The toll of casualties is fast mounting in Ukraine, with the head of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group saying Wednesday that 20,000 of his men have been killed in the lengthy fight for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said about half of those killed in the battle for control of Bakhmut were Russian convicts who were promised their freedom from sentences for criminal offenses if they fought in Ukraine for six months. But the mercenaries were often sent to the battlefront with scant training and often were killed soon after in fierce combat with better-trained Ukrainian troops.
White House officials said Prigozhin’s casualty estimate was in line with their own that Russian losses have accelerated. Russia claimed in recent days it has captured Bakhmut, while Ukrainian officials say they have not given up the fight for the city and are trying to surround it.
Casualty figures for the now 15-month conflict have varied widely, depending on the source of the information. Prigozhin’s estimate for Bakhmut alone stands in sharp contrast to Moscow’s widely disputed claim that just over 6,000 of its troops had been killed as of January, about 11 months into the war.
The U.S. estimated this month that Russia had sustained 100,000 casualties, including 20,000 killed in the fighting, half of them Wagner forces, since December alone. Analysts say Ukraine has also lost thousands of its troops, although Kyiv has not said how many.
U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says that from February 2022 until early April 2023, it recorded 22,734 civilian casualties in Ukraine: 8,490 killed and 14,244 injured.
Prigozhin, despite his forces fighting alongside Moscow’s troops, has been a frequent critic of Russian defense leadership, claiming Moscow has not supplied Wagner with enough ammunition.
In an interview published late Tuesday with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist, Prigozhin extended his criticism — questioning some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for the war. Prigozhin said Russia’s stated goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine has backfired because Kyiv’s military has become stronger with Western weapons and training.
Asked why Prigozhin would make the Bakhmut death toll claim, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “It’s possible that this could be a sort of morbid way of him … claiming credit for whatever they’ve been able to achieve in Bakhmut, but also trying to publicly embarrass the Ministry of Defense further that the cost was borne in blood and treasure by Wagner, and not by the Russian military.”
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