Hitmen, murderers and alcoholics killed fighting for Wagner Group
Hitmen, murderers and alcoholics from in and outside Russia have been killed fighting for the notorious Wagner mercenary group.
New graves discovered in a plot in rural southern Russia expose the array of convicts sent to their deaths on the front lines after a major prison recruitment drive.
A Reuters investigation found many of the buried men were convicted for violent crimes, and some of the recruits were foreign nationals including from Ukraine and Moldova.
Wagner last summer started using a cemetery plot in rural southern Russia which filled up with about 200 graves by the end of January, Reuters said in an investigation on Thursday.
A lawyer for one of the convicts, Vyacheslav Kochas who was sentenced to 18 years for murder and armed robbery in 2020, described his client as an “ordinary guy” who must have thought an offer from Wagner “was his only way out”.
Russian prisoner rights activists have accused Wagner of hiding the truth about the convicts’ fate in order to conceal the scale of defections in their ranks.
Olga Romanova, head of Russian prisoner rights’ group Russia Behind Bars, earlier this week cited the prisoners’ families, estimating that only 10,000 of more than 43,000 prisoners who had been recruited by the end of December were still fighting.
“The rest of them have either been killed, injured, went missing, deserted or surrendered,” she said.
Ms Romanova also said the cases of desertion are so widespread that Wagner’s management often tells the families their relative is dead in order to conceal the scale of defections.
Recruitment stalled
The pace of Wagner’s recruitment stalled in December, according to Ms Romanova, as many prisoners were horrified by a recent video showing a Wagner commander killing a soldier with a sledgehammer after he willingly surrendered to the Ukrainians.
Earlier this month, however, Wagner started recruiting foreign nationals, mostly from Central Asia, from Russian prisons.
In a move that could boost his popularity, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, in a statement on Thursday invited Igor Girkin, a former Ukrainian separatist leader with a sizeable ultranationalist following, to join forces with the mercenaries.
“I’m inviting him to arrive at the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic to be appointed for a commanding post to suit his competencies in one of the storm troops,” he said. “It’s time to move from words to deeds.”
Mr Girkin who has been one of the Kremlin’s pithiest critics but while speaking highly of Wagner’s combat abilities said on his blog later on Thursday he was willing to consider the offer.
