Two German nationals discovered fighting for Russia's Wagner Group in Bakhmut

The Ukrainian military has taken thousands of Wagner prisoners during the fight for Bakhmut, and they're never surprised to find emaciated Russian inmates in Vladimir Putin's mercenary army. But in mid-January, Ukraine's armed forces did find something that shocked them...

Among the Wagner prisoners taken in a major encounter, the Ukrainian military discovered two Germans nationals, one hailing from Leipzig and the other from Berlin.

The German newspaper Tagesspiegel interviewed a 21-year-old German fighting for Ukraine who was present at the capture of the two Russian mercenaries with German passports.

The interviewer, whose real name was not given for security reasons, was used as a translator during the three-day interrogation in Kyiv because the two prisoners did not speak English.

One of the two German prisoners was named Volker, according to the information provided by The Tagesspiegel informant. Volker left Berlin to join the Wagner Group in September 2022 due to long-term unemployment and despite having no prior military experience.

"He said he only did it for the money," the informant said. Wages for members of Russia's Wagner Group can be as high as $5,000 plus allowances, which can total up to $7,000 according to The Tagesspiegel.

For comparison: As a soldier for Ukraine, the informant would only receive 3,000 euros a month, which corresponds to a little more than 3,250 US dollars.

In an interview with The Tagesspiegel, the informant also stated that Volker said he could earn some extra money if "he kills one of us foreigners and presents the corpse's passport as proof, he gets an additional $10,000."

According to The Tagesspiegel's informant, Ukraine has also captured American, French, British, and Syrian nationals fighting for the Wagner Group in Bakhmut.

The Wagner Group is a Russian private security and military organization and according to ARD, it takes on "actions that the regular Russian army does not want to be associated with."

The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 by Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin, a Russian entrepreneur and former soldier, and Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, a hardcore Putin loyalist.

In the beginning, the Wagner group was said to have consisted of only ten fighters who remained after the dissolution of the so-called "Slavic Corps".

Initially, the Wagner Group was said to have fought covertly for Russia, and their cooperation with Russia in the Ukraine war has only been official since 2022, according to The Tagesspiegel. Prigozhin confirmed this on the website of his company Konkord.

According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, Wagner is a group of mercenaries known "for their brutality and unscrupulousness... the mercenaries regularly make headlines with videos of horrific executions or torture."

Mercenaries for the Wagner Group have also been recruited from Russian prisons since 2022, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau. Prisoners are promised a reprieve from their sentence if they join Wagner.

Before the Wagner Group started recruiting from Russia's prisons, they were mainly composed of former soldiers who had served their time in the Russian Armed Forces.

The Wagner Group is officially banned in Russia and the Kremlin often denies any joint action between its mercenaries and its legal armed forces. But there are connections between the group and Moscow, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Since Wagner soldiers are not listed as Russian soldiers, they do not appear in the country's official statistics, which can make judging Russia's losses in Ukraine difficult.

According to Russian military expert Margarete Klein, who was interviewed by Swiss radio and television (SRF), Wagner soldiers are used in actions with a large number of personnel and often as "cannon fodder."

The name "Wagner Group" comes from one of the founders, Dmitri Utkin. According to the Tagesspiegel, the name goes back to Richard Wagner, the composer favored by Utkin, and is also Utkin's nickname.

The Wagner name can also be interpreted as a nod to Utkin's connection to Russia's neo-Nazi scene. Utkin is covered in Nazi tattoos and Richard Wagner was also Adolf Hitler's favorite composer.

In addition to Utkin, Yevgeny Prigozhin is one of the founders of the Wagner Group and, according to the Tagesspiegel, the "real brains, financier and string puller."

Prigozhin is also known as "Putin's cook" because he owns a well-known catering company that supplied the Russian army and many of the country's public institutions, schools, and kindergartens with food.

According to the US government, an estimated 50,000 soldiers have served with the Wagner Group in Ukraine since December of last year.

The US government has now classified the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization. Besides Ukraine, the group's mercenaries have also fought in Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan, Syria, and Libya, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

According to Merkur, the Wagner Group is becoming more and more of a problem for Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the US government is noticing. White House national security spokesman John Kirby stated: "We see growing tensions between Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defense." In addition, Prigozhin would publicly criticize the Kremlin and Putin would clearly distance himself from him, according to Merkur.