Wagner recruits 'are pumped full of drugs that enable them to keep fighting', ... trends now
Ukrainian soldiers have compared Wagner recruits to zombies, describing drugged-up ex-prisoners climbing over the corpses of their comrades during wave after wave of brutal attack.
The Kremlin's private military company bolstered its numbers by giving jailed criminals in Russia a six-month war contract, promising freedom at the end of their service if they survive the horrific onslaught.
The horde of killers, rapists, thieves and gangsters now populating Russia's military with little training are being used as suicidal human battering rams to blast through Ukraine's first lines of defence, before the experienced soldiers follow behind.
Ukrainian soldiers Andriy and Borisych, speaking from the besieged city of Bakhmut, said they have been battling hundreds of Wagner fighters for weeks in an attritional conflict.
" class="c5" scrolling="no"
Ukrainian soldiers Andriy and Borisych, speaking from the besieged city of Bakhmut, said they have been battling hundreds of Wagner fighters for weeks in an attritional conflict
Andriy told CNN: 'They're climbing above the corpse of their friends, stepping on them.
'It looks like it's very, very likely that they are getting some drugs before attack.'
In one particularly savage battle, Andriy said he was a group of 20 soldiers fighting uninterrupted waves of 200 Russians for 10 hours.
He said their AK-47 rifles became so hot from constant gunfire that they had to keep changing them.
The fighter added: 'Our machine gunner was almost getting crazy, because he was shooting at them. And he said, 'I know I shot him, but he doesn't fall.' And then after some time, when he maybe bleeds out, so he just falls down.'
When Wagner forces race forward, they dig foxholes while backed by artillery to consolidate their territorial gains.
One former Wagner commander who fled to Norway has even apologised for the horrors perpetrated in Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, has recruited Russian convicts for the war effort
Ukrainian servicemen make a trench near Bakhmut where attritional fighting with Wagner fighters has been based
The PMC Wagner Centre is pictured in Saint Petersburg, the headquarters of the private army
Andrei Medvedev, who fled by crossing the Russian-Norwegian border on January 13, says he witnessed the killing and mistreatment of Russian prisoners recruited by Yevgeny Prigozhin's killer militia.
He said he fled over the Arctic border, climbing through barbed-wire fences and evading a border patrol with dogs, hearing guards firing shots as he ran through a forest and over the frozen river that separates the two countries.
The 26-year-old is now seeking asylum
