Wagner’s mercenary group has claimed more than 30,000 victims in Ukraine, the White House announced on Friday, and Yevgeny Prigozhin has stopped recruiting from prisons, Reuters reports.

The United States estimates that 90 percent of the Wagner Group soldiers killed in Ukraine since December were prisoners recruited from prisons, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin also said this week that “the number of Wagner divisions will decrease, and we will also not be able to complete the amount of tasks we would like.”

The founder of “Wagner” Evgeny Prigozhin said on February 9 that the Russian mercenary group has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Satellite images from the area near the village in Russia also showed in January a rapidly expanding cemetery where many of those who died fighting on the side of the Wagner Group are buried.

And on January 2, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti showed the founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who visited the site and laid a wreath at one of the graves.

Images of rows of fresh graves near the village of Bakunska in the Krasnodar Territory first began to appear on social media in December.

How criminals recruited from prisons and dead after being recruited by Wagner are perceived

Despite the promises of the head of “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin that his convicted fighters will be treated as heroes and given all honors, ordinary Russians are not very eager to make heroes out of convicted criminals, as the incident in Transbaikalia showed, according to independent researcher Chris. Owen.

Nikita Kasatkin, 23, who was serving 10 years in prison after being convicted of murder in 2020, died fighting for Wagner three months after joining the mercenary group.

His relatives faced opposition from residents of the village of Zhireken in the Trans-Baikal region when they tried to hold his funeral with honors, the regional news site reported.

The head of the village, Alena Kogodeeva, said: “In our village, the situation is really ambiguous. The young man was convicted of murder. It was two or three years ago, people remember.”

Pivesela says: “Now are we going to make heroes out of murderers?” The other half say that he atoned for his sins with his blood. The village is divided into two camps, where they are fighting each other. We understand that a person should be excluded.”

Katsatkin’s relatives initially wanted to hold the funeral in the village cultural center, and local authorities intervened to resolve the dispute.

In the end, the Ministry of Culture said that relatives of the militant Wagner agreed to organize a funeral at his aunt’s house.