The U.S. government estimates that the Wagner PMC has lost more than 30,000 wounded and killed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This assessment is given by the representative of the US National Security Council, John Kirby, according to CNN.
According to him, we are talking about 9 thousand killed, and half of them have been killed since mid-December, and about 90% of those killed in December were recruited from Russian prisons.
“They treat their recruits, mostly convicts, like cannon fodder, literally throwing them into the meat grinder here in an inhumane way without a second thought. People are being ripped out of jails and thrown onto the battlefield with no training, no equipment, no organizational leadership,” says Kirby.
Recently PMC Wagner suffered losses in fierce battles for Bakhmut. Kirby notes that Russia is making "gradual gains" in and around the city as fighting has intensified over the past few days. He said the US could not predict whether Russia would break through, but even if they did, he said the city had "no real strategic value."