Wagner mercenary group will ‘decrease’ as prisoner recruitment ends, says boss

The Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has admitted that his mercenary group is facing difficulties in Ukraine and will soon decrease in size, amid growing evidence that his political influence in the Kremlin is waning.

“The number of Wagner units will decrease, and we will also not be able to carry out the scope of tasks that we would like to,” Prigozhin told a group of pro-war bloggers and state journalists gathered at an army barracks in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.

“You have all heard that the recruitment of prisoners to our ranks has stopped,” he added.

His comments followed a recent announcement that the mercenary group will no longer recruit prisoners to fight in the war, ending a months-long campaign in which Wagner signed up about 40,000 convicts from Russian prisons. The businessman has offered no explanation, but observers say the move is part of growing backlash against him from the Russian security services.

Prigozhin, a catering magnate who last year admitted to founding the Wagner group after years of obfuscation, has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the war, with his troops engaged in some of Russia’s most gruelling battles in eastern Ukraine.

Last month, Wagner, which is now largely made up of convicts, captured the Ukrainian town of Soledar, Moscow’s first territorial gain in the war since the summer.

The mercenary group has also been at the forefront in the months-long fight to seize neighbouring Bakhmut, a battle that Prigozhin on Wednesday said was “not going as quickly as we would like”.

In a thinly veiled criticism of the Russian ministry of defence, he said “horrendous military bureaucracy” had prevented Wagner from taking Bakhmut by the new year.

“Other units are not showing the activity that they should be [showing]. If there were three to five groups like Wagner, we would already be dipping our feet in the Dnipro river,” he said.

Since the start of the war, Prigozhin has repeatedly clashed with army leadership, including the chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, and the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. His willingness to take on the defence establishment has catapulted him to become a leading figure among pro-war ultranationalists who have similarly criticised the army leadership.

However, there are growing signs the Kremlin has moved to curb what it considers the excessive political clout of the magnate. Last month, Russia appointed Gerasimov as its overall commander for the war in Ukraine, replacing Sergey Surovikin, who is believed to be a close ally of Prigozhin.

Several prominent human rights groups have reported that the ministry of defence has now taken over Wagner’s role of recruiting inmates – effectively depriving the group of its main source of manpower.

“Prigozhin has no shortage of enemies,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, head of political analysis firm R.Politik. “The businessman’s attacks on officials, parliamentary deputies and political parties have not won him any favour within the elite, which considers Prigozhin’s autonomy, ambition and rhetoric nothing short of a threat to the state.”

According to Stanovaya, Prigozhin’s Wagner group has been a convenient asset for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, but the businessman was now risking his position by overplaying his ambitions.

“Wagner should operate exclusively in the state’s interests and avoid the limelight. It should not undertake its own initiatives, and it certainly should not have a political agenda,” Stanovaya said. “Until recently, that’s how Prigozhin operated. But now, he hasn’t just become a public figure, he is visibly transforming into a full-fledged politician with his own views.”

Earlier this week, Prigozhin caused further controversy after a Telegram channel linked to him shared a gruesome video appearing to show the sledgehammer execution of a former Russian mercenary who fled the Wagner group while fighting in Ukraine.

Prigozhin later said that Dmitry Yakushchenko was actually pardoned and on Wednesday, the two men appeared together. “This is to answer your question, whether he was actually killed with a sledgehammer,” Prigozhin said.

In November, a Wagner-linked Telegram channel published a similar video that showed the sledgehammer killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a convicted murderer recruited by Wagner who surrendered to Ukrainian forces but was later allegedly handed over to Russia. Nuzhin’s relatives later confirmed his death.