"Prigozhin's star has begun to set" After Months of Failed Attempts to Capture Bakhmut; Killed or Deserted: 10,000 Convicts Remain in Ranks of Wagner Group in War with Ukraine; Ru Loses Over 50 Soldiers Near Mali Shcherbaky; First Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Arrive in Ukraine in Coming weeks, LIVE UPDATES and MORE

"Prigozhin's star has begun to set" after months of failed attempts to capture Bakhmut – ISW:

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has noted that Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has begun to lose credibility in the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the many months of failed attempts to capture Bakhmut.

Source: ISW

Details: ISW said that "Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s star has begun to set" after months of apparent rise following his failure to make good on promises of capturing Bakhmut with his private forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had probably turned his hopes to Prigozhin, along with Prigozhin’s ally, Army General Sergey Surovikin, to gain ground and break the will of Ukraine, along with its Western backers, after the conventional Russian military had culminated and suffered disastrous setbacks there.

At the same time, the Russian Defence Ministry and General Staff, headed by Sergey Shoigu and Army General Valery Gerasimov respectively, have turned their attention to mobilising Russian reservists and conscripts; and setting conditions for improved performance by the conventional Russian military, but they had little hope of achieving anything decisive in the autumn and early winter of 2022.

Putin apparently decided to give Prigozhin and Surovikin a chance to show what they could do relying on mobilised prisoners on the one hand, and a brutal air campaign targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on the other.

As ISW noted, both efforts failed. --->READ MORE HERE

Killed or deserted: 10,000 convicts remain in ranks of Wagner Group in war with Ukraine:

Out of the 50,000 recruited convicts in Russian prisons for the war in Ukraine, only 10,000 remain in the ranks of the Wagner Group private military company, writes Russia Behind Bars charity fund.

Source: Russia Behind Bars, non-governmental organisation and charity fund; Meduza, the Russian Latvia-based media outlet

Quote from Olga Romanova, Head of Russia Behind Bars: "Our data indicates that 42,000 to 43,000 (convicts) were recruited at the end of December. Now, most likely, there are more than 50,000 of them. 10,000 of them are fighting at the front line, because all the others are either killed, wounded, have gone missing, deserted, or surrendered," Romanova said.

Details: Romanova states that convicts began to desert from the Wagner Group "at a terrible rate" back in the autumn. Many fled back to Russia with weapons. As an example, she cited a case that happened in early December 2022 in Rostov Oblast. Then, the former convict who deserted opened fire on the policemen, injuring one of them.

Romanova also suggested that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, who "promised Putin to win the war", does not keep statistics on the disappeared or those convicts who deserted, simply adding them all to the list of the dead. This, in particular, can be confirmed by the reports that the Wagner Group gives relatives of convicts empty coffins. --->READ MORE HERE

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