About 40,000 prisoners recruited by the Wagner mercenary group have died, deserted, been injured or arrested in Ukraine, Russia’s prisoner rights organization Rus Sidiaschaya (RS) reported Monday.
“About 10,000 (prisoners) are fighting at the front, while the rest have been killed, wounded, disappeared, deserted or turned themselves in”said Olga Románova, director of RS.
According to this organization, desertions in the ranks of the mercenaries, who took the weapons provided by their group, began en masse after the summer.
According to Románova, most of these mercenaries fled from the Ukrainian front towards Russia, as evidenced by some incidents between the police and recruited convicts.
When justifying recruitment from Russian prisons, the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgueni Prigojine, replied that it is better to be mercenaries or sentenced to fight in Ukraine than the children of Russians who criticize them.
The White House announced on Friday that the United States will impose new sanctions on the Wagner Group for its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, for which it will be deemed a “transnational criminal organization.”
White House Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US will also impose sanctions on those who support that group on “several continents”.
Prigojine responded to the announcement of the US sanctions by saying that “Wagner and the US will finally be colleagues”.
“Our relations can now be defined as ‘disputes between criminal clans'”explained the leader of the mercenary group.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has so far led to the flight of more than 14 million people — 6.5 million internally displaced persons and nearly eight million to European countries — according to the latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and Russia political and economic sanctions.
Source: DN
