According to estimates by the US government, 50,000 mercenaries from the Russian Wagner combat group are stationed in Ukraine, including 40,000 convicts. In the past few weeks alone, around 1,000 Wagner fighters have been killed, says White House communications director John Kirby in Washington. Around 90 percent of them were convicts from Russian prisons. In certain cases, the Russian military is under the command of the “Wagner” group.
According to Kirby “North Korea completed a first arms delivery to Wagner” – the mercenaries would have paid for it. “We assume that the amount of material supplied to ‘Wagner’ will not change the dynamics on the battlefield and in Ukraine, but we are certainly concerned that North Korea is planning to supply more military equipment .”