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Satellite pictures reveal rapidly expanding cemetery of Russia's Wagner mercenary group
Ukraine said Moscow unleashed a new round of missiles fired at energy facilities after Germany and the US announced plans to send modern tanks to the country.
1:44 p.m. ET, January 27, 2023
Satellite pictures reveal rapidly expanding cemetery of Russia's Wagner mercenary group
From CNN’s Vasco Cotovio, Paul P. Murphy and Anna Chernova
Satellite images of an area near a village in Russia show a rapidly expanding cemetery where many of those killed fighting for the Wagner Group — a Russian private mercenary organization heavily involved in the war in Ukraine — are buried.
Pictures of rows of fresh graves near the village of Bakinskaya in the Krasnodar region first started emerging on social media in December. And on Jan. 2, Russian State News Agency RIA Novosti showed Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin visiting the site and laying a wreath on one of the graves.
“Here we bury fighters who indicated in their will that they want to be buried here,” Prigozhin explained, according to RIA. “Or orphans and those whose bodies, for some reason, relatives do not want to take.”
Satellite pictures taken by on Nov. 24, 2022, show three rows of graves on a new plot. When Prigozhin visited in early January, he told RIA Novosti that 93 graves had been dug. Another Maxar satellite picture taken on Jan. 24 shows the plot already virtually full, with 14 additional rows.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Bakinskaya cemetery seen in satellite pictures, as well as a nearby secondary location in the nearby town of Goryachy Klyuch, may hold around 1,000 dead Wagner soldiers.
Local activists reported the mercenary group began using the Bakinskaya cemetery after it ran out of space at a Wagner-affiliated chapel in Goryachy Klyuch.
“The majority of the Wagner Group personnel buried at these sites were reportedly prisoners, a result of the Wagner Group‘s overwhelming reliance on prison recruitment and its operational use of these personnel in costly assaults,” the ISW said in its analysis on Friday.
“The high number of casualties is likely constraining the Wagner Group’s ability to continue offensive operations at a high pace and will likely prompt further prison recruitment efforts,” it added.
More on Wagner's role in Ukraine: Wagner fighters have been locked in a long battle of attrition with Ukrainian forces as they've taken the town of Soledar and are now engaged in the assault on Bakhmut and surrounding villages. Ukrainian officials say Wagner has sent waves of infantry toward their positions and have suffered heavy losses in the process.
The high number of casualties earned the area the nickname of “meat grinder,” and the rapidly expanding graveyard in Bakinskaya illustrates the high death toll.
According to Wagner founder Yevgeny Prighozin, only some of the group’s fighters are buried there.
The US Treasury Department on Thursday designated Wagner a significant transnational criminal organization and imposed a slew of sanctions on a transnational network that supports it.
12:08 p.m. ET, January 27, 2023
Senior EU official calls for "Free Radio Russia" project to let Russian media report without censorship
From CNN's Amy Cassidy and Sugam PokharelA senior official for the European Union on Friday called for the creation of a "Free Radio Russia" project to enable independent Russian journalists to report without censorship from the Kremlin.
“I want to launch a Radio Free Russia project,” said EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourová, similar to the idea of Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, founded to counter propaganda and transmit uncensored news and information during the Cold War and World War II respectively.
It would not mean creating a brand-new radio station, she said during a speech in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, rather a platform “to support those who are doing a lot already, help them to create economy of scale and fill the gaps so they can produce more content and distribute it more widely without any editorial interference."
Many independent journalists have been expelled from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in wake of its censorship, and so a number of news outlets such as Novaya Gazeta now operate in the EU, providing a “unique opportunity," she said.
The commissioner reflected on her childhood in Soviet-era Czech Republic to “reject” the argument that “all Russians” support Moscow’s government, urging Europe not to “give up on the Russian society [...] regardless of how few or how many want to hear the real news, not Kremlin propaganda.”
Some background: The Russian government adopted a law criminalizing the dissemination of what it calls “deliberately false” information about the Russian armed forces in early March, just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The maximum penalty under the law is 15 years in prison.
12:23 p.m. ET, January 27, 2023
