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By Isabel van Brugen
News Reporter
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Russia's Wagner Group, the paramilitary outfit founded by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, has suffered "significant" losses in the fight for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, a think tank has said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted in its latest assessment of the conflict in Ukraine that Western officials have reported that Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces have likely lost a substantial amount of manpower in the Bakhmut area, and that this will further constrain Russia's offensive on the city.
Russian and Ukrainian forces have been engaged in a bloody fight for Bakhmut since July. It has become the longest-running battle since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow is hoping to secure its first major battlefield victory since last summer by capturing Bakhmut, a small city with a pre-war population of 70,000.
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The ISW noted that on March 29, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley reported that the Wagner Group has around 6,000 professional personnel and 20,000 to 30,000 recruits, mostly convicts, fighting in the Bakhmut area.
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In late December, U.S. National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said that the paramilitary unit that provides fighters for hire had 50,000 personnel in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convict recruits.
Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, a charity advocating prisoners' rights, said in late January that out of the 50,000 convicts recruited by the Wagner Group, 40,000 were either dead or missing, and 10,000 were still fighting in Ukraine.
Prigozhin had been recruiting in Russian prisons since the summer of 2022 through the Wagner Group. But in February, amid rising tensions between Prigozhin and Russia's Defense Ministry, announced that he was no longer hiring convicts.
The Russian businessman, who himself served years behind bars, had very publicly spearheaded a recruitment drive, offering male prisoners commuted sentences and cash incentives in return for six months of military service in Ukraine. The Kremlin said Putin had pardoned convicts recruited to fight in Ukraine.
Prigozhin was seen in a leaked video in September 2022 recruiting soldiers from Russia's extensive penitentiary system, amid reports that the country was facing personnel shortages in Ukraine.
"The Wagner Group has deployed the vast majority of its force to support the offensive to capture Bakhmut, and it is likely that the difference between Kirby's 50,000 figure in Ukraine and Milley's 26,000 to 36,000 figure in the Bakhmut area is the result of casualties from Wagner's attritional offensive on Bakhmut," the think tank said.
The ISW— which is based in Washington D.C.—said that in the coming weeks, the Wagner Group could lose thousands more convict recruits as they finish their six-month military contracts.
"The Wagner leadership appears for now to be allowing pre-pardoned convicts to return from the front lines to Russia at the conclusion of those contracts," it said.
The reduction in Wagner Group manpower will "constrain Russian offensive operations in the Bakhmut area as well as the wider theater" and will also likely threaten its ability to maintain its influential role among Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, the ISW assessed.
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