Recruited directly by Evgueni Prigojine, patron of the Mercenaries of the Wagner group, the prisoners are placed on the front line of the fights. Very little of it.
by Emmanuel Grynszpan
Without any official function in the Russian state apparatus, the businessman Evgueni Prigojine has the power to commute the convictions in the prison in capital. By tens of thousands, he took the Russian detainees out of their cells to re -order them in assault sections on the Ukrainian front, with little chance of escaping them. His private military company (SMP) named Wagner thus renders a great service to the Russian Head of State, Vladimir Putin, who struggles to restore the ranks of his invasion army already in part decimated.
The losses are appalling. “Eighty-dix-nine perish perish”, assures the world Olga Romanova, founder of Rus Sidiachaïa (“Russia in the shade”), an NGO defending the rights of prisoners since 2008. “On the first batch Detainees sent to the front in June, or 500 prisoners, only two are still alive, “continues the activist who has lived in Berlin since 2017 to escape legal proceedings. The two survivors, Andreï Yastrebov and Semion Paltchevsky, both suffer from serious injuries. The mother of the first received 151,000 rubles (2,400 euros) in liquid in an envelope given by employees of the Wagner group, according to Vladimir OSETCHKINE, founder of the NGO GULAGU.NET. The second, whose left hand is paralyzed, would have left the hospital and is always on the forehead. 2>
Canon fodder
The first fighters of the SMP Wagner appeared on the battlefield on July 14, in Vouhlehirsk, in the Donetsk region. Living extraordinarily risky frontal assaults, they were immediately identified by the Ukrainian soldiers for their ability to repeat attacks despite very heavy losses. This primitive use of cannon fodder allowed Russian forces to gain ground at the start of the summer, before stirring on the city of Bakhmout, where part of the Wagner units are concentrated. “They are exclusively deployed on the front line. Behind them are the” barrier troops “[responsible for shooting on the front line soldiers in case they go back], then the mobilized and finally professional soldiers,” summarizes Olga Romanova.
According to Rus Sidiachaïa, who claims to have informants “in all prisons, prison and prison colonies in Russia”, the SMP Wagner would have already been an army of around 30,000 to 35,000 detainees since June, starting the recruitment campaign in prisons. “Our sources communicate to us every day the number of prisoners who signed with Wagner, and the number of those who are transferred,” said Olga Romanova. Currently, 25,000 fights on the front. The 5,000 freshly recruited are drawn on three known bases of the SMP Wagner, in the Russian regions of Rostov, Voronej and Koursk, borders of Ukraine. Their existence constitutes an index of the growing financial windfall of Evgueni Prigojine. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the SMP Wagner only operated on a single military base, in the Krasnodar region (southwest), to form its mercenaries intended to fight in Syria and on the African continent.
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