More than 18,000 Russian soldiers died in the war – most of them were prisoners

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Thousands of Russian soldiers died in the war in Ukraine. Because the official positions in the government apparatus of Vladimir Putin (70) hardly say anything about their losses, independent Russian journalists try to find out the number of deaths themselves.

Mediazona and BBC Russia have now confirmed the names of 18,023 Russian soldiers. The journalists notice that one particular group stands out when it comes to the dead: the prisoners.

The boss of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (61), has been recruiting men in Russian prisons since autumn to go to war for money and amnesty.

Losses increase because of Bachmut

At least 2,259 of them are now dead, which is 12.5 percent of the confirmed deaths. The criminals recruited by the Wagner group most often died during the war. There were also heavy casualties among the mobilized and volunteers.

At the start of the war – in the winter and spring of 2022 – the airborne troops, the spearhead of the failed invasion from the north, suffered the heaviest losses. The motorized rifle brigades followed later, according to the data analysis of the journalists. These extremely powerful units consisted of professional and regular soldiers at least until the beginning of the war.

Many of them were wiped out or nearly wiped out in the early weeks of the war as the fighting continued.
The Russian army was now filling its ranks with volunteers. In the summer and fall of 2022, they died in particular.

Sent to the «slaughterhouse»

But since December, the most significant increase has been in the number of prisoners recruited into the Wagner forces. These were often used as cannon fodder. In Bakhmut, for example, they had to attack the Ukraine without any preparation, so they returned fire and announced their positions to the regular troops who were advancing. Reports circulated in Russia that the prisoners were being sent “to the slaughterhouse”.

On New Year’s Eve, Prigozhin visited a mortuary in Bakhmut. There he appeared next to dozens of dead bodies lying in black body bags before being taken to Russia.

In March 2023, the prisoners formed the largest group of war victims. There are also nearly 900 additional Wagner men, listed separately in the “Mediazona” chart because they did not travel to Ukraine from prison. But they came back in a zinc coffin. (man)

Source: Blick