Nearly 20,000 Wagner soldiers died in the battles for the city of Bachmut in eastern Ukraine last year. More than 17,000 of those who fell were recruited from Russian prisons.
This is shown by an investigation conducted by the independent Russian news site Mediazona together with the British BBC.
So far, over the equivalent of 10 billion Swedish kronor has been paid out to the soldiers' relatives, according to documents accessed by the media.
Threatened to leave
The now deceased Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who led the Wagner group in the attacks on Bachmut, himself stated that his forces had lost around 20,000 soldiers in the occupation attempts. However, he claimed that only half of them were prisoners.
The figures are significantly higher than the official death toll reported by Russia.
In May 2023, Prigozhin went public in a video and threatened that the Wagner forces would leave Bachmut. He believed that the Russian military leadership was letting the group's soldiers die due to a lack of weapons and ammunition.
At the same time, the investigation reveals that the largest daily losses occurred much earlier than May, namely in January 2023, when around 200 soldiers died daily.
Recruited from prisons
The Wagner group was allowed to recruit prisoners from Russian prisons to its units in 2022. Numerous reports have described how many of these recruits were immediately sent to the front lines, described as a "meat grinder".
In late May last year, the Wagner group claimed to have taken over Bachmut after several months of fighting with heavy losses.
The battle for Bachmut is said to be Russia's bloodiest battle since World War II.
