A Ukrainian intelligence agency has identified more than 200 letters of condolence for families of deceased members of the Wagner Group, often branded as Vladimir Putin’s private army.
Every one of the letters sent to the war victim’s next of kin was signed by the Wagner Group’s high-ranking officer, Andrey Troshev.
Accompanied by a posthumous medal of valour, the documents were meticulously numbered, allowing for an estimation of how many mercenaries got killed during Moscow’s ‘special military operation.’
A Russian independent portal, Insider, contacted families of the deceased and confirmed that their relatives who featured on the letters in fact left penal colonies and were dispatched to fight in Ukraine.
Based on the serial numbers of the letters, at least 458 prisoners conscripted into the Wagner Group were killed by 13 October.
Past that date, despite news of Wagner Group member deaths flooding social media, no identification number has been observed, possibly because the families were cautioned against showing them in the public domain.
Adding such social media reports to the deaths evidenced by the letters gives around 500 confirmed deaths of Russian mercenaries, which makes up around a quarter of all the prisoners that had been sent to Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group.
(pjm)
Source: Rzeczpospolita