Russia recruiting female prisoners to make up for huge losses, General Staff says
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Last week, a train with wagons for the transportation of prisoners was spotted moving towards Donetsk Oblast.
One of the cars contained convicted women, the General Staff said.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, as of the morning of March 13, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost about 159,800 of its troops.
Read also: Russia brings prisoners recruited by Wagner mercenaries to Zaporizhzhya Oblast, says General Staff
In recent months, Russia’s Wagner mercenary company recruited male convicts from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine, with the promise of freedom after serving for six months.
Western intelligence estimates that up to have of the convicts have since been killed or wounded. In recent weeks, Wagner was prevented from recruiting from prisons, with the Russian Ministry of Defense taking over that role.
Wagner has instead started to recruit free civilians. The company’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been involved in a long-running feud with Russian Defense Minister Serget Shoigu and Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin has claimed that the Russian military has been sabotaging his mercenaries’ attempts to capture the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast by denying the military group adequate supplies of artillery ammunition.
Wagner has been trying to capture Bakhmut for months, with no success so far, and taking massive casualties.
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
