The mercenary-military clash in Ukraine: what did Russia learn in the first seven months of the war? CNN interviews with the Ukrainian National Guard

The bodies of the Ukrainians lie side by side on the grass next to a crater. Dragged to the spot by Russian mercenaries, the victims’ arms pointed to where they had died.

One of the Ukrainian soldiers said that they would not use a grenade and would just bash them in. The mercenaries realized they had run out of bullets.

CNN was unable to independently confirm the claims. The interviews were done in the presence of Ukrainian security officers, but the captured fighters talked long about their experience with the military. CNN told prisoners they were allowed to stop the interview at any time. CNN is not revealing their identities.)

The group has added to its infamy and attractiveness due to limited official information about its existence, as well as the Kremlin’s denials of its existence.

More than seven months of fighting have thrown a harsh light on failings in Russia’s military performance in Ukraine. The small gains Russia has made in the war have been huge, decimating frontline units and starving many of manpower as well as critically important experience.

They have more valuable experience than the army. The army are a group of young soldiers who were forced to sign contracts.

The Russian army cannot handle the war without mercenaries, according to Gabidullin, who added that there is an obfuscation about a strong Russian army.

How Russian forces have invaded Ukraine: The legacy of the Wagner Regime in Ukraine, as revealed by a senior US defense official in September

“Wagner has been suffering high losses in Ukraine, especially and unsurprisingly among young and inexperienced fighters,” according to a senior US defense source speaking in September.

Wagner fighters have even been offered bonuses – all paid in US dollars – for wiping out Ukrainian tanks or units, according to a senior Ukrainian defense source and based on the intelligence gathered on Wagner since the start of the war by Ukrainian authorities.

Yusov also said that Wagner is increasingly being used to patch holes in the Russian front line. A senior defense official in the US confirmed this and said that Wagner is being used on different front lines unlike Chechen fighters who are focused around the Russian offensive in Bakhmut.

That has led to significant logistical challenges, he says, with the need to supply Wagner troops with ammunition, food and support for extended operations, all while Ukraine has upped its attacks on Russia’s logistics.

Wagner’s invitations to contact recruiters have also spread via social media and online. One recruiter contacted by CNN offered a monthly salary of “at least 240,000 rubles” (about $4,000) with the length of a “business trip” – code for a deployment – of at least four months. Much of the recruiter’s message listed medical conditions that excluded applicants from joining: from cancer to hepatitis C and substance abuse.

It would not have been possible for the private military company that was once considered one of the top units in the Kremlin’s arsenal to make that move months ago.

Prigozhin is an increasingly visible political actor within Russia, clashing publicly with Russian military leaders. The Wagner Group has recruited inmates from Russian prisons to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, promising a pardon if they survive six months on the battlefield.

Belousov fears that the recruiting will cause the scale of war crimes to increase.

On Thursday, Prigozhin announced that Wagner had stopped recruiting convicts to fight in Ukraine, saying “those who work for us now are fulfilling all their obligations.” CNN could not independently confirm the claims that a reason was given for the decision.

Wagner’s struggles in Ukraine have set in motion a wider problem: discontent in its ranks. For a group that depends on the appeal of its salaries and work, that’s critical.

From intercepted phone calls, Ukrainian intelligence services in August noted a “general decline in morale and the psychological state” of Wagner troops, Ukrainian defense intelligence spokesman Yusov said. It’s a trend he’s also seen in Russian troops more broadly.

He said that the decreasing number of soldiers who are willing to volunteer to fight withWagner, is part of the reason for the demoralization.

The ex-commander, who talks to his old friends almost daily, said that their demoralization was caused by their dislike of the organization of the fighting. [the Russian leadership’s] inability to make competent decisions, to organize battles.”

For one mercenary who contacted Gabidullin for advice, that incompetence was too much. “He called me and said: ‘That’s it, I won’t be there anymore. I am no longer taking part in this,’ Gabidullin said.

A fallen Wagner mercenary on the battlefield: The shooting of a soldier killed in front of two prisoners and buried them in trenches

In one clip, a fallen Wagner mercenary lies, in death, almost peacefully, his left hand gently gripping the black earth. There were dead bodies around him as the battlefield smoldered behind the flaming wreck of armored vehicles. There are shots fired through the smoke.

“I’m sorry, bro, I’m sorry,” the soldier’s comrade says, lightly patting his back, stripped of his shirt by the battle that killed him. “Let’s get out of here, if they shoot us, we’ll lie next to him.”

He claims that in front of new people, they would round up people who wouldn’t fight and shoot them. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”

Prigozhin had previously stated that he should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.

Oslo and Oslo, the story of Vladimir Medvedev, on his first tour in Ukraine: How did he learn to escape arrest and evade bullets?

There were no real tactics at all. There were no clear instructions about how to behave since we just received them. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would open fire, what kind of shifts we would have…How it how it how it would turn out that was our problem,” he said.

Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says saw him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake using white camouflage to blend in, he said.

He told CNN that he knew by the sixth day of his deployment in Ukraine that he did not want to return for another tour after witnessing troops being turned into cannon fodder.

Once prisoners were allowed to join, the number he started with grew to 10. “There were more dead bodies, and more, and more, people coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant circulation. Dead bodies, more prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/europe/wagner-norway-andrei-medvedev-ukraine-intl/index.html

Vladimir Medvedev: The clown in the war against the Ukrainians and the way to take down the enemy in the field of Bakhmut

But in reality “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev said. He said there were many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine who were declared missing.

The advantage that we have is we are able to choose the person who the Russians call a clown. The guy is the leader of the free world right now on our planet.

When asked if he fears the fate meted on another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on camera with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said Nuzhin’s death emboldened him to leave.

The Ukrainian soldiers are southwest of the city of Bakhmut, in a hole cut into the earth. Hundreds of fighters from the Russian private military contractorWagner have been throwing themselves against the Ukrainian defences for several weeks.

Another group follows, he says, to claim another 30 meters. “That’s how, step by step, (Wagner) is trying to move forward, while they lose a lot of people in the meantime.”

Only when the first wave is exhausted or cut down do Wagner send in more experienced combatants, often from the flanks, in an effort to overrun Ukrainian positions.

The defenders of Odesa are determined to defend themselves in the war of independence. Andrey tells CNN that he shot him in the first wave

The machine gunner was shooting at them and he was getting crazy. And he said, I know I shot him, but he doesn’t fall. When he might bleed out, and then he falls down.

“It looks like it’s very, very likely that they are getting some drugs before attack,” he says, a claim that CNN has not been able independently to verify.

Even after the first waves were eliminated, the attack continued as the Ukrainian defenders say they ran out of bullets and found themselves surrounded.

As he speaks to CNN, the fields above Andriy’s bunker reverberate to almost constant shelling. The whine of outgoing artillery is followed by a distant thud a few seconds later and a few kilometers away.

Andriy says he had told the engineer: “Obviously, you know that you will be killed (in battle). But you’re afraid to fight for your freedom in your country.”

Andriy contrasted Russian President Vladimir Putin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who not so long ago was the country’s leading comedian.

Andriy, who is from the southwestern city of Odesa and joined up within days of Russia’s invasion, says that no matter how many more fighters are sent to storm their positions, they will resist.

“Most of my guys, they are volunteers. They had (a) good business, they had (a) good job, they had a good salary, but they came to fight for their homeland. He says it makes a difference.

The change of tack in the private military contractor Wagner and the decision of the Russian prisoner’s campaign to abandon recruitment in the battlefield

Private military contractor Wagner will have to look for new fighters beyond Russia’s prison system, a fertile recruiting ground for the past nine months, according to its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigoszhin said that the recruitment of prisoners into the company has stopped. Those who work for us now are fulfilling all their obligations.”

There are several explanations for the change of tack, but the Russian magnate did not give a reason for it. It is possible that the pool of recruits dwindled, that the Ministry of Defense stepped in, or that the operation has stretched the finances of the man who built it. Someone may have told Prigoshyn that his way of war does not suit Russian priorities on the battlefield.

After signing up between 40,000 and 50,000 prisoners from jails across Russia, the number of volunteers from prison may have shrunk so far that the campaign is no longer delivering.

Figures just released by the Russian Penitentiary Service may support that. The population of the prison decreased by 6,000 in November and January when compared to September and October of last year.

They said that in August and September a lot of prisoners with just weeks left of their sentences had signed up. They said he made promises about wages, benefits and criminal records after flying into their prisons in a helicopter.

The experiences of prisoners who completed their six-month contracts may have deterred others from joining. Prigozhin was seen last month with some of the demobilized fighters, many of whom had clearly been wounded.

One of the lawyers who spoke to Agentstvo said the decline of volunteers from among the prison population was in part due to information about Wagner’s high casualties becoming known.

Concord Management has a very opaque financial situation, with dozens of subsidiaries involved. It’s extremely difficult to ascertain the sources of cash to sustain such a dramatic increase in Wagner ranks.

In response to CNN’s request for comment on Wagner’s decision to end recruitment from Russian prisons, Prigozhin issued a sarcasm-laced reply through the Wagner Group’s VKontakte page, and joked that millions of US citizens had applied to join the mercenary group.

CNN spoke to several prisoners and Sevalnev seemed to show a disturbing new strategy. They claim to have been employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The two fighters were captured by Ukrainian forces late last year. CNN doesn’t reveal their identities for their own safety. While in prison, both of them were recruited and are married with children. One was serving a 20-year sentence for manslaughter.

Ukrainians were present in the room where the interview took place for security reasons. CNN told the fighters that they could end the interview at any time they wished. But they spoke in detail for more than an hour.

“There were 90 of us. Sixty people were killed by mortar fire in the first assault. One recalled his first assault near Bilohorivka, and said that a lot of people remained wounded. If one group is unsuccessful, another group is sent right away. If the second one is unsuccessful, they send another group.”

There was a five day assault on the Luhansk-Donetsk border in eastern Ukraine by the other fighter.

You can not help the wounded. The Ukrainians were shooting at us, so you have to keep going no matter how minor their wounds are.

The prisoner claimed a self-preservation instinct kicked in for him, but other people didn’t. “Some stop right there in the forest and drop their weapons. But to drop your weapons is to come under sniper fire and die.”

He said there wasn’t any evacuate of the wounded. If you are wounded, first you roll yourself away on your own, even if there isn’t fire, and then you administer first aid to yourself.

The dozen Casualties were piled up by the men. One fighters said that when casualties arrive, you get orders to load them, but you don’t really consider who is dead or wounded.

They became numb to the casualties and the killing of the Ukrainian soldiers they faced. You would think that you would feel something. You just keep going after killing someone.

The other fighter reported a similar situation: “Our commander was told that if anyone gets cold feet, he would have to be eliminated. And if we failed to eliminate him, we would be eliminated for failing to eliminate him.”

One had disappeared without trace for four months, according to his brother. The other was silent but had sent his brother’s salary from a rented office in a sealed plastic bag. A third had appeared in a video with Prigozhin, portrayed as a lucky returnee. Yet a friend described his “zombie-like” appearance, heavy drinking and urgent desire to return to the front.

One of the prisoners said the selection process was so hard that older prisoners only needed to show they could march a few yards. “They took almost everyone.”

Several prisoners who worked for a unit called “08808” say that they were employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Some held documents suggesting they were ultimately deployed to an element of the Luhansk separatist army, which has been suborned into the Russian defense ministry. In October, a unit called 08807 was deployed to the frontlines around Soledar, an area that was home to the notorious Shtrum brigade.

The training was brief and basic, meaning they would soon be ordered to carry out terrible assaults. The men said it was clear they were being prepared for missions they’d not signed up for.

Viktor Sevalnev: Last message to the Russians, after the Russian assault on a prisoner’s body in Soledar

“He did not mention anything about danger,” one said. “He talked about expunging all convictions, we would serve six months, all convictions would be expunged, an advance payment of 240,000 roubles (around $3,300) and also that our task was to hold the defense on the second line.”

The command ordered me to dig in, so I did it before I were evacuated. The group was sent by the government, and the sniper eliminated all 10 of them.

“I think it was the wrong choice… I’d never participated in any military operation, especially fighting against the AFU, which refuses to give up its land. They brought us here under a different pretext. And so we are at war, but I don’t think it’s a just cause,” said one.

It is the last message Viktor Sevalnev would send. A convict, who had been in jail for armed robbery and assault, he was sent from prison to fight for Russia in Ukraine. After most of his colleagues died in an assault on a factory outside Soledar, it was the act of survival that proved fatal to Sevalnev.

In his last message, he warned his wife that the Russians would soon take him from his hospital bed and execute him. Days later, his body was returned to his wife in Moscow, in a closed coffin.

The war is meat grinder, a former soldier who fled to Luhansk after a Russian assault on a key factory in Soledar

A Ukrainian intel official told CNN that some recently captured prisoners said they were employed by the ministry.

Usov said the development had “echoes of internal squabbling among the Russian military leadership,” and that the Russian defense hierarchy, defense minister Sergei Shoigu and the new head of the Ukraine operation, Valery Gerasimov, were creating a convict resource they could directly control through the ministry’s own private companies. The ministry has fewer convicts for now but they will be used in the same way as cannon fodder, according to Usov.

Grainy footage has Sevalnev and his unit celebrating at a camp in Luhansk. It also shows them eating and joking just behind the frontlines the night before they began an assault on a key factory in Soledar, which would prove fatal for the majority of Sevalnev’s unit, survivors said.

Audio messages and images of Sevalnev from the war were supplied to CNN by Gulagu.net, but his wife wouldn’t be interviewed for the report. According to CNN, Sevalnev should have been jailed when he died because of a theft conviction. His grave is outside Moscow, and it has a record of where he died.

“No one is being operated on here, no surgeries performed on anyone,” he said. CNN is withholding his name and those of the other surviving convicts for their safety. “People walk around [the hospital] with bullet wounds, with shrapnel stuck in their legs.”

A former soldier before his imprisonment, he also described catastrophic losses. He stated that they have many amputees and that they might have as many as 40 remaining in their unit. The unit he said had only 15 survivors was called 40321, or the Storm unit. “In short, the meat grinder,” he added. He told CNN in the past few days he had been sent back to the frontline, his injuries unhealed.

“I don’t have any complaints, war is war. Some come here, hear the machine gun, and run. It is not good. He said they set everyone else up, because no one had his back. A soldier that was wounded in the leg after 25 days on the front spoke about how he felt no fear. soil falls to the trench, but I don’t feel any fear, because the shell lands 3-6 meters from me. I don’t know why it happens to me.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russian-army-prisoners-conscripts-ukraine-intl/index.html

The fate of three Wagner convicts revealed by CNN: “I have no idea that he would become a soldier in Tanzania”

The fate of convicts employed by Wagner appears no better, according to relatives of three convicts over the summer who appeared in an August CNN report.

The legality of pardons given to prisoners was explained last month by the Kremlin spokesman, who said any presidential decree pardoning prisoners were probably classified. There are various classifications of secrecy in the open decree. “That is precisely why I cannot say anything about these decrees. I can confirm the entire pardoning procedure is done in line with Russian law.

The prisoners who are not Russian may not have been convicted of a crime. Tarimo was a student in Moscow when he was arrested on drugs charges while on an exchange. He was convicted in March last year to seven years in jail, according to the Tanzanian foreign ministry, citing information from their Russian counterparts.

A video was released that claims to show a memorial ceremony for Tarimo at a graveyard in western Russia. His body was returned to Tanzania last month, according to state TV, with the foreign ministry saying in a statement that Tarimo had accepted an offer to fight in return for money and his freedom.

His cousin Rehema Makrene Kigoga told CNN: “Since his childhood, Nemes was a very obedient boy. He wasn’t a scamp, but was a very religious person.” She said that they didn’t hear about his recruitment until after he died. “When he was alive, we never heard about this report but now that he’s died we are told he was arrested for drug-related offenses. It gives a lot of sorrow and sadness as a family. He had no idea that he would become a soldier.

A Russian guy in jail: How he came out of prison to become the one of us, and how he fought for him at the front

rigozhin spent the bulk of his 20s in jail. He enters this country in the very last years of the Soviet Union at the age of 30. “He comes out of prison and he starts off selling hotdogs. … But very quickly, he moves on to bigger things.”

The basic pitch is six months. It’s going to be very difficult. If you try to run away, we’ll shoot you. If you don’t give your everything, we will shoot you,” Walker says. “But you go to the front, you put in your service … after six months, you’re free to go.”

“It’s just so out of the realms of fantasy that this former convict is going to fly around prisons in his helicopter and offer people salvation for fighting for him at the front, and then lead these battalions of prisoners to their almost certain death,” Walker says. It’s so crazy it’s hard to believe. But yet it has happened.”

He’s a big guy. His head is shaved. He speaks in a language that’s quite coarse. It’s clear that this is not a polished guy. This is not a particularly well-educated or cultured guy. … After researching this article, we were able to speak with a few prisoners who are still in jail, and ask them questions like why people agreed to go and how they came to know this guy. And they all said to us, “We could see from this guy that he was one of us. He’d been in prison so we respected him. They all said, You could see that he was a former [inmate], the way he talked, the way he kind of gave his word that if they fought for him, he would give them their freedom. All of these people said, “We wouldn’t trust a normal Russian official, but this guy had something about him that made us think he was one of us.” …

He’s not sugarcoating this at all. He’s not saying that this will be pleasant or that it will be a holiday. He’s basically saying, look, you’re probably going to die. It’s going to be absolutely horrible. The fighting is very intense. We’re going to throw you right in at the front line. I’ve got your back if you survive.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1158944377/russia-ukraine-war-mercenaries-prisoners-yevgeny-prigozhin-putin

Prigozhin’s leg injuries: When a Russian journalist’s investigation came to an end and he was stabbed by a sailor

It might be a couple of weeks. [of training]. The way in which the convicts are used by the Wagner Group is a mystery, we have had reports that indicate they are not used on hard strategic operations or anything like that. They’re really used as cannon fodder. The same thing was said to Ukrainians who were on the other side of the line, that it’s really strength in numbers. It is a bit of disregard for human life. There have been many credible reports that have shown that there has been executions of their own people to keep everybody else in line as punishment for disobeying orders.

There are certain things that happen to people who look into Prigozhin’s activities. One of the journalists from Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper who did one of the biggest investigations into Prigozhin ended up receiving a severed ram’s head and funeral wreath at his home address. It’s kind of like a mafia touch.

In 2015, Alexei Navalny’s team did a series of investigations into Prigozhin and how he got these government contracts. And the main investigator on these was a woman called Lyubov Sobol, who is one of Navalny’s top aides. And not long after one of these investigations came out, her husband was just arriving home to their apartment when [an] unknown assailant appeared, stabbed him in the leg with a syringe and ran off, and he then collapsed. I was talking to Lyubov about this recently when we were preparing this article about Prigozhin. She is convinced that this was linked to her investigation and that she and her husband were rushed to the hospital. He got very quick medical attention. She said that the doctors told her that if it had been a bit longer, he may not have survived. The tranquilizer had been injected into his leg. If you cross Yevgeny Prigozhin, some pretty devious things can happen to you.