Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has suffered about 35,000 casualties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, with about 10,000 of those fighters killed in action, defense analysts say.
Most of the recent deaths were among convicts released from Russian prisons in exchange for agreeing to fight in Ukraine. The U.S. National Security Counsel told reporters that roughly 90 percent of Wagner Group fighters killed in Ukraine since December were released inmates.
Half of the overall deaths among Wagner mercenaries have occurred in the last two months, as fighting accelerated in Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut.
National Security Counsel spokesman John Kirby said the mercenaries had made modest gains in the vicinity of Bakhmut but those advances had taken many weeks to achieve and came at a “devastating cost that is not sustainable.”
“It is possible that they may end up being successful in Bakhmut but it will prove of no real worth to them because it is of no real strategic value,” he said, pointing out that Ukraine’s military is reinforcing strong defensive lines across the Donbas region.
Kirby told reporters that Wagner continued to rely heavily on released inmates, who are sent to the battlefield without training or equipment. That contradicts recent claims by the Wagner Group’s founder that he had stopped recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
England’s defense ministry says Russian forces have suffered at least 200,000 casualties since the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has been very bad at retrieving and taking care of wounded troops, aggravating a high ratio of deaths to injuries among its casualties. “The high Russian casualty rate, especially the high ratio of deaths to injuries, continues to have deleterious effects on the Russian military’s combat effectiveness and is likely prompting Russian officials to continue crypto-mobilization efforts,” says the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, DC.
