News of the hacking of Wagner Group’s data was announced by Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov on Monday night, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Fedorov wrote on the social messaging app Telegram: "The website of the Wagner group, which recruits Russian prisoners for the war in Ukraine, has been hacked by the IT Army!”
He added: “We have all the personal data of mercenaries! Every executioner, murderer and rapist will be severely punished. Revenge is inevitable!," as cited by the Ukrainska Pravda website.
'All of Ukraine under threat of rocket attack': General Staff
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Tuesday morning that Russian forces had carried out ten missile strikes and fifteen air attacks over the past 24 hours, according to Poland’s polskieradio24.pl website.
Infrastructure in more than 33 settlements has been damaged by the strikes, Ukraine’s military command said, adding that “all of Ukraine’s territory is under threat of rocket attack,” polskieradio24.pl reported.
Ukrainian counter-attacks
At the same time, “The missile and artillery units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine inflicted fire damage on 16 enemy objects, including six areas of concentration of personnel, weapons and military equipment,” Ukraine’s General Staff also said, as cited by the Ukrinform news agency.
‘Occupiers are panicking’ in Kharkiv region: Zelensky
Assessing the situation in the northeastern Kharkiv region, following Ukraine’s successful counter-offensive, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “We are stabilising the situation, holding on strong to our positions. So strong, in fact, that the occupiers are obviously panicking,” as quoted by polskieradio24.pl.
Russia’s proxies in Donbas ‘panicking’: ISW
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Monday night that “Urgent discussion on September 19 among Russia’s proxies of the need for Russia to immediately annex Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts (much of the latter of which is not under Russian control) suggests that Ukraine’s ongoing northern counter-offensive is panicking proxy forces and some Kremlin decision-makers.”
The US think tank reported that “The legislatures of Russia’s proxies in occupied Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), each called on their leadership to ‘immediately’ hold a referendum on recognizing the DNR and LNR as Russian subjects.”
Morale sinks among elite Russian units
Meanwhile, the ISW also noted that “Recent Ukrainian counter-offensive successes are further reducing the already poor morale among Russian units that had been considered elite before February 24.”
The US experts said that “Independent Belarusian media outlet Vot Tak posted images of intercepted documents left behind by Russian soldiers of Unit 31135 of the 1st Motorised Rifle Regiment of the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division as they fled Izyum en masse.”
According to the ISW, “The signed documents (dated to August 30, prior to Ukraine’s counter-offensive in Kharkiv on September 7) include written pleas to commanders of Unit 31135 to dismiss the letters’ authors due to persistent ‘physical and moral fatigue.’”
The US analysts pointed out that “Ukrainian intelligence claimed that 90% of the personnel of the 1st Motorised Rifle Regiment wrote damning reports on the state of morale as early as May 23, 2022.”
As the ISW noted, “The 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division is one of three divisions of the 1st Guards Tank Army, which, prior to the current war in Ukraine, was considered Russia’s premier mechanised force and was to be Russia’s key force in a large-scale conventional war with NATO.”
“The intercepted letters indicate pervasive morale issues among Russia’s most elite units and the degradation of Russia’s conventional capabilities against NATO,” the think tank assessed.
Tuesday is day 209 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, pravda.com.ua, polskieradio24.pl, ukrinform.net, understandingwar.org