“We will kill them all”: Wagner chief ordered no more arrests of Ukraine

The head of the Russian paramilitary group, Wagner, has said his troops will no longer take Ukrainian prisoners in response to what he presents as the execution of one of his men by Kyiv forces. “We do not know the name of our wounded guy, who was shot by the unfortunate Ukrainians. But we’re going to kill everyone on the battlefield. We will not take any more prisoners,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday in an audio message published on Telegram by his press service.

He reacted to another audio recording posted on a Telegram account in support of Wagner and presented as a conversation between Ukrainian servicemen ordering the execution of a captured paramilitary fighter. The authenticity of this last entry has not been confirmed at this stage. “When you take a prisoner, you start by taking care of him, treating him, not hurting him, and after a while you send him home, exchanging him or just like that,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin.

On the front line in Bakhmut

Accused of multiple abuses in the various areas of operations where it has been deployed around the world, the Wagner Group is now on the front lines in the Battle of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has been raging for months.

Since the start of the Russian offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv and Moscow have regularly accused each other of mistreating prisoners, amounting to war crimes. In mid-April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the actions of Russian “monsters” after posting a shocking video on social media showing the beheading of a suspected Ukrainian prisoner of war. Yevgeny Prigozhin denied allegations made by an NGO and a deserter from his group that claimed that the Ukrainian soldier’s executioners seen in this video were members of Wagner.