[ad_1]
MADRID (Euronews) – The British Ministry of Defense intelligence service estimates that the Wagner Group currently has 5,000 mercenaries, ten times less than before the death of its boss Yevgeny. In August 2023, Prigozhin suffered a plane crash.
The new report from British Military Intelligence notes that Friday marks the first anniversary of the accidental death of Prigozhin and other senior Wagner officials, including its founder Dmitry Utkin, in the plane crash, and the organization has continued to split since then.
They include Andrei “Sedoi” Troshev, the former CEO of Wagner, who later joined the Russian Defense Ministry as part of a team dedicated to training volunteers to fight in Ukraine, and Alexander “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, who joined the Chechen special forces.
“A large number of Wagner veterans followed the organization’s former leaders to other units. Compared with about 50,000 members in 2023, the number now remains around 5,000 and they are sent to Belarus and Africa,” he noted.
Prigozhin is one of the most high-profile faces in Ukraine’s war, leading his mercenary group on multiple fronts while launching fierce attacks on armed forces chief and former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom he accuses of keeping them in Ukraine’s slant.
In late June 2023, he and his men launched a failed mutiny, but as he began to march towards Moscow, he eventually capitulated and sought refuge in Belarus following the intervention of President Lukashenko. However, a year later, he died in a plane crash.
[ad_2]
Source link
