At least 21,000 Wagner mercenaries have been killed fighting in Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian leader said the private military company had suffered “enormous losses,” particularly in eastern Ukraine where its “most powerful group” was fighting.
“Our troops killed 21,000 Wagnerites in eastern Ukraine alone,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv on Saturday, adding that another 80,000 Wagner fighters had been wounded.
“These were enormous losses for the Wagner PMC,” said Zelensky, who characterized its fighters as a “motivated staff of the Russian army” and mostly convicts who “had nothing to lose.”
CNN could not independently verify the claim by Zelensky, made during a press conference with Spanish media to coincide with a visit to Kyiv by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The trip by Sanchez is his third visit to Ukraine. It comes as Spain takes over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union and follows news that CIA Director William Burns also recently traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
CIA director met Zelensky on trip to Ukraine, US official says
Zelensky’s claims about Wagner’s losses comes just a week after the private military company’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin led his men in an abortive rebellion against Moscow.
Wagner troops had marched toward the Russian capital, taking control of military facilities in two Russian cities in what Prigozhin said was a response to a Russian military attack on a Wagner camp, before a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko defused the crisis.
Source: cnn.com
