Russia’s Mercenary Army
“They climb over the corpses of their friends”: Ukrainian soldiers describe the fight against Wagner troops
Ukrainian soldiers fire a 120mm mortar at Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut (archive photo). In the attacks on the city, Russia mainly uses the mercenary group Wagner
© Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/DPA
For months, Russia has been trying to take over the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine with the help of the Wagner mercenary group. Two of the Ukrainian defenders reported the fighting to the US broadcaster CNN – and expressed their suspicions.
Fierce fighting has been going on for months over the small town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian soldiers Andriy and Borisych are among the defenders of the town in Donetsk province, which has now been largely destroyed. In a candle-lit bunker hewn into the frozen ground, the men reported to the US broadcaster CNN about the attacks by the Russian mercenary group Wagner on their positions.
“They climb over the corpses of their friends”
“We fought for about ten hours straight. And it wasn’t just waves, it was non-stop. It was like they didn’t stop coming,” Andriy recalled a firefight against a barrage of Wagner fighters. The Ukrainian soldiers’ AK-47 assault rifles had become so hot from the constant shooting that they had to keep replacing them. “There were about 20 soldiers on our side and maybe 200 on their side,” Andriy estimated.
The attack was a scary and surreal experience, the soldier said. “Our machine gunner went almost insane from shooting at them and he said, ‘I know I hit him, but he doesn’t fall down’. And then after a while, if maybe he lost too much blood, then he just falls over.”
Andriy compared the fight to scenes from a zombie movie. “They climb over the bodies of their friends and step on them,” he said. “It looks like it’s very, very likely they’ll be on drugs before the attack.”
Andriy’s claims cannot be independently verified. But they coincide with the reports of other defenders of Bakhmut: “With night vision goggles we can see them coming towards us like zombies,” said the Ukrainian soldier Jura in November the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti the attacks of the Wagner mercenaries. “They just come at us, in big groups. When we start shooting, they don’t even try to take cover. They just walk like in a slow-motion movie.”
Jura also suspects that the attackers are under the influence of drugs. “Nobody else behaves like that. They don’t duck, they don’t throw themselves on the ground, they don’t do anything when we shoot.”
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Irina Rybakova, a spokeswoman for the 93rd Ukrainian brigade, reported a similar thing last November the website “Caravanserei” sponsored by the US armed forces: “It’s a common phenomenon that Wagnerists just walk into bullets and die,” Rybakova said. “I think they took something. Our people said they were under the influence of some drugs.”
According to CNN, Wagner uses inexperienced recruits as cannon fodder
According to CNN, the Wagner group’s tactic is to let loose on the Ukrainian positions in a first wave, mainly recruits who come directly from Russian prisons. These attackers knew little about military tactics and were poorly equipped, reports the broadcaster citing a document from the Ukrainian military intelligence service. Most just hoped that if they survived their six-month assignment, they could go home and not have to go back to a cell. Anyone who retreats without an order or without being wounded will be executed on the spot.
“They make sure that the group – let’s say ten soldiers – gets 30 meters away, then they start digging in to hold their position,” says Andriy, describing the procedure. Another group follow and advance another 30 meters. “In this way, Wagner tries to move forward step by step, while they lose a lot of people in the meantime.” Only when the first wave was exhausted or eliminated would more experienced fighters attack, often from the flanks, to overrun the Ukrainian positions.
According to Andriy and Borisych, this almost happened. “The problem was that they walked around us. And so they surrounded us. They came from the other side. We didn’t expect them to come from there,” reports Andriy. “We had already fired up to the last shell, so we threw all the grenades we had left and only me and a couple of guys stayed behind. We were helpless in this situation.”
But the soldiers were lucky. After holding off the attackers until the last moment, the two recount, the Wagner troops retreated by the end of the day.
Sources: CNN I, CNN II, Iltalehti, “Caravanserei”