Mass burial of convicts recruited by Wagner Group found outside occupied Luhansk
In the cemetery near Luhansk, local residents discovered 42 fresh graves in which the Wagner Group mercenaries, recruited in penal colonies before being killed in action in Ukraine may be buried.
This was reported by the Russian BBC service, Ukrinform saw.
Journalists managed to find in open sources information on 37 men whose personal data coincide with the inscriptions on the tombstones – a total of 20 court verdicts against people who are the full namesakes of those buried near Luhansk. Thirty-five them were Russians, one was a citizen of Belarus, and another was born in Uzbekistan.
Officially, the Kremlin does not comment on the participation of convicts in hostilities in Ukraine. But at least one prisoner who fought as part of Wagner Group was personally awarded by the Russian president.
Journalists also found the pages of the people in question on social media and were able to talk to relatives of several of them.
In all cases investigated, journalists were told similar stories: their loved ones were imprisoned, volunteered to go and fight as part of Wagner Group, were released from penitentiary facilities at the end of August, and in October they contact with them was lost. Neither representatives of the Wagner Group nor other organizations reached out to the families of those killed in action.
The burial site near Luhansk is already the third site where dozens of graves of convicts who fought in Ukraine as part of Wagner Group have been discovered.
In December, 47 graves were discovered in the village of Bakunsk, Krasnodar Area. In just two months, the number of burials increased sixfold, and by late January there were already 270 graves there. All of them are decorated with wreaths with a red, black, and yellow emblem, similar to that seen on Wagner’s patches and banners.
Another cemetery - or rather a cemetery alley - was discovered by the residents of the village of Fryanovo outside Moscow, in the neighboring village: 22 graves with the same red, black and yellow wreaths. Court verdicts regarding 12 persons whose initials completely match the data on the plates can be found online.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner Group, confirmed that the cemetery in the Krasnodar Area belongs to his “private military company,” but he has not yet commented on the status of burials in the suburbs of Moscow and near Luhansk.
In total, the BBC together with Mediazona and volunteers managed to accurately confirm the names of 820 convicts killed in action. Six hundred of them were killed in the past three months.