British Intelligence: The Kremlin has assumed the functions of the Prigozhin group

A year ago, on June 24, 2023, the late Yevgeny Prigozhin led 8,000 mercenaries of the Wagner Group in a "march for justice" against the senior command of the Russian armed forces, accusing them of corruption and dereliction of duty.

This was reported by the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom on Twitter.

According to the summary, several high-ranking military officials were later arrested on charges of corruption.

"However, the target of Prigozhin's disdain, former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, has since changed," the British Ministry of Defense noted.

Although Yevgeny Prigozhin perished in an airplane crash on August 23, 2023, his Wagner Group survived, now led by his son Pavel Prigozhin and commanded by Anton "Lotos" Yelizarov, as stated in the report.

According to British intelligence, the Wagner Group withdrew from the front lines in Ukraine in May 2023, replaced by irregular formations from the Chechen and Russian "volunteer corps" of the Ministry of Defense. The Russian Ministry of Defense's "African Corps" took over Wagner's deployments in Syria and Libya at the end of 2023 and early 2024, respectively. However, Wagner Group maintains independent deployments in Belarus, Mali, and the Central African Republic.

Moreover, Prigozhin pioneered the practice of recruiting prisoners for service in Ukraine. From July 2022 to February 2023, when this practice was taken over by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Wagner Group recruited over 48,000 prisoners, with more than 17,000 of them later perishing in combat. Since February 2022, the overall number of prisoners in Russia has decreased by at least 150,000 individuals.

"It is likely that the majority of these prisoners were released in exchange for agreeing to fight in Ukraine," emphasized the British Ministry of Defense.