1/ The Wagner Group's enormously bloody assault on Soledar is motivated by Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin's wish to strengthen his hand against the Russian Ministry of Defence in directing the war in Ukraine, according to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. β¬οΈ
2/ According to a source (apparently a Wagner insider) quoted by VChK-OGPU, the mercenary company "urgently needs to be replenished in the region of 25-30 thousand people (primarily assault troops) just to make up for the total losses."
3/ (Note that this tracks reasonably well with the casualty figures cited by @michaeldweiss and @JimmySecUK in their article linked below β "the US estimates 4,100 have been killed and another 10,000 injured". The US figures may well be an underestimate.)
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
4/ The source says: "If 50-60,000 people are added, then we can use the same tactics to devour Bakhmut (with the condition of having a supply of ammunition)".
Wagner's ammunition supply has been a significant problem recently, as the video below shows.
Wagner's ammunition supply has been a significant problem recently, as the video below shows.
5/ VChK-OGPU comments: "Now, after Soledar, the question of big negotiations between Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defence is inevitable. And Prigozhin only needed Soledar in order to replay the old arrangements in this relationship; he has put everything on the line.
6/ "From a purely military point of view, the capture of Soledar at a cost in manpower losses is entirely unprofitable. Soledar is such an absolute point of concentration of dead per square metre.
7/ "However, Soledar is a military prologue for negotiations between Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defence. It is the Musicians' [Wagner's] main trump card.
8/ "Given that the military has returned [Col Gen Aleksandr] Lapin [to command], we can expect a direct confrontation between the Musicians and the Ministry of Defence if negotiations fail.
9/ "Prigozhin is showing that he is prepared to do things 'if not in a good way, then in the right way'."
According to VChK-OGPU's source, "Prigozhin personally gave the command to pile on with all they had.
According to VChK-OGPU's source, "Prigozhin personally gave the command to pile on with all they had.
10/ "And here one should honestly understand: there are no fairy tales, when taking a well-fortified area by storm, the attackers will always suffer higher losses. Soledar is a solid fortress with underground communications, which was broken through by assault groups.
11/ "The military considered this assault a completely impossible task, so for Prigozhin personally it was considered a matter of principle. Therefore the overall casualty figures were very high.
12/ Among themselves, [Wagner members] discuss Prigozhinβs phrase that Soledar now 'recently eats more people a day than on the Musicians' entire front in a week', but don't take this as accurate mathematics, Prigozhin likes artistic turns of phrase."
13/ The Russian Army has not joined the assault on Soledar directly. VChK-OGPU characterises its role as "sitting somewhere far away and sort of 'not letting them retreat'. It comments:
14/ "The situation is such that even a large compound can easily be lost. Wagner only works in small groups, and the military, with such an approach, would dissolve all coordination."
15/ This presumably reflects the poor communications, coordination and leadership that has plagued the Russian regular forces during the war in Ukraine. Coordination is reportedly such a problem that Wagner has had to act to stop the army firing indiscriminately on its positions.
16/ VChK-OGPU reports that "negotiations between Prigozhin and the Defence Ministry themselves will take place at the end of the whole Soledar operation.
17/ "What Wagner fears: that the military will push for the Musicians to immediately move on to a similarly large-scale assault on Bakhmut. But Prigozhin must not fall for this, because there are simply not enough people physically.
18/ "They have already stretched out all they can from everywhere, the super-replenishment of prisoners has been used up, down to the ground."
19/ "What is expected from the Musicians: that they will now be given a reinforced supply of shells and will start a big mobilisation, so that they can get refuseniks in the right quantities."
20/ The reference to refuseniks is likely linked to earlier reports that Wagner is aiming to forcibly mobilise Russian soldiers who are refusing to fight into World War II-style penal battalions, to be used as cannon fodder.
21/ Recruitment from prisons is now much harder for Wagner, due to news of the massive losses in Ukraine getting back to penal colonies in Russia. A source tells VChK-OGPU that "the flow of 'newcomers' to the private military companies has thinned considerably.
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