Drone attacks on Kiev and fierce battles at the front in Donetsk: even at the start of the new year, there seems to be no end to the war in Ukraine.
In Bakhmut, the Ukrainians are trying by all means to maintain their positions. According to reports from Kiev, the Russian army has suffered heavy casualties in recent days. Ukrainian Army Group East spokesman Sergei Cherewati on Saturday spoke of 170 fallen soldiers and a “conveyor belt of death”.
Whether this figure is correct cannot be independently verified. That Russian soldiers die there is also apparent from recordings from our own ranks.
Prigozhin appears next to body bags
A video appeared late on Sunday evening showing the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (61), in a makeshift morgue. The recordings are said to have been made on New Year’s Eve near Bachmut.
In the video, Prigozhin can be seen next to several black body bags. The man behind the camera asks him who is lying there. «Wagner fighters who fell like heroes at the front. They will now be respectfully placed in the zinc coffins and taken home,” Prigozhin replies.
He says of the dead Wagner mercenaries: “Your contract has expired. You go home in a week. We must now prepare for the journey.”
Prigozhin, who is considered a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin (70), has recruited numerous prisoners for the war in Ukraine in recent months. The criminals were lured into the contracts with amnesty and a lot of money. So now they’re coming home dead men.
The video shows the body bags being loaded onto a truck. Prigozhin shouts to the men piling up the corpses: “Happy New Year, people.” (Man)