Yevgeny Prigozhin lets himself be filmed in a cemetery where Wagner fighters are buried. He is calm about the fact that many of his mercenaries are being killed in Ukraine. “Those who fight sometimes die. That’s life,” he says.
According to its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary group Wagner continues to suffer losses in the fighting in Ukraine. In a video sent out by his press service, Prigozhin can be seen in a cemetery where Wagner fighters are buried. “Yes, (the graveyard) grows. Those who fight sometimes die. That’s life,” he says. “Wagner’s fighters continue to be buried here and there is no problem with that to this day,” Prigozhin adds in the video. “We will (…) make a monument out of this cemetery for future generations.”
The Wagner forces lead offensives in eastern Ukraine, around the town of Bakhmut, where the longest and bloodiest battles of the Russian war of aggression are taking place. Both sides suffered heavy casualties there. A few days ago, Prigozhin reported that his fighters had conquered Bakhmut “in the legal sense.” The government in Kiev then denied that the city had been taken by Russian troops. This Friday, Prigozhin also rowed back. The Ukrainian armed forces have set up defenses in the high-rise buildings west of Bakhmut. “It must be said clearly that the enemy is going nowhere,” he wrote in a statement on Telegram.
Russian authorities have not released new estimates of soldiers killed since September 2022, when the Defense Ministry counted 5,937 dead. However, this number does not include the Wagner fighters who are not part of the regular army. Estimates from Western countries suggest around 150,000 dead and injured on each side.
Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is involved in conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Up until February, Prigozhin had recruited prison inmates for months and promised them amnesty if they returned to Russia after surviving combat operations in Ukraine.
Source : NTV
