The Russian mercenary group “Wagner” plans to recruit about 30,000 new fighters by mid-May, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday, Reuters reports.

In an audio message on Telegram, he noted that an average of 500-800 people work in Wagner recruitment centers every day.

He provided no evidence to support the figures, which Reuters was unable to independently verify.

Prigozhin said that last week such centers were opened in 42 cities of Russia.

The Wagner Group suffered heavy casualties while spearheading the Russian effort to capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which had been held since last summer in the longest and bloodiest battle of more than a year of war.

In January, the United States estimated that Wagner had about 50,000 militants in Ukraine, including 40,000 convicts Prigozhin had recruited from Russian prisons with the promise of a pardon if they survived six months.

Ukrainian officials stated that about 30,000 fighters of the “Wagner” PMK deserted, were killed or wounded, this figure cannot be independently verified.

Prigozhin stated that the recruitment from gymnasiums had gone better than expected, and that those who volunteered were in better physical shape than the prisoners he had recruited before.

“By mid-May, we plan to increase the number of fighters in our units by approximately 30,000,” he said.

For months, Prigozhin waged a vigorous PR campaign to highlight the role of Wagner’s group in the Russian offensive, often complaining that the Russian military leadership did not pay due attention to his group, and even claiming that they had deprived him of ammunition – a claim denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

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