Russia’s Wagner group using drafted recruits as ‘fodder’ to protect experienced commanders, says MoD

Russia’s proxy military fighter group Wagner is using convict conscripts to shield its “rare assets” of experienced commanders and threatening those wishing to exit the war with execution, the British defence ministry said on Monday.

These officers commanding convict recruits themselves remain in hiding while issuing orders and watching them through drones, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update on the war in Ukraine.

“Russian military proxy group Wagner continues to take a major role in attritional combat around the Donetsk oblast town of Bakhmut. In recent months, it has developed offensive tactics to make use of the large number of poorly trained convicts it has recruited,” the ministry said.

These individual fighters from Wagner are “likely issued a smartphone or tablet which shows the individual’s designated axis of advance and assault objective superimposed on commercial satellite imagery”.

They are then observed from a platoon level and above where from “commanders likely remain in cover and give orders over radios, informed by video feeds from small uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)”, the ministry’s intelligence report on the war said.

These conscripts and sections are then “ordered to proceed on the pre planned route, often with fire-support, but less often alongside armoured vehicles”, it said.

“Wagner operatives who deviate from their assault routes without authorisation are likely being threatened with summary execution,” the ministry said.

“These brutal tactics aim to conserve Wagner’s rare assets of experienced commanders and armoured vehicles, at the expense of the more readily available convict-recruits, which the organisation assesses as expendable,” the MoD said.

While heavily contested in its actual involvement in the war, Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin-led Wagner units are closing the “pincers” on Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut, the Institute for the Study of War said in its intelligence update on Saturday.

The top mercenary leading Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine through the private military company has reportedly recruited thousands of convicts from Russian prisons in what has been termed as a meat-grinding war.

In October, the British defence ministry said that Wagner likely remains heavily involved in the Bakhmut fighting.

“Russia likely views seizing Bakhmut as a preliminary to advancing on the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk urban area which is the most significant population centre of Donetsk oblast held by Ukraine,” it had said.

The battle of Bakhmut where Russian forces have dedicated a majority of their might after withdrawing from Kherson has demonstrated Mr Putin’s desire for visible gains.

Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets and shelling for more than seven months now.