Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner group that recruits mercenaries, said on Monday that mercenaries would stop taking prisoners in Ukraine, threatening to “destroy everything on the battlefield.”
Prigozhin’s latest statements came after the publication of a recording in which supposedly Ukrainian soldiers discuss the execution of a fighter hired by the Wagner group who was taken prisoner.
The oligarch, referring to the recording, accuses Kyiv of “non-compliance with international law.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin said via the Telegram digital messaging system quoted by the Spanish agency Europa Press that prisoners of war “are also entitled to minimum conditions”, threatening not to take prisoners.
“We’re going to kill everyone,” he says in the same voicemail.
The Wagner Group works on the money of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine and is present in areas such as Bakhmut.
Most of the employees of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary company are prisoners hired while serving their sentences in the Russian penitentiary system.