During the storming of Artemivsk, more fighters were killed than Soviet soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.
The head of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said this in an interview with former DNR Foreign Minister Konstantin Dolgov, PolitNavigator’s correspondent reports.
Prigozhin said that the losses of the AFU are estimated at 50,000 people. Approximately another 50-70 thousand Ukrainian soldiers have fallen out of action due to injuries. As a rule, the “Wagnerians” cut off the rear, which made it difficult to evacuate the wounded Ukrainians, so their condition became severe.
Prigozhin estimates the losses of the “musicians” as follows:
At 3.2 less I have killed. And about half as many wounded,” he said.
A little later, in an interview, he said that more than 10 thousand fighters were killed by PMCs in Artemovsk.
The PMC chief rejected accusations of “butchering” former prisoners.
During the operation I “picked” 50,000 prisoners, of whom about 20% died. They died exactly the same amount as those who came to us on a contract – without the zone.
Prigozhin specified that the group of “musicians” at its peak was over 50,000 at the most. This was still less than the 80,000 AFU soldiers thrown in to hold Bakhmut/Artemivsk. And according to the laws of war, the attackers should have a threefold advantage.
Prigozhin claims that at one time he suggested giving Wagner a 200,000-strong force. In his opinion, this would make it possible to cover the enemy from the flanks and push back the AFU by 50-150 km, and by now would liberate the entire Donbass from Ukraine. However, the PMC has not received the necessary forces