This was reported by the UK Ministry of Defence on X (Twitter).
The department recalls that today marks one year since the death of the top leaders of the Wagner Group, including owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry Utkin, who died in a plane crash, probably due to an explosion on board. Since then, the Wagner Group has greatly fragmented and many surviving high-ranking members have left its ranks.
Andrey “gray-haired” Troshev, the former general director of Wagner, has probably joined the Russian Ministry of Defense, becoming a member of the Redut PMC, which is engaged in the formation of detachments of “volunteer corps” to participate in the war in Ukraine. Alexander “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, who previously commanded the first assault detachment of “Wagner”, was transferred to the Chechen special forces “Akhmat”.
According to British intelligence, many Wagner veterans followed these and other former leaders in leaving the group.
“Compared to a peak strength of around 50,000 in 2023, there are now around 5,000 fighters left at Wagner, based in Belarus and Africa,” the British Ministry of Defence reports.
Recall that on August 23, 2023, a Wagner Group plane crashed, on board of which Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine other people were traveling.
Previously, Cursor reported that on July 28, 2024, Tuareg rebels reported killing dozens of government soldiers and Russian Wagner mercenaries in a battle near the Algerian border.
GUR representative Andrei Yusov said that Ukrainian intelligence was involved in the defeat of the Wagnerites. He later noted that in addition to operations to destroy Russian mercenaries in Sudan, Syria and Mali, other operations are underway, information about which has not yet been made public, and new events are also being prepared.
