Soldiers of the private military company "Wagner" are directly involved in the battles in the Donbas. Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar said that in the east, in some assault detachments of the PMC "Wagner" and units of the 2nd army corps, losses amount to 80% of the personnel.
In a cemetery near Lugansk, local residents discovered 42 fresh graves in which Wagner PMC fighters could be buried, BBC Russian Service reports.
Initially, photos of the graves began to be distributed by the locals themselves in order to find the relatives of the dead: “We thought, what if these people are lying here, and their relatives do not even know about it. They took pictures of all the graves, and began to distribute them among the search groups for the missing,†one of the women who discovered the burial told reporters. She also added that she has already been contacted by nine people who believe that their relatives may be in the graves. “All of them did not even know their loved ones had died. We were looking for them, waiting for news,†the woman added.
In turn, the journalists managed to find information in open sources about 37 men whose data match the inscriptions on the grave tablets, including 20 court verdicts against people who are the full namesakes of those buried near Lugansk. The journalists also found the pages of these people on social networks and were able to talk with the relatives of three of them.
In all three cases, journalists were told similar stories: their relatives were prisoners who agreed to go to fight as part of the Wagner PMC. They left the colonies at the end of August and stopped communicating in October. Since then, neither the Wagner PMC nor representatives of other paramilitary structures have contacted the victims' relatives.
It is noted that the burial near Lugansk is already the third cemetery where dozens of graves of prisoners who fought against Ukraine as part of the Wagner PMC are found.
- In Russia, at least one cemetery is known where Wagner PMC fighters are buried, and information about this was confirmed by the founder of the PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin. This cemetery is located in the village of Bakinskaya, Krasnodar Territory. In December 2022, 47 graves of convicts were discovered there, and by the end of January, there were already 270 of them.
- According to the BBC Russian Service, another cemetery where Wagner PMC fighters could be buried was discovered in early February 2023. Residents of the village of Fryanovo near Moscow found it. On each of the 22 graves were red-black-yellow wreaths, as in the village of Bakinskaya.
