Up to 20,000 Wagner Group prisoners killed within few months – UK Intelligence
UK Defence Intelligence estimates that up to 20,000 prisoners from the Wagner Group taken to war in Ukraine have been killed, and the rest are likely to be removed from the mercenary ranks soon.
Source: UK MoD Defence Intelligence review of the Russian-Ukrainian war on 21 July, as reported by European Pravda
Details: The scheme for recruiting inmates from prisons was at its largest scale in early 2023, when about 40,000 people served under Project K. However, a significant number of prisoners are likely to continue to work for the Wagner Group as contract soldiers. "Meanwhile, the Russian MoD has taken over Wagner's prison recruitment pipeline," the intelligence department adds.
Analysts note that the end of this Wagner scheme is a kind of a "waypoint" in the history of Wagner Group and in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
"The soldiers provided by Project K enabled Russia to seize Bakhmut: one of its few recent claims to success. The project grew Wagner into the organisation which, last month, directly challenged the authority of President Putin. It also marks one of the bloodiest episodes in modern military history: up to 20,000 convict-recruits were killed within a few months," the intelligence concludes.
Background:
- Earlier, UK Defence Intelligence said that after a period of confusion over the Wagner Group rebellion, an agreement on the group's future had begun to emerge in Russia.
- Meanwhile, the head of the CIA said that if he were the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, he "would not fire his taster" because Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is unlikely to forgive him for the attempted rebellion.
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