“Wagner Group”, the most important group of mercenaries in Russia, is now a full-fledged army, which in terms of numbers is equal to the military personnel of Hungary or Slovakia, the spokesman of the Eastern Military Command of Ukraine, Serhiy Cherevaty, told “Ukrainian Channel 24”, Ukrinform reports. Independent Kyiv.

He did not specify the number of Wagner Group troops, but Slovakia’s Armed Forces have 19,000 active personnel, while Hungary’s Armed Forces have 40,000 soldiers, according to 2019 World Bank data.

In recent months, the “Wagner Group” has been trying to capture the city of Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk region with the support of the Russian regular army.

At the end of March, General Mark Milley said that about 6,000 mercenaries of Wagner’s group were fighting in the city of Bakhmut.

“They are currently conducting combat operations, primarily in Bakhmut,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee alongside US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“It’s probably about 6,000 mercenaries and maybe another 20,000 or 30,000 recruits that they get, a lot of them from prisons. Ukrainians are causing a lot of death and destruction to these people,” Milli said.

According to Serhii Tserevaty, on April 1, Ukrainian troops killed 121 and wounded 139 Russian soldiers in Bakhmut, and Russian troops shelled the city 232 times.

Since the Wagner Group stopped recruiting prisoners from Russia in early February, regular Russian airborne troops and motorized infantry have been deployed in the Bakhmut area, the military said.

In late January, Olga Romanova, head of Russia Behind Bars, a non-profit organization that defends Russian convicts, said that only 10,000 of the nearly 50,000 mercenaries recruited by Wagner remained in service — meaning the rest escaped, were killed or injured

The United States has designated the Wagner Group as a “significant transnational criminal organization” and imposed sanctions on its support network around the world.