In a panic, Ukraine’s troops size up the enemy
The reality of the war in Ukraine revealed in the video footage provided to CNN by David Gabidullin and Sergei Igorenko
The ground next to the bodies was splayed open by a crater. The victims had been dragged by the mercenaries to the spot where they died.
One of the Ukrainian soldiers who will come collect the bodies said that there was no need for a grenade. The mercenaries then realize they have run out of ammunition.
The reality of the war in Ukraine is plain to see in video provided to CNN which depicts the group’s operations.
Limited official information about Wagner and long-standing Kremlin denials about its existence and ties to the Russian state have only added to its infamy and allure, while helping the group to cloud analysis of its exact capabilities and activities.
There have been many failures in Russia’s military performance during the fighting in Ukranian. Russia’s small gains, especially compared to Putin’s initial ambitious targets in the war, have come at huge cost, decimating frontline units and starving many of manpower, as well as critically important experience.
The army doesn’t have as much meaningful experience as they do. The army have no experience, they were forced to sign contracts, he said.
“The Russian army cannot handle [the war] without mercenaries,” according to Gabidullin, adding that there’s “a very big myth, a very big obfuscation about a strong Russian army.”
The two Wagner prisoners interviewed this week by CNN spoke of huge losses as they were sent to storm Ukrainian positions, with fighters refusing to go forward instantly executed by commanders, they said.
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.
According to that report, if Wagner forces succeed in taking a position, artillery support allows them to dig foxholes and consolidate their gains. There is often a lack of coordination between the Russian military and Wagner.
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. The recruiters CNN contacted offered a monthly salary of at least 240,000 rubles or about $4,000 and a business trip 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’s a move that would have been unthinkable months ago for the private military company once considered one of the most professional units in the Kremlin’s arsenal.
“The Kremlin is sort of looking for ways to disguise the fact that its troops are active in Ukraine [and] Prigozhin steps in,” Walker says. “He offers to set up a kind of private military company, which will be able to do the Kremlin’s work for it, but retain that kind of deniability. The moment that I think is the beginning of Prigozhin is when we have the kind of warlord.
Working on Ukrainian investigations into possible Russian war crimes, Belousov fears that this lax recruiting will see the scale of war crimes increase.
Those who work for us now are complying with all their obligations, according to Prigozhin on Thursday. CNN cannot independently verify the claims because no reason was given for the decision.
There is unhappiness in its ranks caused by the struggles of Wagner in Ukraine. 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. He has also seen it in Russian troops.
The reduction in Wagner recruitment requirements, as well as decreasing the number of truly professional soldiers who are willing to volunteer to fight with it, point to demoralization.
Ex-commander Gabidullin, who says he talks to his old comrades on an almost daily basis, explained that this demoralization was due to their dissatisfaction “with the overall organization of the fighting: The Russian leadership couldn’t 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’m not taking part in this anymore,’” Gabidullin told CNN.
“I didn’t fire”: A battle between Nikitin and Stas Volovyk in Mykolaiv, Ukraine
In one clip, a fallen Wagner mercenary lies, in death, almost peacefully, his left hand gently gripping the black earth. Around him, the battlefield smolders alongside dead bodies and the flaming wreckage of their armored vehicles. There are shots being 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.”
STAVKY, Ukraine — Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. Helmets and belongings were inside the building. The men were gone.
“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. “I think it was a special unit, but they were panicking. They were moving because the road was bad and it was raining very hard.
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — On the second day of the war with Russia, Anatoliy Nikitin and Stas Volovyk, two Ukrainian army reservists, were ordered to deliver NLAW anti-tank missiles to fellow soldiers in the suburbs north of Kyiv. Then, as they stood exposed on a highway, Nikitin, who goes by the battle nickname Concrete, says they received new orders.
There are two Russian tanks on the radio. Try to hit one and livestream it!,” recalls Nikitin, sitting on a park bench in the southern city of Mykolaiv, as artillery rumbles in the distance.
There was one problem: neither soldier had ever fired an NLAW. They hid among the trees and looked for a video on how to do that as the tanks approached. The missiles were prepared when they took their positions.
The commander said, “Oh, it’s ours!” It’s ours! Volovyk goes by the nickname Raptor. “So, we did not fire. It was a really close call.”
The Russians left the suburbs: a fight against the Russians in the Kherson riot police field and a drone for intelligence missions
The Russians retreated from the suburbs in late March. After this, the two men followed orders and headed south to fight a very different kind of war. They left behind the protection of suburban buildings and forests outside the capital for sweeping farm fields with little cover. They began working the trenches at the bottom.
The on-the- job training they receive is a mixture of terror and adventure, as well as black comedy. The first days of the war were filled with confusion and unvarnished view of the fighting by the two men.
“It was total chaos,” recalls Nikitin, who is 40, wears a salt-and-pepper beard and heads a construction company. It’s fortunate that the Russians were more chaotic than us.
Volovyk is a 33-year-old software engineer who learned English by playing video games. The war has improved Russian tactics, but some of their early action was not right. For instance, the Russians deployed riot police who headed toward Kyiv, only to be wiped out.
Volovyk, wearing a camouflage cap with “Don’t worry, be ready” written on it, was curious about whether the fight was the best one they had ever seen.
“It sucks,” says Volovyk. You dig. You dig. Unless you dig, you’re pretty much dead in the war, because it’s an isle war.
After two weeks, the men were offered new jobs doing reconnaissance. It’s dangerous work that involves getting close to enemies and avoiding detection. But the men leapt at the opportunity — anything to get out of the trenches.
They now operate drones and serve as the eyes of the artillery, helping to guide fire on everything from Russian tanks to ammunition depots in the Kherson region.
Nikitin and Volovyk say they prefer military-grade surveillance drones to commercial ones. The military drones have secure data transfer and are much harder for the Russians to jam.
The soldiers have had some heart-stopping moments. Nikitin recalls traveling with a team of engineers when they came across a Russian soldier in a field.
“He looks at me, I look at him and he just jumps into the bushes,” recalls Nikitin. He then told the engineers to go shoot the Russian and any of his fellow soldiers.
Six years ago, the army reserve was formed after the Russian invasion of the peninsula. Nikitin says they weren’t prophets, but they knew Russia would try to take the rest of Ukraine. Kherson, the regional capital, is their ultimate goal here down south.
Videos filmed from Ukrainian drones showing Russian soldiers being hit by shelling in poorly trained positions have supported the claims of high casualty rates. The videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.
Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of attacks along some parts of the front. He didn’t say who the attackers were or where they came from.
“We discussed the situation at the front,” General Zaluzhnyi wrote. Ukrainian forces, he said he had told his U.S. colleague, were beating back the attacks, “thanks to the courage and skills of our warriors.”
An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, also said that the increase in infantry in the Donbas region in the east had not resulted in Russia’s gaining new ground.
The institute said that if Russian forces waited until they had enough people to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, they would have had more success.
The Ukrainian military has been able to cut supply lines and hit Russian equipment with long-range rockets during the counteroffensives in the northeast and south.
In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.
With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.
An apparent Ukrainian strike in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine appears to have killed a large number of Russian troops housed next to an ammunition cache, according to the Ukrainian military, pro-Russian military bloggers and former officials.
Both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts say that there was a strike at a school housing Russian conscripts on New Year’s Day.
The attack has led to vocal criticism of Moscow’s military from pro-Russian military bloggers, who claimed that the troops lacked protection and were reportedly being quartered next to a large cache of ammunition, which is said to have exploded when Ukrainian HIMARS rockets hit the school.
The Russian defense ministry claimed that 63 Russian troops were killed in the attack, which would make it one of the worst episodes of the war for Moscow.
Russian senator Grigory Karasin said that those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found, Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.
The scene of the attack of Makiivka in Ukraine, as witnessed by the Ukranian army and the government of Donetsk
Video from the scene of the attack is circulating on Telegram and an official Ukrainian military channel. Almost no part of the building appears to be standing when the pile of rubble is shown.
The chief commander of the armed forces of Ukranian said “welcome and greetings” to the people who were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the school building. There were 400 corpses of Russian soldiers in bags.
The high command is not aware of the capabilities of the weapon, as asserted by a former official in the Donetsk administration.
“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bezsonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”
The building was nearly completely destroyed by the detonation of the ammunition stores, according to the Russian propagandist who wrote about the war effort on Telegram.
The military equipment that stood near the building without a sign of camouflage was destroyed. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”
Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline. Girkin was previously minister of defense of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, and was found guilty by a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”
“As you can see, despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, hence the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might have not happened.”
The Makiivka Strike in Bakhmut (Karamolensk): Russia’s Response to the Decay
In October of last year, Moscow tried to annex several parts of Ukrain in violation of international law.
The military said on Sunday that Russian forces lost 760 people in the last 24 hours and continued to try to take over Bakhmut.
Russian units have been engaged in a battle for months with the Ukrainians in the city of Bakhmut in the northeast but have suffered a lot of losses.
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine over the weekend as fresh rounds of Russian missile strikes hit several regions. Six people were killed and a man was injured when they were attacked in the eastern part of the country.
A CNN team on the ground has not seen large numbers of people dying in the area. There is no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk, including in the vicinity of the city morgue, the team reported.
There were no signs of an attack on two college dormitories that Russia claimed had housed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, as reported by a reporter in Kramtorsk.
The Russian Defense Ministry said “the main cause” of the Makiivka strike was the widespread use of cell phones by Russian soldiers, “contrary to the ban,” which allowed Ukraine to “track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ locations.”
The account was angrily dismissed and the leader of the DPR in eastern Ukraine was seen as siding with the Russians on the response to the attack.
One man stayed at a position and was scared his first assault would happen. We received an order to run forward. The man hid under a tree. This was reported to the command and that was it. He was taken 50 meters away from the base. He was digging his own grave and then was shot.”
Prigozhin, a Canadian Marine who had been in Russia for a decade and a half: How we fought and where we could go
Prigozhin has stated previously that he should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners because he served in his company.
“There were no real tactics at all. We were given orders regarding the position of the adversary, but no definite instructions about how we should act. 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.
He escaped arrest at least ten times after crossing his border in a daring defection, and says he dodges 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.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/europe/wagner-norway-andrei-medvedev-ukraine-intl/index.html
The fate of Yugoslav Medvedev, the newest Nazi defector in the free world, and the fight against the Ukrainians in Bakhmut
He started with 10 men, the number grew after prisoners joined, he said. More dead bodies and more people coming in. He said that he had many people under his control. I didn’t know how many. They were in constant circulation. More dead bodies, more prisoners, more prisoners.
Nobody wanted to pay that kind of money. He alleged that many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were “just declared missing.”
“Our advantage is that yes, we do, we really can choose the guy whom the [Russians] call a clown. But as we can see, now, this guy is really the leader of the free world, at the moment, 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.
Southwest of the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers Andriy and Borisych live in a candle-lit bunker cut into the frozen earth. For several weeks they have been confronting hundreds of fighters belonging to the Russian private military contractor Wagner throwing themselves against Ukrainian defenses.
He said another group would follow and 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 fighters from Odesa are willing to fight for freedom in their homeland, writes Andriany Zelensky in the aftermath of the Crimean Reionization
“Our machine gunner was almost getting crazy, because he was shooting at them. He said he knew I shot him but he didn’t fall. And then after some time, when he maybe bleeds out, so he just falls down.”
It looks like they are getting drugs before the attack, he claims, but CNN has not been able to verify it.
Even after the first waves were eliminated, the attack continued as the Ukrainian defenders say they ran out of bullets and found themselves surrounded.
fields above Andriy’s Bunker echo with almost constant shelling as he speaks to CNN. The whine of outgoing artillery is followed by a distant thud a few seconds later and a few kilometers away.
According to Andriy, he told the engineer that he would be killed in battle. You are afraid of fighting for freedom in your country.
Andriy compared Putin with Zelensky, who was once the country’s leading comedian.
The fighters from Odesa will resist no matter what amount of fighters are sent to take their positions.
Many of my guys 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. And it makes a great difference,” he says.
Deputy Defense Minister Prigozhin’s “Front-Force Reform” after Putin’s First Operation on Crimea
The boss of the private military contractor said there has been a shortage of fighters in Russia for the past nine months.
Prigozhin said on his company’s Telegram channel Thursday: “We have completely discontinued the recruitment of prisoners into Wagner PMC. The people who work for us are doing everything they can to fulfill their obligations.
Prigozhin held numerous businesses that dealt with various aspects of the Russian president’s life. Military services eventually were included in the Catering contracts. In 2014, Walker says, the nature of Prigozhin’s business shifted when Putin decided to annex Crimea and invade Ukraine for the first time.
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.
The Russian Penitentiary Service has recently released figures. They showed that the prison population decreased by 6,000 between November and January, compared to a drop of 23,000 inmates between September and October last year.
They said that a lot of inmates with just weeks left in their sentences had signed up after getting a visit from Prigozhin. They said that he arrived at their prisons in a helicopter and made bold promises about wages and other benefits, as well as promising to get their criminal records wiped out.
One fighter said that most of his unit came because they had long sentences. Some people who only had one day left in their sentence went anyway.
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.
The finances of Concord Management are very opaque and involve a lot of subsidiaries. It’s difficult to know where money comes from to sustain a dramatic increase in ranks.
In response to CNN asking for comment on the decision of the group to stop recruitment from Russian prisons, Prigozhin joked that many US citizens had applied to join the group.
Sevalnev and several prisoners were talking to CNN and they sounded like they had a new strategy. They say they were directly employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The two fighters were captured by Ukrainian forces. CNN is not giving out their identities to protect themselves. Both were recruited while in prison and are married with children. The other was serving time for manslaughter.
The interview took place in the room where the Ukrainians were present for security reasons. CNN told the fighters that they could end the interview at any time they wished. They were talking in detail for more than an hour.
“There were 90 of us. Sixty people were killed by mortar fire in the first assault. A handful remained wounded,” said one, recalling his first assault near the village of Bilohorivka. “If one group is unsuccessful, another is sent right away. If the second one is unsuccessful, they send another group.”
The other fighter was involved in an assault lasting five days, through a forest near the city of Lysychansk on the Luhansk-Donetsk border in eastern Ukraine.
You are unable to help the wounded. The Ukrainians were firing heavily on us so even if they only have minor wounds, you have to keep going, because you are the one who gets hit by the fire.
The prisoner said a self-preservation instinct had kicked in for him, but others froze. “Some stop right there in the forest and drop their weapons. Dropping your weapons will bring you under fire and you’ll die.
He said there was no move to evacuate the wounded. “If you’re wounded, you roll away on your own at first, any way you can, somewhere neutral where there’s no fire, and if there’s no one around, you administer first aid to yourself,” he said.
Casualties were piled up by a dozen. “When the casualties arrive, you get orders to load them, and you don’t really think who’s dead and who’s wounded,” one of the fighters said.
They became numb to the losses of the Ukrainians. You would think that you would feel something. [after killing someone], but no, you just keep going.”
The commander told the other fighter that he would have to be eliminated if anyone got cold feet. And if we failed to eliminate him, we would be eliminated for failing to eliminate him.”
The two men described how they were recruited by Wagner. In August and September last year, the group’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, arrived by helicopter at the prisons where they were held, offering six-month contracts in return for being pardoned.
The selection process was so rudimentary that older prisoners only had to show they could march a few yards, one of the prisoners said. “They took almost everyone.”
Several prisoners who were employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense spoke to CNN, and all said that they were employed directly by the ministry. Some of the documents held suggested they were used by the Russian defense ministry to deploy to an army from Luhansk. The unit 08807 was deployed in October to the frontlines around Soledar, known as a “Shtrum” brigade – for storming Ukrainian lines – and suffered catastrophic casualties.
The training was brief and basic – handling guns for the terrible assaults they would soon be ordered to carry out. The men said they were prepared for missions that they did not sign up for.
The German Army is at war, but I don’t think it’s just a good excuse to stay at the AFU,” exclaimed a cleric
One person said he did not mention anything about danger. We would have to serve six months in order to expunge all convictions and we would also have to pay a 240,000 rouble (around $3,300) advance to the defense.
“Then they started to hit us with multiple-grenade launchers from both sides. I crawled into the trench and they bandaged my butt. But since I was the leader of the group, I couldn’t let the guys simply die. So, I took a rifle and I started firing back.”
I don’t think that was the right choice, since I never participated in any military operation against the AFU. They brought us here under the wrong pretext. And so we are at war, but I don’t think it’s a just cause,” said one.
Viktor Sevalnev: Last message from a prisoner in Ukraine for the war against Russia, according to a CNN interview with Vladjudenko Usov
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 a last message to his wife, he said he feared officials from the Russian Ministry of Defense would soon take him from his hospital bed, where he recorded the audio message, and execute him. Days later, his body was returned to his wife in Moscow, in a closed coffin.
The prisoners recently captured by the Ukrainian forces said they were working for the ministry, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official.
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 will be used in the same way as cannon fodder.
Grainy footage obtained by Gulagu.net shows Sevalnev and his unit celebrating pre-deployment by dancing at a camp inside of 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.
Sevalnev’s wife declined to be interviewed for this report, but his audio messages and images of him from the war were supplied to CNN by Gulagu.net. Russian court documents obtained by CNN show Sevalnev was convicted for theft, and should, according to his sentencing, have been in jail when he died. His grave is outside of Moscow and he was dead in November 2022, according to the records.
“No one is being operated on here, no surgeries performed on anyone,” he said. For their safety, CNN is not releasing his name and those of the other survivors. “People walk around [the hospital] with bullet wounds, with shrapnel stuck in their legs.”
He described catastrophic losses before he was imprisoned. He stated that the unit had 130 people, but also had a lot of amputees, and probably had 40 left. He said that he had 15 survivors in his unit and that it was now referred to as 40321, or the Storm unit. “In short, the meat grinder,” he added. He told CNN he had been sent back to the front and his injuries hadn’t healed.
War is war and I have no complaints about it. Some come here and hear the machine gun, then they run. It isn’t good. They set everyone else up, as no one has my back,” he said. The soldier was wounded in the leg during the 25 day fight and described that he didn’t feel fear. In the trench, soil falls down but I don’t feel any fear at all. I don’t know why this happens to me.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russian-army-prisoners-conscripts-ukraine-intl/index.html
The death of a Tanzanian student and the fate of his fellow convicts who were arrested on drugs charges in exchange: a memo to the media
Relatives of three convicts who were employed by Wagner spoke to CNN in the summer and said that their fate appeared no better.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also elaborated on the legality of the pardons that Wagner has insisted convicts are given, telling reporters last month any presidential decrees pardoning prisoners were likely classified. He said there are open and secret decrees. “That is precisely why I cannot say anything about these decrees. I can really confirm that the entire procedure for pardoning prisoners is carried out in strict accordance with Russian law.”
Some prisoners who are not Russian are snared and may not have been convicted of a crime. Tanzanian student Nemes Tarimo was on an exchange in Moscow when he was apparently arrested on drugs charges and held on remand. He was convicted in March last year to seven years in jail, according to the Tanzanian foreign ministry, citing information from their Russian counterparts.
Wagner released a ghoulish video of a memorial ceremony in Tarimo’s honor at a graveyard in Molkino, western Russia, saying he died in October near Bakhmut. 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.
He was obedient as a child, his cousin told CNN. He was a very religious person and not a scamp. Before his death, she said they didn’t know anything about his recruitment. When he was alive, we never heard of this, but now that he has died, we are told that he was arrested for drug related offenses. It gives a lot of sorrow and sadness as a family. He never even had a dream of becoming a soldier.”
“Come out of prison, I’m going to throw you in at the front,” a Russian prisoner’s father tells us
“[Prigozhin] spent his whole 20s pretty much in jail. He emerged before his 30th birthday in this rapidly changing country after the death of the Soviet Union. The man comes out of prison and sells hotdogs. He moves on to bigger things very quickly.
The pitch is six months, it’s going to be horrible. It is going to be difficult. We will shoot you if you try to run away. Walker says that if you don’t give your everything, we will shoot you. After six months, you’re free to leave.
It’s just so out of the imagination of a former convict that he will fly around in his helicopter and give people a chance at salvation in lieu of fighting at the front. It’s so dystopian that it’s really hard to believe. But yet it has happened.”
He’s a big man. He has a shaved head. He speaks in a language that is quite coarse. It is clear that this guy is not polished. This is not a well-educated guy. Me and my colleague, when we were researching this article, we managed to get hold of a few prisoners who are still in prison and speak with them either by text message or in other ways, and ask them how they saw this guy, why people agreed to go, why, in that case, they didn’t agree to go. And they all said to us, “We could see from this guy that he was one of us. We kind of respected him because he’d also been in prison.” … 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 is not pretending this will be pleasant or that it will be a holiday. He’s saying that you’re probably going to die. It’s going to be absolutely horrible. The fighting is really hard. We’re going to throw you right in at the front line. If you survive this, I’ve got your back.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1158944377/russia-ukraine-war-mercenaries-prisoners-yevgeny-prigozhin-putin
Prigozhin stabbed in the leg by a syringe: a victim’s mother’s story
Perhaps a couple of weeks Of training. All of the reports we’ve had of the way that the convicts are used by the Wagner Group is that they’re not used on sort of difficult strategic operations or anything particularly targeted and careful. They’re really used as cannon fodder. Talking to Ukrainians who have been on the other side of the lines and kind of watched the Wagner troops approach them, they’ve said the same thing: that it’s really strength in numbers. It’s a bit of a disregard, really, for human life. There are many credible reports that there’s been executions of their own people as a punishment for disobeying orders and to keep everybody else in line.
People who look into Prigozhin’s activities tend to have more than one worry. A journalist from the Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper got a severed ram’s head and a funeral wreath just after he finished his investigations into Prigozhin. It’s kind of a sort of mafia touch.
[Alexei Navalny’s] team did a series of investigations into Prigozhin and into how he was winning these government contracts, back in 2015, 2016. One of Navalny’s top aides is the main investigator on these. 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 believes that the attack was linked to her investigation, and that they were able to get her husband to the hospital. He was given immediate medical attention. She said that the doctors told her that if it had been a bit longer, he may not have survived. It was a very strong animal tranquilizer that had been injected into his leg. … Let’s say you cross Yevgeny Prigozhin and there are some frightening things that can happen to you.
The fate of the dead soldiers in the country’s eastern Donbas trenches: Max, the team leader, and a Ukrainian sniper
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Max, a Ukrainian sniper, is oiling his rifle in the early morning sunlight, listening to AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” on his cellphone.
On the night before, Max and his team were operating in enemy territory and had cleared a trench of six Russian troops that a soldier had killed with a machine gun.
Andriy, the team leader, lays out the contents of the dead men’s green backpacks on the ground, outside the Ukrainian team’s safe house in the country’s eastern Donbas region.
“They were young, very young, and none older than 25 years old, that’s what I think of the dead soldiers,” says Andriy, referring to the dead soldiers. They have been provided with nothing.”
“Russians have the luxury to make mistakes because of the infinite reserve of the Russian mobilizational reserve,” says Andriy. They can lose a platoon, but some of them are going to survive and have some experience with the new conscripts.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1159671076/ukraine-war-donbas-russian-ukrainian-troops
Do we really need a enemy? A soldier’s army prepared for the Ukrainian war in Soledar, Ukraine: After all, they can’t shoot us, but they do
“They approach our positions, saying, ‘No, don’t shoot! We are your people.’ This is how they try to get close to us,” Andriy says. Our soldiers start to believe that it may be our people, because of the camouflage.
The guys share a private house. It is a mix of cozy domesticity and modern weaponry common near the front lines.
Max, who wears a military olive-green hoodie, says that the football hooligans are a small army. He has a bat on the back of his hand, and a snake on the left. I feel like it was preparing me for this war for my whole life.
He says that they have told them either to sit in a prison and be released in the battlefield or spend the rest of your life there. “They are now just used as meat. They push them in waves and waves and waves.”
Max says that they push them forward because of the threat of being shot. The conscripts need to go until they find the enemy. Then the Russians see where we are, and say, ‘Let’s hit that place.’ “
It can be difficult for those that do to use it. Max recalls a time in the Ukrainian city of Soledar — about 40 miles east of here — where his team prepared an ambush. Russian troops went through town without knowing that Max’s team was lay in wait 150 feet away.
“He looked like he was walking at the front of a parade,” recalls Max, incredulous. “Then some of our guys did something stupid. They shouted at him, ‘Stop!’ “
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1159671076/ukraine-war-donbas-russian-ukrainian-troops
Zelensky’s first shot: Cowboy-style shooting of his butt and his fight with the Russians in a hospital bed
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to vow to push Russian soldiers entirely out of Ukrainian lands, but the view from the front line is more measured.
“It was cowboy-style shooting,” Max recalls in a voice memo he recorded from his hospital bed. “We started to think what to do next when shrapnel from a grenade hit my butt.
Max has been fighting the Russians for nine years, but this is the first time he has been wounded. He says he doesn’t know how long it will take him to recover.
