The Wagner group are seasoned veterans. If the premise came to save Mother Russia, I believe their zealotry will become a focused fury, that Mssr. Putin’s houseguards would not endure.
That sort of thing would make “the days of Yeltsin” appear to be a high school rendition of ‘Richard III’.
The core is seasoned veterans, but a large bulk of them(40,000) were recruited convicts. Not sure how many of those survived.
Human rights activists: Of the first thousand Wagner prisoners, 20 returned home
Of the first thousand prisoners recruited by the Wagner Group to participate in the war against Ukraine, only 20 have returned home, Olga Romanova, head of the Rus Seated NGO, said in an interview with Current Time.
According to her, the third wave of recruitment of prisoners into the “Wagner group” is now underway in Russia. The first wave went in the prisons of central Russia from June 26 to September 21, the second – in the Urals and the Far East from September 21 to the end of December. The third one has begun, covering the whole country, including Chechnya.
https://odessa-journal.com/human-rights-activists-of-the-first-thousand-wagner-prisoners-20-returned-home/