The ruthless approach of the founder of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin to his militants led to the fact that the ranks of his private army were greatly thinned. Of the 50 thousand mercenaries recruited in prisons at the front in Ukraine, about a fifth remained. This is stated in the report of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Giving this figure, ISW analysts refer to the information of Olga Romanova, head of the independent Russian human rights organization Rus Seated, and note that the remaining 40,000 recruited militants have either already been eliminated at the front, or have been injured, or have deserted from their positions..

“ISW cannot independently confirm these figures, but they are very likely given the Wagner model of using convicts as cannon fodder in very grueling offensive operations.. The model that Wagner used, keeping highly trained long-serving mercenaries as leadership and elements of the Special Forces type on top of the mass of untrained prisoners, is also said to result in high combat casualties, capitulations and desertions,” the ISW report says..

[see_also ids\u003d"

Recall, ISW also noted that Vladimir Putin used the "