In a post to his personal Telegram channel, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin clarified figures on manpower and casualty numbers, which appears to be in response of claims that 30,000 Wagner PMCs joined the Russian military after last month’s mutiny.
According to Prigozhin:
- 78,000 Wagner fighters “passed through the Ukraine business trip”
- 49,000 of those fighters were prisoners
- 22,000 fighters were killed and 40,000 were wounded by the capture of Bakhmut, which he said was May 20, 2023
- He signaled that Wagner has 25,000 ‘alive and healthy” fighters, with the addition of an unspecified number of treated wounded who continue to serve
- Of that 25,000, Prigozhin said 10,000 have left for Belarus while 15,000 have “gone on vacation.” It is unclear to me if this means they left Wagner Group or have already been deployed elsewhere in the world, namely Africa.
