“It’s the private war of Prigojine”, continues the soldier named Eugene, known as “Gym”, 38 years old, member of the national guard.
All around the concrete tunnel under which he took shelter, one kilometer from the front line, Russian shells or rockets fly at regular intervals.
In Bakhmout, a small town in eastern Ukraine, on which Russia strangely continues to push, even as it retreats elsewhere, it is Evguéni Prigojine, the boss of the Wagner forces, who is in charge.
And the Russian oligarch, reputed to be close to Vladimir Putin but who displays growing personal political ambitions, seems ready to do anything to win this military trophy.
Since the beginning of October, he has been accused by Ukraine of dumping there a flood of thousands of fighters recruited directly from Russian prisons, against the promise of a salary and an amnesty.
Used for several weeks mainly on the front line, and especially at night, these ex-detainees serve as “human bait”, according to several testimonies of Ukrainian soldiers collected by AFP in Bakhmout.
“Your Jail Number”
“It starts around 6:00 p.m., when it’s dark,” says Anton, known as “Poliak”, 50, a member of the 93rd Ukrainian brigade, on rest since an injury.
“These inexperienced soldiers are sent under our bullets for several minutes and they stay there,” he testifies. According to him, up to 7 or 8 so-called “diversion” commandos can thus be sent to a position in a single night.
“Their job is to advance in our direction so that we can fire on them and then they can locate us”, deciphers Sergii, known as “Tanthon”, major in the 53rd brigade of the Ukrainian forces, from the outskirts of the contact line.
“Then they send artillery or other more experienced commandos to our positions,” he continues.
Most Russian fighters fall under Ukrainian ammunition and, more rarely, some, only wounded, are captured.
The same morning, Tanthon found alive one of these Wagner fighters, former convicts who had come in regiments and called by the Ukrainians “single-use soldiers”.
“In a sense he is lucky, because he is still alive, most of his comrades were killed”, comments the soldier.
In a video he shot and dating from the same day – which AFP was able to authenticate – the Russian captive can be seen lying on the floor of a room, injured in the right hand and in the left leg.
He is interrogated by the Ukrainian major.
– “What is the number of your prison?”, he asks.
– “It’s Kopeika” (the correctional penitentiary number 1 located in Voronezh, in the west of Russia), answers the Russian mercenary.
The latter then indicates having joined Wagner a month ago, and having received rapid training, in three different places, the last of which was in Lugansk.
All those who were with him were “convicts” recruited by the Wagner group, explains the captive.
“I’m Getting You Out of Here”
This paramilitary group, which emerged in 2014 in Ukraine, has been suspected for years by Westerners of carrying out the dirty work of the Kremlin in various theaters of operation, from Syria to the Central African Republic. Moscow has always denied.
The private company is partly made up of hardened mercenaries in foreign theaters, but also of professional Russian soldiers who have passed over to Wagner’s side because they are better equipped and better paid than in the army, as well as recruits without experience, and released from prison.
Yevgeny Prigojine only admitted being the founder on September 26, putting an end to years of rumors.
A few days before, a video had emerged showing him – in all likelihood – recruiting inmates from a Russian prison establishment, to send them to Ukraine.
Faced with prisoners in rows of onions, he details his requirements and gives them a few minutes to decide: he wants men between 22 and 50 years old, in “good physical shape”, while specifying that he will pay attention to the convicted of sex crimes and drug addicts.
“I’m getting you out of here alive! But I don’t always give you back alive. Well, guys, do you have any questions?” he concluded.
His catering group, Concord, has neither confirmed nor denied the origin of this video.
Obsession
For Moscow, these recruitment operations are an admission of failure, at a time when its army is in difficulty on several Ukrainian fronts and when the announced mobilization of 300,000 Russians has shaken the national confidence pact.
To fight in Bakhmout, the boss of Wagner would have succeeded in recruiting in prison up to “2,000” detainees, according to a statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on October 16.
But why did Yevgeny Prigojine make the small mining town of Ukrainian Donbass such an obsession?
According to military experts, this bloody push on the locality (of 70,000 inhabitants before the war), which has lost all strategic interest since the withdrawal of the Russians from Izioum, no longer seems to respond to any military logic.
“The Russians are exhausting themselves there without succeeding in enveloping or destroying major enemy positions”, analyzes for AFP Mykola Bielieskov, researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Research.
Retired Ukrainian Colonel Sergei Grabsky believes that “technically Russia can capture Bakhmut, but not in the near future”, and that it would be a “Pyrrhic victory”, obtained at the cost of losses if heavy for the winner that it would almost amount to a defeat.
Carelessness
Beyond the military trophy, Yevgeny Prigojine seems more and more interested in a political platform, asserting himself as a warlord in the face of the negligence of the Russian generals.
On October 19, the oligarch announced that he had embarked on the construction of a “Wagner line”, a “Maginot line” bristling with anti-tank “dragons’ teeth”, as during the First World War, supposed to maintain Ukrainian troops away from the occupied territories of the Lugansk region.
A symbolic project with vague outlines, supposed to establish its narrative as the ultimate defender of the national territory, castigating the “bureaucrats-enemies” of Moscow who do not support it, those he says who “constantly change scenarios since February”.
“The Russian troops are on the defense and he is on the offensive, it is his main interest: to transform this battle into political influence, therefore into money”, explains the Ukrainian analyst Mykola Bielieskov.
For Nestor, a Ukrainian soldier from the 53rd brigade, engaged on this bloody front, Evguéni Prigojine, who served for a time as a supplier to the Kremlin kitchens, “earned his nickname of Putin’s cook”.
“He transforms 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 soldiers into cannon fodder,” says the fighter.
The number of Russian recruits who fell at the Bakhmout front is unknown.
The adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Oleksiy Arestovych, estimated “in the low range” that it was the equivalent of one company per day, or 100 to 200 men.