrainian positions, with fighters refusing to go forward instantly executed by commanders, they said.
Wagner fighters have even been offered bonuses – all paid in US dollars – for wiping out Ukrainian tanks or units, according to a senior Ukrainian defense source and based on the intelligence gathered on Wagner since the start of the war by Ukrainian authorities.
If Wagner forces succeed in taking a position, they can dig foxholes with the help of artillery support. According to Ukrainian intercepts, coordination between Wagner and the Russian military is often lacking.
That has led to significant logistical challenges, he says, with the need to supply Wagner troops with ammunition, food and support for extended operations, all while Ukraine has upped its attacks on Russia’s logistics.
The invitations to contact recruiters have been spread via social media. One recruiter contacted by CNN offered a monthly salary of “at least 240,000 rubles” (about $4,000) with the length of a “business trip” – code for a deployment – of at least four months. The recruiter said medical conditions that exclude applicants from joining are cancer, hepatitis C, and substance abuse.
It’s a move that would have been unthinkable months ago for the private military company once considered one of the most professional units in the Kremlin’s arsenal.
It is possible that the Russian establishment is attempting to limit Prigozhin’s access to resources. To get his prison recruitment scheme going, Prigozhin had to secure the agreement of Russia’s prison service, the Interior Ministry and other agencies. That assent may have been withdrawn as Prigozhin has stoked a confrontation with the military establishment over its conduct of the war.
Working on Ukrainian investigations into possible Russian war crimes, Belousov fears that this lax recruiting will see the scale of war crimes increase.
Wagner Struggles Marat Gabidullin in CMD-intl/Local-Law-Independent Army Recruiting
According to a recording of the man being questioned, he was an engineer but had been selling drugs to make money. He volunteered to join Wagner in the belief it would expunge his criminal record so that his daughter would have fewer problems following her dream to become a lawyer.
Wagner’s struggles in Ukraine have set in motion a wider problem: discontent in its ranks. For a group that depends on the appeal of its salaries and work, that’s critical.
The Ukrainian defense intelligence service in August noticed a decline in the mental state of the troops, according to Yusov. It is also a trend he has seen in Russian troops.
There is a decrease in the number of truly professional soldiers who are willing to volunteer to fight withWagner because of the reduction in recruitment requirements.
The demoralization of their organization was due to their discontent with the overall organization of the fighting, explained the ex-commander, who said he talks to his old colleagues almost daily. The Russian leadership has an inability to make competent decisions.
For one mercenary who contacted Gabidullin for advice, that incompetence was too much. “He called me and said: ‘That’s it, I won’t be there anymore. The man said that he was not taking part in the project anymore.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/europe/wagner-ukraine-struggles-marat-gabidullin-cmd-intl/index.html
How a fallen mercenary was killed in a battle against the enemy: The killing of two prisoners and burying them in trenches
In one of the clips, a fallen mercenary leans back in death, his left hand touching the black earth. There are dead bodies and flaming vehicles around him on the battlefield. Occasional shots crackle through the smoke.
A soldier who died in the battle stripped of his shirt and said, lightly, “I’m sorry, bro.” “Let’s get out of here, if they shoot us, we’ll lie next to him.”
He claims that they would shoot people who did not want to fight in front of new people. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”
In the past Prigozhin said that he should have been prosecuted if he attempted to mistreating prisoners.
More prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners and so called “wagner Norway and rei-medvedev-ukraine-intl”
There were no real tactics. We just got orders about the position of the adversary…There were no definite orders about how we should behave. We had planned how to do it, step by step. How it would turn out, that was what our problem was, who would open fire and so on.
He dodged gunfire from Russian forces, and evaded arrest for at least ten times after crossing his border in a daring defection. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake using white camouflage to blend in, he said.
He told CNN that he didn’t want to return for another tour after witnessing troops being turned into cannon fodder.
He started off with 10 men and then got more with the prisoners joining. More dead bodies were found, and more people were coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he said. I didn’t know how many. They were in constant circulation. More dead bodies, more prisoners, more prisoners.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/europe/wagner-norway-andrei-medvedev-ukraine-intl/index.html
Russians are afraid of next-generation wars in Ukraine, and they are determined to follow a Kievn leader with a sledgehammer
But in reality “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev said. He alleged that many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were “just declared missing.”
The propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise and all our leaders will be up for grabs, and a new leader will emerge, as soon as possible.
When asked if he fears the fate meted on another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on camera with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said Nuzhin’s death emboldened him to leave.
There is a candle-lit vault southwest of the city of Bakhmut where Ukrainian soldiers live. The Ukrainians have been confronting hundreds of fighters belonging to the Russian private military contractor for several weeks.
He says that another group will follow to claim another 30 meters. They lost a lot of people in the meantime, so they need to move forward step by step.
Only when the first wave is exhausted or cut down do Wagner send in more experienced combatants, often from the flanks, in an effort to overrun Ukrainian positions.
Odesa man tells a Russian soldier to come out and fight for his country: “I know you’re crazy, but you don’t wanna fall”
The machine gunner was shooting at them and they were almost getting crazy. He said that he knows I shot him but he doesn’t fall. And then after some time, when he maybe bleeds out, so he just falls down.”
He says it appears that they are getting drugs before attacking, a claim that CNN has not been able to verify.
Even after the first waves were eliminated, the attack continued as the Ukrainian defenders say they ran out of bullets and found themselves surrounded.
As he spoke to CNN, the fields above him were being bombarded. The sounds of the gun is followed by a thundering sound and a few kilometers away.
Andriy says he had told the engineer: “Obviously, you know that you will be killed (in battle). You are afraid of fighting for your freedom in your country.
Andriy contrasted Russian President Vladimir Putin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who not so long ago was the country’s leading comedian.
No matter how many fighters are sent to storm their positions, they will resist, says a Odesa man who joined up in the days after the Russian invasion.
“Most of my guys, they are volunteers. They had (a) good business, they had (a) good job, they had a good salary, but they came to fight for their homeland. And it makes a great difference,” he says.
The fate of Prigozhin’s private contractor, Wagner, as revealed by the Putin-Malta-Constraint-based platform Behind Bars
Private military contractor Wagner will have to look for new fighters beyond Russia’s prison system, a fertile recruiting ground for the past nine months, according to its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin said on his company’s Telegram channel Thursday: “We have completely discontinued the recruitment of prisoners into Wagner PMC. Those who work for us now are fulfilling all their obligations.”
There are many possible explanations for the change of course by the Russian billionaire. The pool of recruits may have dwindled, the Ministry of Defense may have intervened, or the operation may have stretched Prigozhin’s finances. The way of war may no longer fit Russian priorities on the battlefield.
After signing up between 40,000 and 50,000 prisoners from jails across Russia, the number of volunteers from prison may have shrunk so far that the campaign is no longer delivering.
The figures just released by the Russian penitentiary service may support that. They showed that the number of people in the prison decreased by 6,000, compared to a drop of 23,000 people last year.
They said that they had visited dozens of prisoners with only a few weeks left in their sentences. They said he had arrived at their prisons in a helicopter and made bold promises about wages and other benefits, as well as a pledge that their criminal records would be expunged.
Additionally, the experiences of prisoners who completed their six-month Wagner contracts may have deterred others from joining up. Prigozhin was seen last month with some of the demobilized fighters, many of whom had clearly been wounded.
There was a decline in the number of volunteers from the prison population due to information about the high casualties of the Wagners, according to one of the lawyers.
The finances of Wagner’s parent company – Concord Management – have always been very opaque, with dozens of subsidiaries involved. It’s hard to determine sources of cash to sustain such a large increase in ranks.
In a sarcastic reply to CNN, Prigozhin joked that millions of US citizens applied to join the mercenary group, after learning that recruitment from Russian prisons was ending.
Romanova, who is with Russia Behind Bars, believes that the Russian Ministry of Defense is now in charge of prisoner recruitment in Russia.