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Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said some 20,000 troops from his group were killed in the months-long battle for control of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
He said he had recruited about 50,000 prisoners to fight with Wagner in Russia’s war in Ukraine and that about 20 percent of them had been killed.
A similar number of his contract soldiers had also perished in the battle for the city, he told Russian political strategist Konstantin Dolgov in a video interview posted on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, reports Al Jazeera.
Prigozhin, a businessman whose influence has deepened since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, has scathingly criticised the country’s military leadership, accusing Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of incompetence.
If ordinary Russians continued getting their children back in coffins while the children of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun, he warned in his latest video, Russia would face turmoil along the lines of 1917 that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
Wagner and the Russian military claimed to have taken control of Bakhmut, which has been left in ruins by the prolonged fighting, with Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating the armed forces. But Kyiv has said its forces continue to fight for the city.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
