Wagner Group Competing With Kremlin for New Troops As Numbers Dwindle: U.K.

The Russian-backed paramilitary Wagner Group is "competing" with the Russian military over a "limited pool" of fighting-age men as they look to replenish their ranks with conscripts, the U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.

In an intelligence update on Sunday, it said it saw the Kremlin's most recent campaign to bring new recruits into the conflict as "highly unlikely" to reach its 400,000-men target.

The latest British government briefing follows reports of cracks beginning to show between Moscow and the paramilitary group—which has been instrumental to certain Russian military maneuvers in Ukraine—as the group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, called for an end to what Russian President Vladimir Putin has referred to as a "special military operation."

In the 14 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, it has been dogged by setbacks due to strategic blunders, a lack of equipment and training, and an unexpectedly strong defense from Ukrainian forces. In November, the Russian military was forced to cede Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city it held.

According to Ukrainian military figures—which Newsweek has been unable to verify—as of Sunday, more than 186,000 Russian personnel had been "liquidated" in fighting. As Russia quickly expanded the professional fighting force it had committed to the invasion in the early phases of the war, it increasingly relied on conscripts who have been less willing or able to fight.

In September, Putin announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 men, which saw fighting-age men flee the country to avoid war and domestic protests over the round-up. Some 10,000 men have been returned home after being erroneously deployed, and the Russian leader has admitted "mistakes" had been made during the conscription process.

In March, Putin increased the upper age limit for Russian National Guardsmen serving in Ukraine in an apparent bid to find more men without reneging on a pledge not to use further mobilizations "for the foreseeable future."

The MoD said on Sunday that Russia had launched a "pervasive campaign" to attract volunteers which sought to appeal to "potential recruits' masculine pride" by looking for "real men" as well as highlighting the financial benefits of service.

"The authorities are almost certainly seeking to delay any new, overt mandatory mobilization for as long as possible to minimise domestic dissent," it added.

Newsweek approached the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment on Sunday.

The Russian armed forces have recently turned to conscripts to defend Crimea—which Russia annexed in 2014, and which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to take back. Ukrainian officials have said the peninsula is "already a battlefield" despite being well behind enemy lines in the south.

Earlier in April, Prigozhin said the Wagner Group had "handed over" control of its forces near Bakhmut—a city on the western edge of the contested Donbas region and the focus of intense fighting in recent months—to the Russian Defense Ministry, noting that "the enemy is not going anywhere." He admitted that a Russian offensive seemed "out of the question" against the encroaching Ukrainian forces.

Prigozhin has become increasingly critical of the Kremlin's decision-making, as Western analysts see increasing concern about the turning tide of the Russian invasion domestically.

On April 14, the Wagner Group leader said the "ideal option is to announce the end of the special military operation" and for Russia to cement its hold on the regions of Ukraine it was already occupying.

However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, wrote that Prigozhin was making a "strawman argument," and that his overall message was to push forward with the invasion.

"Prigozhin has an idiosyncratic rhetorical and writing style that relies heavily on deadpan sarcasm, selective ambiguity, aphorisms, vulgarity, and ironic slang," ISW said.