Washington, (EFE).- The United States estimates that more than 30,000 mercenaries from the Wagner group, supported by Russia, have died since the start of the war in Ukraine, the White House reported on Friday.
The spokesman for the National Security Council of the US Presidency, John Kirby, indicated in a press conference that of these casualties they estimate that some 9,000 have occurred since mid-December last with the intensification of the battle in Bakhmut, in Donbas (eastern Ukraine).
“They are using their recruits, most of them convicts, as cannon fodder, they are literally throwing them into a meat grinder,” he said.
Kirby added that based on the intelligence information available to the US, he believes that 90% of Wagner’s casualties in December would be convicts enlisted in the organization.
The US has imposed sanctions against the Wagner group of Russian mercenaries for its involvement in the war in Ukraine and has designated it as a “transnational criminal organization”, which opens the possibility of continuing to punish this organization and its allies around the world economically. world.
In January, the US estimated that the group would have some 50,000 troops deployed in Ukraine, of which 10,000 would be contractors and 40,000 ex-convicts, and announced that Wagner recruits guerrillas in Russian prisons.