RFE/RL’s Yaroslav Krechko reports that Ukrainian soldiers found bodies of enemy soldiers with patches indicating they were members of the Wagner Group, Putin’s private army. The bodies were abandoned on a battlefield near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, after a brief combat with Ukrainian soldiers in a wooded area.
You can see Krechko’s report in “Bodies Of Russian Mercenaries Litter Field After Donetsk Battle With Ukrainian Army” (warning: video depicts dead bodies, though mostly blurred out).
Krechko shows two patches:
- One patch depicts the Grim Reaper, saying “НАШ БИЗНЕС СМЕРТЬ И БИЗНЕС ИДЕТ ХОРОШО”, Russian for “OUR BUSINESS IS DEATH AND BUSINESS IS GOOD”.
- Another patch says “Я НЕ ВЕРЮ НИ ВО ЧТО. Я ТУТ ПРОСТО ДЛЯ НАСИЛИЯ”, Russian for “I DON’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING. I’M HERE JUST FOR VIOLENCE.”
The Ukrainian soldiers say these are calling cards for the Wagner Group. The dead soldiers bore no Russian Army markings, but some had patches and green armbands with lettering in Arabic, on bodies that didn’t look Slavic. The dead soldiers had only standard uniforms and Kalashnikov rifles, and did not use advanced tactics before they died.
The Ukrainian soldiers obtained radios from some of the dead soldiers, and heard recordings of communications asking superiors for an evacuation vehicle, but their headquarters did not send one to pick them up.
Reports like this should be of interest to Russians thinking of joining the Wagner Group, which has recently had enough trouble recruiting that it has partly stepped out of its shadowy tradition and put up recruiting billboards in provincial cities in Russia. As Meduza reports, many recent Wagner Group recruits are coming directly from prisons, where inmates are promised 100,000 rubles ($1,600) per month plus a month’s salary as bonus, plus an official pardon and a return home if they survive six months of combat. Prison recruits also must promise not to drink, use drugs, loot, desert, or surrender, all on penalty of death. They are given two weeks of basic training before being sent into combat.
It appears that Putin has decided to use his private mercenaries indiscriminately as cannon fodder in eastern Ukraine. Even if I were a criminal in a Russian prison, though, I’d think twice before signing up for an organization with a patch that says “OUR BUSINESS IS DEATH AND BUSINESS IS GOOD”. In Ukraine, the patch refers more to the mercenaries who wear it than to the Ukrainian soldiers they’re attacking.