1. Every fifth KIA is VDV (Airborne) 2. 17% are officers 3. 'Volunteers' have the fastest growing rate of losses 4. According their sources, 'volunteers' and PMCs are currently primary assault forces
"More than 40% of 'volunteers' killed in action are older than 45 years old." Most are from provinces, have low average salary.
Regarding numbers of KIA — BBC visited 33 cemeteries across Russia and identified the graves of soldiers whose deaths were not reported in nearly every single one.
Some folks in comments asking about fidelity of this data. BBC maintains this list with @mediazzzona, focuses on declared deaths, so they acknowledge that 40%-60% of casualties are not accounted for in this number.
Last interesting details - BBC and @mediazzzona list includes non-Russian casualties, from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, occupied Georgian territory of South Ossetia.
Finally: list includes 162 Rosgvardia, including Vityaz, Rosich, Typhoon detachments. Vityaz involved in war crimes in Bucha. Also at least 111 GRU Spetsnaz and three FSB “Alpha” officers. reuters.com/investigates/s…
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Lots of spurious stories of “Wagner being sent to Venezuela.” That’s not true in any meaningful way. The closest we might get are GRU mil “advisors” being sent to Venezuela as they have before, but more likely that its token hardware.
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This Defense News story is probably the least sensational and most factual reporting on Aviacon Zitotrans flight to Caracas. They cite that AZ was sanctioned for ties to Wagner. Other outlets are using this to cast it as a sort of Wagner airline.
While it’s true AZ flew for Wagner, it did so as a provider for the Russian Ministry of Defense. Their history involves lots of illicit arms transfer and similar shadiness (usually unrelated to Wagner see below) but also more conventional RU state flights
One of my major questions after Prigozhin’s death was where Wagner’s most experienced and influential fighting men, its commanders, would go. With recent news, we largely have the answer. ridl.io/the-new-russia…
Commander of 3rd Assault Detachment Boris Nizhevenok has gone the Rosgvardiya / volunteer detachment route. This pathway is a successful compromise in bringing Wagner’s human capital under the State while allowing them to avoid submitting to MoD.
Anton “Lotus” Elizarov chose a similar route under Rosgvardiya, with mixed success in recruiting for Ukraine. He is cited by Wagner figures as still having a major role in the subsumed Africa operations (under MoD and security services other than Rosgvardiya)
In an odd twist, the Russian IL-76 RA-78830, originally reported as the one shot down over Belgorod, was in fact en route to Syria and *possibly* the aircraft carrying Russian fighters for ‘Africa Corps’ to Burkina Faso.
Caveats here:
- receiver limitations means we can’t see see an IL-76 making the trip all the way to Ouagadougou, have to make inferences
- Africa Initiative, ru propaganda outlet claims that “Africa Corps” arrived with 100 personnel, arms, and vehicles in Burkina at 2 PM.
- Africa Initiative posted early photos of the aircraft loading in Ru. These images could be Chkalovsky, but unconfirmed
This week marks a year since Wagner took Soledar in a bloody, protracted battle that has become one of the more important moments in the collective mythology of Russian PMCs. Brief thread on Soledar and some of the commanders involved.
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Like in Bakhmut to the south, Soledar was a grinding battle of artillery and urban combat, and a flashpoint in tensions between Wagner and the MoD, with both claiming to captured the town in January of 2023. Soledar was obliterated in the process.
Prigozhin and the broader Wagner info community recognized Anton 'Lotos' Elizarov as the commander of Wagner forces at Soledar. Elizarov was increasingly presented as a mouthpiece for Wagner in this period. He survived the mutiny and Prigozhin's death.
More videos of Prigozhin’s last trip to Africa, where he travels with Utkin. They visit the CAR and meet people like Dmitri Sytiy, Zombie, travel to Mali to meet Lotus. Prigozhin personally hands out aid to locals.
Here he travels through the CAR, taking with Boris “Zombie” Nizhevenok, an assault detachment command, and meets with local partners.
He flies to Mali, where he meets with Anton “Lotus” Elizarov, who led the assault of Soledar. He is rumored to be “Utkin’s deputy,” responsible for resolving Wagner’s future after Prigozhin died, but there is little hard evidence.
The plane that Prigozhin died aboard, RA-02795, has a remarkable story.
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Many Russia watchers know it better as M-SAAN, which carried Russian military officials including the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Igor Osipov, to Sudan a week after the revolution that toppled Bashir
It also ferried the Deputy Commander of the RSF and the Deputy Minister of Defense of Sudan to Russia according to an investigation by @OCCRP and @novaya_gazeta. Other passengers were Sudan's UN ambassador, Pavel Prigozhin, Wagner fighters.