Wagner Group insider reveals desperate tactics as convicted prisoners are sent to die in waves
>
A Russian source has revealed the brutal tactics used by Putin’s private mercenaries in Ukraine.
‘Russian Criminal’, a website with links to the VChK-OGPU, repeated internal comments about the suicidal impulses of the Wagner Group.
Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary organization, first deployed in the 2014 annexation of Crimea and now a private extension of the Russian military in Ukraine with close ties to Putin.
The source told the outlet how squads of conscripted prisoners are sent out in waves over and over again, jumping to bring the front line a little closer to the enemy as Russian artillery continues to explode overhead.
The source said: ‘Sometimes there is an order not to wait for the shelling to end: the ‘Musicians’ [Wagner recruits] they are so disciplined that they will go anyway because they have a good chance of surviving.’
Putin’s crony Yevgeny Prigozhin trains prisoners to become ‘real cannibals’ in war with Ukraine
Wagner mercenaries in Popasna, Sievierodonetsk District of Lugansk Oblast, Ukraine
MailOnline previously reported on ‘human wave’ tactics by the Russian army and Wagner Group, filmed during heavy fighting for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine late last year.
Russian attacks have become increasingly desperate in recent months as Putin looks to secure a major victory after months of stalemate.
‘Somme’-style nihilistic thrusts result in huge casualties for both Ukraine and the Russian invaders, who have increasingly muffled invasion forces with a shield of ex-convicts.
The inside source, likely within the Wagner Group, told Russian Criminal that groups of eight advance in waves.
Each attack usually consists of four waves, but it can take up to 14 to take a contested area, as seen in Soledar.
The source said casualties often numbered a hundred or more per section.
Recruits from Russia’s penal colonies are disciplined by being induced to watch executions on video.
Those who show weakness or are lightly injured risk being shot in the legs and left behind.
As a result, waves of troops launch in suicidal charges through friendly artillery fire.
A Ukrainian drone captured the moment a group of Russian troops came under artillery fire near the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut in Donetsk.
The stormtroopers advance first in a squad of eight with a Bumblebee rocket-assisted flamethrower.
‘No matter what, the group must come to a firefight. “No matter what” is not a turn of phrase, but a task, the failure of which will end in execution, regardless of any factors.
Losses of more than 50% are not bad if there is a result
The squads then continue a cycle of advancing, digging, and marking a position, and then reporting the coordinates to artillery crews.
Less-equipped teams reportedly move forward to advance into the starting position marked by the stormtroopers.
Many are killed in friendly artillery fire from Russian territory, advancing even as artillery continues to land around them.
The source explained how the Wagner Group replaces the regular army in contested areas like Soledar, where defensive lines are strong. The mercenaries, made up largely of ex-convicts, are more willing to take on the task, losing four waves of eight men to advance to the front lines.
‘Losses of more than 50% are not bad if there is a result.’
Late last year, Russia made a concerted effort to recruit more prisoners to its front lines in an effort to break the stalemate in Ukraine.
The number of prisoners in Russian correctional colonies fell by 23,000 between September and October, independent media Medizona reported.
On November 6, Putin signed entry into force of a new law that allows the Russian state to recruit convicts.
The private Wagner group, which exists largely outside the law, likely he came to rely more on his convict recruitment between the summer and fall of 2022.
Amnesty and a cash payment were reportedly offered to prisoners who joined the war effort and returned after six months during the recruitment drive last summer.
Yesterday, the UK Ministry of Defense reported that Russia was struggling to maintain its convict supply and would no longer be able to rely on “human wave-style assault”.
This is corroborated by the source of ‘Russian Criminal’, who adds that as a result of the suicide tactics of the Wagner Group squads, ‘the losses are increasing and the advances [slowing] below’.
‘The recruitment of convicts at first gave a river of people flowing. Now they are gone.
White House spokesman John Kirby saying in January that approximately 50,000 Wagner Group fighters were currently in Ukraine, of whom some 40,000 are convicted.
Before Ukraine, private mercenaries from the Wagner Group were deployed in Syria, Sudan and central Africa, while allowing the Kremlin to deny any official Russian involvement.
The graves of fighters of the Russian mercenary group Wagner are seen in a cemetery near Bakinskaya
MailOnline reported yesterday on the dire plight of Russian infantry, used as cannon fodder, who would rather take their own lives than fight for Putin in Ukraine.
A 25-year-old, afflicted with panic attacks as a witness to war atrocities, has committed suicide after throwing himself out of a ten-story window in full view of his mother.
Unfortunately, Mikhail Lyubimov’s story is not unique and offers a tragic insight into the harsh reality of aggressive warfare.
Putin’s ‘meat grinder’ approach to war, sending recruits in waves to make small territorial gains in a sovereign nation, has seen morale and support for the war steadily decline over the past year.
jellyfish reported last year that support for the war among Russians fell steadily throughout 2022, peaking in March-April and falling from 25% to 16% in September.
Thick spring mud, ‘Rasputitsa’, is the latest assault on Russian morale as eastern Ukraine turns wet and humid.
Melting ground will make it difficult for armor to advance and can give entrenched defenders a tactical advantage.
As a result, it has been predicted that the end of winter may make it difficult for Ukraine to regain territory, further entrenching the war into a stalemate.
Ukrainian soldiers dig trenches in Soledar, Donetsk region, on January 14 as the Wagner Group attacks in waves with tactics reminiscent of those used in World War I.
The hands of a Ukrainian soldier take a smoke break after fresh waves of attacks and strikes at key infrastructure facilities in Soledar, eastern Ukraine, on January 14, 2023.
Russia has long relied on its large prison population to change the outcomes of the war.
After the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, the Soviet Union faced a mass defection of its regular troops.
With Nazi Germany advancing through the Crimea, Soviet leader Josef Stalin created Penal Battalions (‘Shtrafbats’) made up of all but professional criminals to maintain reinforcing forces.
The prisoners were sent to the most dangerous parts of the front line to resist the German invasion.
Until October 1942, Stalin used ‘blockade detachments’ to keep criminals advancing, shooting ‘panics and cowards’.
The infamous Order 227, the ‘not one step back’ order, held that ‘cowards and panic-mongers must be liquidated on the spot’.