Wagner Group leader calls off prisoner recruitment after 'suicide squad' reports

Daily Star ^ | FEBRUARY 10, 2023 | Fasika Zelealem

[familyop]

The leader of The Wagner Group – described as the private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin – has revealed that the paramilitary organisation are no longer recruiting prisoners to fight the war in Ukraine...According to independent Russian media, the reason comes down to reports of convicts being executed discouraging new volunteers to step forward. The alleged lack of volunteers joining the 'suicide squad', as some describe the Wagner Group, is damaging optics to Prigozhin who appears to be losing his influence within the Kremlin.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Volunteer? You got to be out your f’n m8nd.

[Widget Jr]

Ping.

Admsmith, what do you think, in relation to your post (link) on Prigozhin's role as a толкачи tolkachi? Prigozhin's actions are inside and with permission of the Russian government and bureaucratic system, not independently outside it. His role as head of the Wagner Group has the military and FSB looking over his shoulder, right?

[pepsionice]

You know...it used to be pretty simple to follow the path of Putin and decisions made. If you just viewed the insider Oligarch folks and top level of the Duma....things would make sense.

With the war, you have to blend in the FSB, the top level of the military, and then guess how much influence the Wagner folks really exert.

Putin now has to guess the BS-level of forty different people...telling him forty different ideas.

[Cronos]

well, initially (i.e. last August or so), the Russian state media was still shocked that they hadn't rolled over Kyiv in 3 days, but they still (and even to today) kept saying everything was fine and the glorious Rossiski soldier was winning everywhere

For prisoners in the gulags the promise was that if they survived, they got out - and going by the media, that seemed highly possible. So they took it

But the survival rate turned out to be 20 out of 1000 -- and you can't keep the news of the defeats hidden for long, even in utterly state controlled media.

[tlozo]

Vlad Mykhnenko, an expert in the Eastern European history at Oxford University

"The Wagner Group is effectively a 'suicide squad.' That's not a really big promotional, unique selling point"

[pas]

Rare video footage of the suicide squad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHk2RSMCS8

[Williams]

The Ukrainian fellow, Daniel, who posts a daily video said he has become more optimistic about holding Bachmut, because Wagner is losing its supply of prisoners for human wave attacks.

He attributes this to Kremlin rivalries, including Putin’s insecurity.

Apparently the head of Wagner is viewed very favorably in Russian society.

But I wonder, did Wagner stop recruiting prisoners, or did they just say it for PR reasons.

[AdmSmith]

Prigozhin has been useful to Putin to make sure no one in the army or FSB would grow too big. But, now Putin is trying to limit him:

On January 15, Putin appeared on state television and spoke of the capture of Soledar without mentioning Wagner. That Putin refused to acknowledge his old friend's achievement points to a delicate state of affairs within the Kremlin, as the president struggles to control the narrative that his war in Ukraine is all going to plan.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-11/putin-prigozhin-tensions-soledar/101960462

Good article about the use of the cannon fodder https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-prigozhin-questionably-calls-obligations-to-wagner-s-ex-convict-recruits-fulfilled-/6956226.html