At least 10,000 prisoners recruited by Wagner have died in Ukraine, according to his boss

Some 10,000 of the 50,000 prisoners conscripted into Russian prisons by the wagner group died in Ukrainewhere they were in the front line in the bloody battle of bakhmutrecognized the head of the organization, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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“I selected 50,000 detainees of whom 20% died”Prigozhin said in an interview published on Tuesday night by the pro-Kremlin blogger Konstantin Dolgov.

on the other side, Prigozhin indicated that a similar proportion of its professional fighters also died in combat, without specifying the number.

According to him, the Ukrainian losses they are more important: “I have three times fewer deaths (…) and around two times fewer injuries”said.

Prigozhin He thus spoke for the first time openly about the magnitude of his casualties, when on the Russian side everything is done to keep the number of dead and wounded secret.

The Russian army published its last balance in September 2022, registering 5,900 deaths in its ranks.

A recent leak of classified US documents estimated as of March 1 the Russian losses between 35,500 and 43,500versus between 16,000 and 17,500 from Ukrainebut those figures are unverifiable estimates.

Last year, Yevgeny Prigozhinwho spent years in prison in Soviet times, recruited in prisons, promising detainees to erase their sentences if they survived the fighting.

Ukraine claims that during the battle of bakhmut units of former detainees of Wagner they made near-suicidal attacks on the defense lines and were killed in great numbers.

Prigozhin He accused the Russian military high command of having deprived him of the weapons and ammunition necessary to avoid these significant losses.

“There are now tens of thousands of relatives of those who died. There will probably be hundreds of thousands. We can’t hide that.”he said in the interview published on Tuesday.

He cluster Wagner and the Russian army claimed over the weekend that they had fully conquered bakhmutwhich Ukraine denies.

Prigozhin He assured that his troops will withdraw from the city before June 1 and they will hand over their positions to the regular army.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.