Report from The Telegraph, UK
Dated Sunday 16 April 2023; 6:24pm - full copy:
Watch: Wagner Group releases 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war
Yevgeny Prigozhin is seen freeing Ukraine’s captured soldiers in what appears to be a scripted video to mark Orthodox Easter
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The Kremlin’s Wagner Group freed more than 100 Ukrainian prisoners to mark the Orthodox Easter in what may be the mercenary organisation’s only prisoner release of the war.
A video posted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, showed his fighters wearing balaclavas as they watched the thin, dirty and unshaved Ukrainian soldiers walk down a muddy tree-lined road.
They were still wearing the combat fatigues that they had been captured in. Many were wounded, one man was being carried on a stretcher and another was supported by two other soldiers as he hobbled along.
“I hope you don’t fall back into our hands,” an armed Wagner soldier was filmed saying to the men before they were ordered into a truck, some loading packs of water bottles.
Since being ordered to deploy his Wagner Group mercenaries to Bakhmut last summer, Mr Prigozhin’s prominence has risen significantly and he rarely misses an opportunity for publicity.
He has accused the Russian elite of being too “decadent and lazy” and blamed them for undermining the war effort, carefully drawing comparisons between what he sees as his doughty Wagner fighters battling it out on the front line and his own high work ethic.
In what appeared to have been a scripted scene at the start of the prisoner release video, Mr Prigozhin was seen briefing a Wagner fighter.
“Prepare all of them, feed and water them, check the wounded,” he said.
He also released an earlier video of himself wearing combat uniform and carrying a rifle as he lit a candle in what appears to be a dark and abandoned church to mark Orthodox Easter. He didn’t give the location of the church but Wagner fighters have been focused on Bakhmut, which has become the focus of some of the fiercest battles since Russia’s invasion.
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PHOTO The location of the prisoner swap, where the photographs and video were taken, is unknown CREDIT: Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War/Reuters
On Sunday, Wagner claimed to have taken two more blocks of the city, where Ukraine’s fighters are holed up in an increasingly tight corner. The Ukrainian authorities described levels of “unprecedented bloodshed”.
View original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/16/wagner-group-prisoners-of-war-easter-release-prigozhin/
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