Ukraine war: Wagner Group suffers heavy losses as their boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, steps firmly into the spotlight
The graves are all fresh. Row after row of them, almost identical. The same mound of sandy soil, the same black, red and yellow wreath mounted with a golden star.
The same wooden, orthodox cross to mark the grave, though there are some Muslim headstones too. Just the names and the dates on a small bronze plaque to distinguish the lives extinguished. None of them lived to a ripe old age.
This is a cemetery for Wagner mercenaries near Krasnodar in southern Russia. Krasnodar region is the Wagner Group’s heartland. Their training ground is nearby in a village called Molkino.
There is a newly built chapel not far away which houses the urns of cremated fighters. And there is space available for still more graves in this cemetery, when the next wave of bodies come home.
Wagner is heavily involved in Russia’s offensive around Bakhmut and Soledar in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Its fighters have died, Ukraine says, in their thousands.
Most likely the bulk of those were convicts, sent in to die like cannon fodder and be buried in a Wagner cemetery far from home. Perhaps after time in Russia’s penal colonies they no longer had homes to speak of.
“The area near Soledar is covered with corpses of the invaders… This is what madness looks like,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said in one of his nightly addresses.
The rows of graves of Wagner fighters are almost identical
Russia claims to be in control of Soledar, a victory that Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, declares as his own.
In the past few days he has also claimed to be behind the capture of the village of Klishchiivka about nine kilometres south of Bakhmut, though that has yet to be confirmed from the Ukrainian side. The Russian defence ministry has been less gracious about Wagner’s role but it has conceded that they played a role in capturing Soledar.
There are rumours, dismissed by the Kremlin as media speculation, that army boss Valery Gerasimov was brought in to replace Sergey Surovikin as head of Ukraine operations partly to keep Prigozhin in line.
Putting the top military commander in charge of Russia’s “special military operation” could be interpreted as a way of reinforcing army hierarchy and reminding Prigozhin and his band of mercenaries who is ultimately in charge.
Prigozhin, who only a few months ago refused to confirm the well-known secret that he ran the Wagner Group and sued anyone who suggested otherwise, has come out in public all guns blazing. There is no longer a need for the “regime of silence”, he said.
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin inspects body bags. Pic: Fan Media Agency
There are videos of him now in the salt mines around Bakhmut, where US officials believe he has an eye on the mineral spoils.
There are videos of him handing out medals to his fighters. There are videos of him surveying piles of body bags behind the frontlines and attending funerals back home. He has not shied away from his losses, demanding the same burial rights for his men as for regular army soldiers.
He has shown himself willing to be a presence at the frontlines, quite the battleground commander, which is more than can be said for the ultimate commander-in-chief who, unlike Ukraine’s president, has paid no visits to the front.
Prigozhin’s PR team provide quick responses, purportedly from the man himself, to media questions. In a recent salvo, he takes aim at Kremlin bureaucrats who he says are longing for Russia to lose the war and for the US to start calling the shots in Russia. But the US “won’t take you in”, he writes to these supposed Kremlin traitors. “And then you will come to us, where the Wagner sledgehammer will be waiting for you.”
It is getting harder for the Wagner Group to recruit fighters after heavy losses
The sledgehammer is no idle threat. In November, video appeared purporting to show a Wagner mercenary bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer for defecting to Ukraine. When asked to comment, Prigozhin replied, “a dog receives a dog’s death”.
Later that month, a bloodied sledgehammer in a violin case was presented to the European Parliament as they debated declaring Russia a terrorist state, a sinister message from the group also known in Russia as “The musicians”.
But losing that many men creates problems and the recruitment drive in Russia’s prisons is reportedly drying up.
Paul Whelan, a US citizen (who also holds British citizenship) and was jailed in 2018 on espionage charges, told his brother David that Wagner recruiters had little luck the last time they came round his prison colony. “Everyone else has a clear picture of what happens to prisoners who go to fight the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine”, David Whelan wrote in his regular email updates. This time round, they reportedly managed to sign up just eight men, compared with 115 on the previous occasion.
Prigozhin is a powerful man. He is unashamedly critical of both Russia’s senior military command and of the Kremlin elites though he does not say a bad word about Vladimir Putin.
Wagner has played a key role for years already as an unofficial arm of Russian foreign policy in Syria, Libya and other African countries.
Now in Ukraine, the group is out in the open. But Ukraine is a far bloodier battlefield and the fight more existential, both for the Wagner Group and for Putin’s Russia, which has enabled men like Prigozhin, with his brutal, sledgehammer tradecraft, to flourish.
World
Body of missing rabbi Zvi Kogan found in UAE – as Israeli PM says he was murdered in ‘antisemitic terror incident’
The COP29 climate talks have reached a last ditch deal on cash for developing countries, pulling the summit back from the brink of collapse after a group of countries stormed out of a negotiating room earlier.
The slew of deals finally signed off in the small hours of Sunday morning in Azerbaijan includes one that proved hardest of all – one about money.
Eventually the more than 190 countries in Baku agreed a target for richer polluting countries such as the UK, EU and Japan to drum up $300bn a year by 2035 to help poorer nations both curb and adapt to climate change.
It is a far cry from the $1.3trn experts say is needed, and from the $500bn that vulnerable countries like Uganda had said they would be willing to accept.
But in the end they were forced to, knowing they could not afford to live without it, nor wait until next year to try again, when a Donald Trump presidency would make things even harder.
Bolivia’s lead negotiator Diego Pacheco called it an “insult”, while the Marshall Islands’ Tina Stege said it was “not nearly enough, but it’s a start”.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said: “This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps.”
The funding deal was clinched more than 24 hours into overtime, and against what felt like all the odds.
The talks were rocked from the start by the incoming presidency of climate denier Mr Trump, the moment Argentina’s team were recalled back to Buenos Aires by their right-wing president and a controversial letter that sent shockwaves through the United Nations.
Pic: AP
The fraught two weeks of negotiations pitted the anger of developing countries who are footing the bill for more dangerous weather that they did little to cause, against the tight public finances of rich countries.
A relieved Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, climate envoy for Panama, said there is “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Just hours ago, the talks almost fell apart as furious vulnerable nations stormed out of negotiations in frustration over that elusive funding goal.
They were also angry with oil and gas producing countries, who stood accused of trying to dilute aspects of the deal on cutting fossil fuels.
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Climate-vulnerable nations storm out of talks
The UN talks work on consensus, meaning everyone has to agree for a deal to fly.
A row over how to follow up on last year’s pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels” was left unresolved and punted into next year, following objections from Chile and Switzerland for being too weak.
A draft deal simply “reaffirmed” the commitment but did not dial up the pressure in the way the UK, EU, island states and many others here wanted.
Saudi Arabia fought the hardest against any step forward on cutting fossil fuels, the primary cause of climate change that is intensifying floods, drought and fires around the world.
Governments did manage to strike a deal on carbon markets at COP29, which has been 10 years in the making and will allow countries to trade emissions cuts.
‘Not everything we wanted’
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The UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said the deal is “not everything we or others wanted”, but described it as a “step forward”.
“It’s a deal that will drive forward the clean energy transition, which is essential for jobs and growth in Britain and for protecting us all against the worsening climate crisis,” he added.
“Today’s agreement sends the signal that the clean energy transition is unstoppable.
“It is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century and through our championing of it we can help crowd in private investment.”
Protesters at the summit in Baku. Pic: AP
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The Azerbaijan team leading COP29 said: “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator.
“We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.”
At least 20 people have been killed and 66 injured in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.
Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dig through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.
The attack destroyed an eight-storey residential building and badly damaged several others around it in the Basta neighbourhood at 4am (2am UK time) on Saturday.
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut
The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack and has not commented on the casualties.
At least four bombs were dropped in the attack – the fourth targeting the city centre this week.
A separate drone strike in the southern port city of Tyre this morning killed two people and injured three, according to the state-run National News Agency.
The victims were Palestinian refugees from the nearby al Rashidieh camp who were out fishing, according to Mohammed Bikai, spokesperson for the Fatah Palestinian faction in the Tyre area.
Israel’s military warned residents today in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they were near Hezbollah facilities, which the army would target in the near future. The warning, posted on X, told people to evacuate at least 500 metres away.
The army said that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It said it hit several command centres and weapons storage facilities.
Pic: AP
Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.
Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, at least 3,670 people have been killed in Israeli attacks there, with more than 15,400 wounded.
It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
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‘Dozens’ of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike
Meanwhile, six people, including three children and two women, were killed in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
Some 44,176 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.
US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.
Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
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