Late last summer, a plot of land on the edge of a small farming community in southern Russia began to fill with scores of newly dug graves of fighters killed in Ukraine. The resting places were adorned with simple wooden crosses and brightly coloured wreaths that bore the insignia of Russia’s Wagner Group — a feared and secretive private army.
There were about 200 graves at the site on the outskirts of Bakinskaya village in Krasnodar region when Reuters visited in late January. The news agency matched the names of at least 39 of the dead here and at three other nearby cemeteries to Russian court records, publicly available databases and social media accounts. Reuters also spoke to family, friends and lawyers of some of the dead.
Many of the men buried at Bakinskaya were convicts who were recruited by Wagner last year after its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, promised a pardon if prisoners survived six months at the front. They included a contract killer, murderers, career criminals and people with alcohol problems.
For months, Wagner has been locked in a bloody battle of attrition to take the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Western and Ukrainian officials have said it is using convicts as cannon fodder to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences. Toughening sanctions on Wagner this month, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby branded the group “a criminal organisation that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses”. In a short open reply to the US government, Prigozhin asked Kirby to “please clarify what crime was committed” by Wagner.
Videos and photographs of the graves first appeared on social media channels in the Krasnodar region in December. Reuters geolocated these images to the Bakinskaya cemetery and reviewed satellite imagery of the site from Maxar Technologies and Capella Space. Satellite pictures show that the Wagner plot was empty in the summer, had three rows of graves by the end of November and was three-quarters full by early January. Virtually the entire plot was used by January 24.
Local activist Vitaly Votanovsky, who took the first pictures and has documented soldiers killed in Ukraine and buried in Krasnodar region graveyards, said he observed a truck delivering bodies to the cemetery. He said gravediggers told him the bodies had come from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, close to Russia’s border with Donetsk region. When Reuters visited the cemetery in January, fences and security cameras were being installed about the plot and another burial was under way.
In the past, Wagner fighters have deployed to Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic in support of Russia’s allies.
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published footage in early January of Prigozhin visiting the cemetery, crossing himself and laying flowers on one grave. He told local media that the men buried there had expressed a wish to be laid to rest at a Wagner chapel outside the nearby town of Goryachiy Klyuch, rather than having their bodies returned to relatives. The Bakinskaya plot was provided by the local authorities, he said, after the chapel ran out of space. In 2019, Reuters reported on the existence of a Wagner training camp in the village of Molkino, about five miles (9km) from Bakinskaya.
Of the 39 convicts Reuters identified, 10 had been imprisoned for murder or manslaughter, 24 for robbery and two for grievous bodily harm. Other crimes included manufacturing or dealing in drugs and blackmail. Among the convicts were citizens of Ukraine, Moldova, and the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia. Wooden markers on their graves at Bakinskaya and three nearby cemeteries show the men perished between July and December 2022, at the height of the battle for Bakhmut.
One of the youngest, buried at the nearby Martanskaya cemetery, is Vadim Pushnya. He was just 25 years old when he died on November 19. Pushnya was imprisoned in 2020 for burgling garages, a beer shop and a cement factory in his hometown of Goryachiy Klyuch, close to the Wagner chapel. The birth date on Pushnya’s grave matches the date given on his social media accounts and in court records.
The oldest, Fail Nabiev, was serving one-and-a-half years for burglary in Ivanovo region’s Penal Colony No.2, 322km northeast of Moscow, at least his second such prison spell. He had been convicted in May 2022 by a court, in the picturesque tourist town of Suzdal, of stealing a string trimmer and a sanding machine valued at a total of 5,500 roubles (R1,359) from a garage. According to his simple wooden grave marker, emblazoned with an Islamic crescent moon, Nabiev died in October, less than five months after being sentenced. He was 60.
Nabiev’s common-law wife, Olga Viktorova, confirmed to Reuters that Nabiev had been killed while serving with Wagner in the military campaign in Ukraine. She said that her husband had been nearing the end of his prison term, and that he had substantial credit card debts that she was now left to pay. She said she did not know that her husband had joined Wagner until after his death. Russian independent news site iStories has reported that Prigozhin visited Penal Colony No.2 to recruit fighters in August.
“He always had crazy ideas. An incorrigible optimist,” Viktorova said. Nabiev probably “thought that he’d take a quick trip to Ukraine and earn some money.”
The Kremlin, Russia’s defence ministry and Russian prison authorities did not reply to questions for this article. The Russian government has in the past praised the “courageous and selfless actions” of Wagner fighters. Wagner’s founder Prigozhin, who also didn’t comment, has said previously he is giving convicts “a second chance at life”.
Though Reuters was unable to confirm where exactly the men died, the mother of one said that her son was killed in the Donetsk region. The social media accounts of several others also indicate that they were in Ukraine before their deaths.
Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the previously secretive Wagner and founder Prigozhin have assumed an increasingly public profile. In the past, Wagner fighters have deployed to Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic in support of Russia’s allies. Prigozhin, known in Russia as “Putin’s chef” because of his Kremlin catering contracts, consistently denied any links to Wagner. Then, last September, he confirmed he founded the private army, which he described as a “group of patriots.”
Since then, Prigozhin has repeatedly visited the front lines in eastern Ukraine, while also criticising Russia’s military leadership and some senior officials, and personally spearheading a drive to recruit fighters from Russia’s sprawling penal system.
According to a regular report published by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, Russia’s penal colony population decreased by about 8% from 353,210 in August to 324,906 in early November, the largest drop in more than a decade. The report gave no reasons for the sudden, sharp decline, which coincided with the beginning of Wagner’s prison recruitment push.
Last month, Reuters reported that the US intelligence community believes that Wagner had about 40,000 prisoner recruits deployed in Ukraine as of December, accounting for the vast majority of Wagner personnel in the country. Wagner has not commented on the figure or provided any information on fighter numbers. In a January 14 video message, Prigozhin described Wagner as a fully independent force with its own aircraft, tanks, rockets and artillery. It is “probably the most experienced army that exists in the world today,” he said.
Some of the convicts identified by Reuters were violent offenders who had spent much of their adult life in prison or were facing long sentences. Court papers reviewed by Reuters also portray men who had struggled with alcohol problems. The names of some others are on banking black lists, suggesting personal financial troubles.
Their lives bring into bleak focus the realities of Russia’s criminal underclass. Wagner founder Prigozhin in December told Russian news site RBC that he is giving convicts an opportunity “to redeem themselves.” In January, he appeared alongside the first group of fighters to be pardoned, having survived their stints in Ukraine. A few weeks later, he wrote an open letter to the speaker of Russia’s parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, asking him to criminalise any actions or publications that discredit Wagner fighters and to outlaw public disclosure of their criminal pasts. He wrote that those “who are risking their lives every day and dying for the Motherland are being portrayed as second-class people, stripping them of the right to atone for their guilt.”
Among the prisoners identified by Reuters was 43-year-old Anatoly Bodenkov. He was serving a 16-year sentence after his conviction as a contract killer, court papers show. According to a local news report on the case, in 2016 Bodenkov murdered a local real estate agent in the northern city of Kirovo-Chepetsk with a sawn-off shotgun for 400,000 roubles (R98,799). The grave marker says Bodenkov died on November 27, 2022. It doesn't say where.
— Reuters
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