The White House said on Friday (17) that the United States estimates that more than 30,000 mercenaries of the Wagner group, backed by Russia, have been killed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a press conference that around 9,000 of those casualties have taken place since mid-December last year, with the intensifying battle in Bakhmut, in the Donbass region (eastern Ukraine). .
“They’re using their recruits, most of them convicts, as cannon fodder, they’re literally throwing them through a meat grinder,” he declared.
Kirby added that, based on US intelligence, it is believed that 90% of Wagner casualties in December would have been convicts enlisted in the organization.
The US has imposed sanctions against this Russian group of mercenaries for their involvement in the war in Ukraine and has designated it a “transnational criminal organization”, which opens up the possibility for them to continue to economically sanction both the organization and allies around the world.
Last January, the US estimated that the group would have around 50,000 soldiers in Ukraine, of which 10,000 would be contracted and 40,000 would be ex-convicts, and assured that Wagner recruits guerrillas in Russian prisons.