2024-08-24 11:37:32
The UK Ministry of Defence reported this on X (Twitter).
The agency recalls that today marks one year since the death of key leaders of the Wagner Group, including owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry Utkin, who died in a plane crash, likely due to an explosion on board. Since then, the Wagner Group has become heavily fragmented, with many of the surviving high-ranking members leaving its ranks.
Andrey “Sedoy” Troshev, former CEO of Wagner, has apparently joined the Russian Defense Ministry, becoming part of the Redut PMC, which is building “volunteer corps” units to fight in the Ukraine war. Aleksandr “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, who previously commanded Wagner’s 1st Assault Detachment, has joined the Chechen special forces unit “Akhmat”.
According to British intelligence, many Wagner veterans followed these and other former leaders in leaving the group.
“Compared to a peak of around 50,000 in 2023, Wagner currently has around 5,000 fighters remaining in Belarus and Africa,” the UK Ministry of Defence said.
Let us recall that on August 23, 2023, a plane belonging to the Wagner group crashed in a plane crash, with Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine other people on board.
Earlier, Cursor reported that on July 28, 2024, Tuareg rebels reported that they had killed dozens of government soldiers and Russian mercenaries from Wagner in a battle near the border with Algeria.
GUR representative Andrey Yusov reported that Ukrainian intelligence was involved in the defeat of the “Wagnerites”. Later, he also noted that in addition to operations to destroy Russian mercenaries in Sudan, Syria and Mali, other operations are being carried out, information about which has not yet been made public, and new events are being prepared.