According to a Russian NGO, tens of thousands of militants rounded up in Ukraine for the Wagner Group, Russia’s private mercenary combat corps, have disappeared or died.
While the Wagner Group recruited about 50,000 fighters in recent months, including from prisons, only 10,000 fighters are still fighting for Wagner on the front lines, Russia Behind Bars head Olga Romanova 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 it is most likely already over 50,000,” said Romanova. “Of those, 10,000 are fighting on the front lines, for all the others are either killed…or missing, or deserted, or surrendered.”
The statistic cited is just the latest indication that Wagner’s force in Ukraine is falling apart, even as Russia works to secure battlefield victories nearly a year after invading Ukraine.
Wagner Group fighters have been involved in heavy fighting in Soledar, a city where Russia has achieved victory, in recent weeks. Wagner was also largely responsible for the profits made at nearby Bakhmut “at an extraordinary cost” because many of Wagner’s recruits had had minimal training since Wagner recruited 40,000 convicts, said John Kirby, a National Security Council coordinator at the White House, last week told reporters.
In a recent speech, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi also referred to the dramatic losses suffered by the Russians in Soledar.
“The area near Soledar is covered with corpses of the invaders,” said Zelenskyy. “This is what madness looks like”
The US Department of Defense has also noted that both Russian forces and Wagner suffered huge casualties.
It’s “well over 100,000 now,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last week. “The Russians have suffered an enormous number of casualties in their military, and that includes their regular military and also their mercenaries, the Wagner Group and other types of forces fighting with the Russians.”
There is evidence that some of these casualties may have been desertions. Earlier this month, a former member of the Wagner group, Andrei Medvedev, was caught trying to escape in Norway, AFP reported. According to the BBC, the arrested Medvedev is said to be the first Wagner member to defect to the West.
Medvedev has offered to share details about his experience in the private mercenary group to help investigators uncover war crimes, AFP reported. He was reported to have witnessed “executions of deserters” and “terrorist methods”.
The Biden administration announced last week that it is designating the Wagner group as a “transnational criminal organization” to try to disrupt Wagner’s supply and ability to do business worldwide.
“Wagner is a criminal organization that commits … widespread atrocities and human rights abuses, and we will work tirelessly to identify, disrupt, expose and target those who support Wagner,” said Kirby of the National Security Council.
News of Wagner’s disintegration comes as the mercenary group also has problems with the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military has stalled in Ukraine due to logistical and command-and-control failures, has been relying on the Wagner Group’s combat prowess for some time to try to correct Russian forces’ failures in Ukraine, according to a white man of Ukraine balance assessment of the National Security Council of the House of Representatives. But Putin and the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, have been at odds in recent days, both contradicting each other and insisting that their forces are responsible for Soledar.
Putin seems to have started shifting the focus of Russian fighting back to the military in recent weeks. The President shook command of Russia’s armed forces earlier this month by promoting General Valery Gerasimov in an apparent attempt to inject some momentum into Russia’s military strategy.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, the recent upheaval likely sidelined Wagner.
“Putin’s decision to focus on and rely on Russian conventional forces marginalizes the Wagner group and the siloviki faction, which nonetheless continues to contribute to the Russian war effort in Ukraine,” the ISW said in an assessment this week .
Gerasimov began his work trying to improve the discipline of Russia’s armed forces, according to a British intelligence assessment released on Monday.
“Since he took command, officers have attempted to crack down on non-regulation uniforms, travel in civilian vehicles, use of cell phones, and non-standard haircuts,” the intelligence assessment reads. “The measures have met with skeptical feedback. However, the greatest mockery has been reserved for attempts to improve the standard of troop shaving.”