What a Russian Mercenary Can Do for Ukraine, or What Happens When You Give Up Your Life Without a Grenade?

The Ukrainians’ bodies lay side-by-side on the grass, the earth beside them splayed open by a crater. The victims had their arms pulled to the spot where they had died.

There is no need for a grenade, the Ukrainian soldiers will just bash them in and get the bodies. The mercenaries then realize they have run out of ammunition.

A man who was jailed for 10 years for murder, after being overlooked initially, was hired by the Russian Ministry of Defense last year, a decade into his sentence, after having been recruited from his prison. He described himself as a “patriot” and complained many of the prisoners sent to the front were “green.”

The group has added to its infamy and allure, while helping it cloud analysis of its exact capabilities and activities, by limited official information regarding its existence and ties to the Russian state.

As the prospects of victory in Ukraine seem less and less realistic, life as a Russian mercenary is no longer appealing.

They have a more meaningful experience than the army. Young soldiers were forced to sign a contract and have no experience, he said.

The Russian army cannot handle the war without mercenaries, according to a person that spoke on condition of anonymity.

Prigozhin, Wagner, and the U.S. Armed Forces: Why Ukraine is fighting so hard against Russia and why Ukraine is doing well

“Wagner has been suffering high losses in Ukraine, especially and unsurprisingly among young and inexperienced fighters,” according to a senior US defense source speaking in September.

The intelligence gathered by Ukrainian authorities has led to the offer of bonuses in US dollars for wiping out Ukrainian tanks or units, according to a senior Ukrainian defense source.

Yusov also said that Wagner is increasingly being used to patch holes in the Russian front line. This was also confirmed by a US senior defense official, who added that Wagner is being used across different front lines unlike Chechen fighters, for instance, who are focused around the Russian offensive aimed at Bakhmut.

The need to supply theWagner troops with bullets, food, and support for extended operations has led to logistical challenges, while Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s logistics have increased.

Wagner’s invitations to contact recruiters have also spread via social media and online. 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. Much of the recruiter’s message listed medical conditions that excluded applicants from joining: from cancer to hepatitis C and substance abuse.

The private military company was once considered to be one of the most professional units in the Kremlin’s arsenal.

Vladimir Osechkin, from prisoner rights group Gulagu.net, said the Ministry of Defense appeared to be luring recruits and convicts from Wagner using “more favorable terms” as a check on the rising clout of its owner, Prigozhin, increasingly seen as a competitor to parts of the armed forces.

Working on Ukrainian investigations into possible Russian war crimes, Belousov fears that this will see the scale of war crimes increase.

On Thursday, Prigozhin announced that Wagner had stopped recruiting convicts to fight in Ukraine, saying “those who work for us now are fulfilling all their obligations.” No reason was given for the decision and CNN cannot independently confirm the claims.

discontent in its ranks is a bigger problem than the struggles in Ukraine. For a group that depends on the appeal of its salaries and work, that’s critical.

The Ukrainian defense intelligence spokesman, Yusov, said that from intercept phone calls in August, the intelligence services noted a decline in thePsychological State of the troops. It’s a trend he’s also seen in Russian troops more broadly.

The number of true professional soldiers who are willing to fight with him is decreasing, he said, because of the reduction in Wagner recruitment requirements.

Ex-commander Gabidullin, who says he talks to his old comrades on an almost daily basis, explained that this demoralization was due to their dissatisfaction “with the overall organization of the fighting: The Russian leadership has difficulty making competent decisions.

One mercenary contacted Gabidullin for advice and it was too much. He said that he would not be there anymore. I am not taking part in this anymore, said Gabidullin.

“If they shoot us, we’ll lie next to them,” alleged Prigozhin of a fallen mercenary

In one of the clips, a fallen mercenary is lying in state, his left hand resting on the black earth. Around him, the battlefield smolders alongside dead bodies and the flaming wreckage of their armored vehicles. Occasional shots crackle through the smoke.

The man who was with the soldier who died apologized lightly to him, without revealing his shirt that was torn by the battle. “Let’s get out of here, if they shoot us, we’ll lie next to him.”

“They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleges. They brought two prisoners who didn’t want to fight. and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”

Prigozhin has previously confirmed that Medvedev had served in his company, and said that he “should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”

Oslo: The end of the road? The tale of Medvedev, after he had crossed the border into the Ukrain-Rasov army

“There were no real tactics at all. We just got orders about the position of the adversary…There were no definite orders about how we should behave. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would start the fire, how it would turn out, that was our problem.

Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says saw him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He used white camo to blend in after crossing into Norway.

He told CNN he didn’t want to come back for another tour because he saw troops being turned into cannon fodder.

He started out with 10 under the control of him, but once prisoners were allowed to join he had a larger number of men. There were more dead bodies and more people coming in. He said he had a lot of people under his command. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant motion. Dead bodies, more prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/europe/wagner-norway-andrei-medvedev-ukraine-intl/index.html

Wagner PMC isn’t ready: The number of demobilized prisoners in the prison system has slowed down, as reported by the Russian Penitentiary Service

In reality, nobody wanted that sort of money. He claimed that many of the Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were declared missing.

The propaganda in Russia will soon cease, the people will rise up, and all of our leaders will be up for grabs, and there will be a new leader emerge.

Yevgeny Nuzhin was murdered with a sledgehammer, and the death of the defector inspired him to leave.

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. Everyone who works for us now is fulfilling their obligations.

The open criticism of the leadership of the defense could not have happened before February 24, 2022, and Prigozhin’s comments would not have been allowed. Earlier this week, Prigozhin escalated his spat with Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, accusing them of “treason” for their alleged failures to support and supply the Wagner group in Ukraine.

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 could support that. Between November and January, the population of the prison decreased by 6,000 compared to the fall of 23,000 inmates last year.

Dozens of prisoners with just weeks left in their sentences signed up after being visited from Prigozhin in the summer and autumn. 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.

People deterred from joining up by the experiences of prisoners who completed their contracts. Many of the demobilized fighters, who had clearly been wounded, were seen with Prigozhin last month.

According to one of the lawyers who spoke to Agentstvo, the decline of volunteers in the prison population is a result of information about the high casualties that happened in the war.

Concord Management finances have always been very opaque and have dozens of subsidiaries involved. It is hard to know the sources of cash to sustain such a large increase in rank.

When CNN asked for comment on the decision of the group to stop recruiting from Russian prisons, Prigozhin responded by making fun of the fact that millions of Americans had applied to join the group.

However, Sevalnev and several prisoners CNN has spoken to seem to indicate a disturbing new strategy. They say they were employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

It is the last message Viktor Sevalnev would send. A convict that had been in jail for an armed robbery was sent to fight for Russia in Ukraine. After most of his colleagues died in an assault on a factory outside Soledar, it was the act of survival that proved fatal to Sevalnev.

He recorded a message to his wife in which he said he feared the Russian ministry of defense would kill him if they took him from his hospital bed. His body was returned to Moscow in a closed coffin.

According to several prisoners who spoke to CNN, they were working for the Russian Ministry of Defense and not the other way around. Some documents pointed to the fact that they had been deployed to an section of the Luhansk army that was suborned into the Russian defense ministry. The unit in October was deployed to the frontlines around Soledar and suffered a lot of casualties.

Usov said the development had “echoes of internal squabbling among the Russian military leadership,” and that the Russian defense hierarchy, defense minister Sergei Shoigu and the new head of the Ukraine operation, Valery Gerasimov, were creating a convict resource they could directly control through the ministry’s own private companies. Usov said the ministry had fewer convicts for now but they “will be used in the same way … as cannon fodder,” as Wagner does.

Grainy footage shows Sevalnev and his unit dancing in front of other people at a camp in Luhansk. It also shows them eating and joking just behind the frontlines the night before they began an assault on a key factory in Soledar, which would prove fatal for the majority of Sevalnev’s unit, survivors said.

Audio messages and pictures of Sevalnev from the war were provided to CNN by his wife who declined to be interviewed for the report. According to CNN, the court documents show that Sevalnev should have been in jail when he died because he was convicted for theft. His grave is on a hill outside of Moscow.

“No one is being operated on here, no surgeries performed on anyone,” he said. CNN is withholding his name and the other convicts because they are in danger. People in the hospital suffer bullet wounds, with some of them embedded in their legs.

He was a former soldier and described devastating losses before his imprisonment. The unit has 130 prisoners, but also has many amputees and probably has 40 left, he said. He said his unit had only 15 survivors and that the 08807 was now called 40321, or “Storm unit.” “In short, the meat grinder,” he added. He told CNN in the past few days he had been sent back to the frontline, his injuries unhealed.

“I don’t have any complaints, war is war. Some come here, hear the machine gun, and run. It’s not good. The other people were set up as nobody has my back, he said. This soldier was wounded severely in the leg in October, after 25 days on the front, but described how he felt no fear. soil falls to the trench from a shell, but I don’t feel scared at all. I am not sure why it happens this way with me.

Witnesses of a Rwandan student charged with drug-related offenses are under the same law in Tanzania: Nemes Tarimo was a student on exchange in Moscow

According to relatives of three convicts who appeared in a CNN report in August, the fate of convicts employed by Wagner appears to be exactly the same.

One went missing for four months, according to his brother. One of the brothers was silent but was sending his brother’s monthly salary from a rented office in a sealed plastic bag. A third appeared in the video with Prigozhin as a lucky returnee. Yet a friend described his “zombie-like” appearance, heavy drinking and urgent desire to return to the front.

The legality of any presidential pardons is explained by the Kremlin spokesman, as he told reporters last month. He said there were various classifications of secrecy in the open decree. “That is precisely why I cannot say anything about these decrees. I can really confirm that the entire procedure for pardoning prisoners is carried out in strict accordance with Russian law.”

Some prisoners who are not Russian have been snared and may not have been guilty of a crime. Tanzanian student Nemes Tarimo was on an exchange in Moscow when he was apparently arrested on drugs charges and held on remand. He was convicted in March last year to seven years in jail, according to the Tanzanian foreign ministry, citing information from their Russian counterparts.

Wagner released a ghoulish video of a memorial ceremony in Tarimo’s honor at a graveyard in Molkino, western Russia, saying he died in October near Bakhmut. His body was returned to Tanzania last month, according to state TV, with the foreign ministry saying in a statement that Tarimo had accepted an offer to fight in return for money and his freedom.

His cousin Rehema Makrene Kigoga told CNN: “Since his childhood, Nemes was a very obedient boy. He was a very religious man and not a scamp. She said they did not know anything about his recruitment until after he died. “When he was alive, we never heard about this report but now that he’s died we are told he was arrested for drug-related offenses. As a family, it gives a lot of sadness. He never even had a dream of becoming a soldier.”

Prigozhin’s frustrations with the Russian military in Bakhmut and the “shell starvation” of the Ukraine conflict

Despite all of his acquaintances and connections, Prigozhin said he can not solve the problem of Russia’s insufficient ammunition supply because the industry has reached the required levels.

Prigozhin said that he has been told to apologize to someone who is a high up in his life but that he doesn’t know who that is.

In January, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced another reshuffle of the commanders leading the war in Ukraine, amid mounting criticism over its handling of the military operations in Ukraine.

Prigozhin has praised the withdrawal of Russian forces in the south of Kherson region last year but he still does not approve of the Ministry of Defense’s handling of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

All that changed after Russia’s military suffered humiliating setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. Prigozhin – a canny political entrepreneur without any official government position – began openly taking credit for Wagner’s efforts to secure some territorial gains, particularly in the battles raging around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Prigozhin said that it was one of the gathering places of the dead. The guys who died yesterday were the so-called “shell starvation”. [by the Russian MOD]. There should have been many fewer of them. So mothers, wives and children will get their bodies.”

I believe the message got through to someone. In a voice note and message, Prigozhin said a shipment of bullets was on it’s way to his forces.

“Today at 6 am (local) it was reported that shipment of ammunition begins,” he said. The main papers have already been signed and the train is most likely moving.

The Prigozhin Story of Fatherland Day: What Putin’s Closest Inner Circle can (and does not) Know About

The war of attrition between Prigozhin and the Russia’s defense establishment appeared to have been raised by his latest stunt.

He acknowledged his role in the Russian attempts to interfere with the US election, and that he started the Internet Research Agency.

In a recent recording, Prigozhin rails against the unnamed functionaries, who he said have breakfast, lunch and dinner on golden dishes and send your daughters, granddaughters, and whoevers to vacation inDubai, showing no shame at all.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has become a remote and isolated leader since the Covid-19 pandemic, has no obvious successor and some political analysts speculated that at least one opportunist might be in a position to build a power base independent of Putin.

“All five state-owned firms are headed by Putin’s oldest friends from the days when he was a KGB agent. In effect, this schema allows Putin’s closest inner circle, through frontmen like Prigozhin, to manage the cartel-like structure that constitutes what many think of today as the Wagner Group.”

Whether the Wagner frontman will retain his usefulness to Putin after such crude public criticism, then, remains to be seen. He hasn’t decided if he’s going to continue his media campaign.

On Thursday, Prigozhin posted a video greeting to his Telegram channel to mark Fatherland Day, a Russian national holiday. In the video, Prigozhin is shown a building in the distance that Wagner fighters claim to have taken close to downtown Bakhmut.