The sad irony is that no one threatened Russia. This is a disaster of its own making!

“We’ll pay $5,000 per month. NO training required” (or provided). The thing about mercenaries is…you don’t have to pay the dead ones.

I remember a local bully while growing up. So feared from reputation, that nobody messed with him. Until the day he messed with the wrong kid and got smacked and embarrassed in front of a crowd. That was the end of his reign as the local baddy.

I remember the time during the Vietnam war when the US recruited freshly convicted delinquents straight from the courts of law who had been given the choice of imprisonment or sign up for service in the US army. I knew enough NCOs who rolled their eyes when they got another one of these types. They had a deteriorating effect on discipline, were always getting into trouble, often had fights with others, were dishonest and untrustworthy, stole from their comrades and did only the absolute minimum to fulfil orders. In other words they were more work than they were worth it.

you're forgetting about a fun detail: when russian soldiers die in service, their families are legally entitled to monetary compensation. wagner contracts do not contain such a clause. therefor wagner mercenaries are comparatively extremely expensive alive (they're paid about 10 times more), but their deaths are cheap. nobody in their right mind and not in prison should sign up for that. also the "no thuggery, no sexual crimes" thing is clearly not a strict rule. wagner's prison recruitment has included rapists, murderers, and a cannibal.

A quote Russia might want to consider: "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.". Russia can decide to start the war without the consent of Ukraine, but they can't decide to end it without the consent of Ukraine.

At the beginning of this war, the Ukrainian lady who told Russian soldiers that they would become fertilizers just came to my mind.

3:20 : “No experience needed”. Yeah, that’ll help your chances of survival. Slava Ukraine!

A man who died alone on the ground, left behind a whole life for nothing. RIP

If you're going to have an "elite" military group, not enlisting jail-birds or bringing in men with previous experience would be a good starting point. Doesn't sound like an "elite" mercenary unit to me.

As a 20 year veteran in the Army, I have seen many mercenaries , or as they prefer, private security companies on the ground. Their usual recruitment requirements only accept well trained operatives. But when being used, they usually are employed as security for big business companies in the area. Because of their high standard of recruitment, they have sometimes been used in hostage recovery. However, they are not used as a full on fighting force in the same way as your average grunt. Their qualifications and rate of pay excludes them that. But with the Wagner Group we don't see this. Their mortality rate on the battlefield has forced them to take volunteers from prisons, increase the age of volunteers and accept people with no military training. They just need to keep the numbers up in order to keep the profit rolling in. Compare the Wagner Group to the Chechen fighters in Ukraine for example. They are battle hardened soldiers who are not fighting for money, they are fighting in order to keep Ukraine free from Putin's rule.

Mercenary: _"they were dissatisfied with the organization of the fighting"_ *Nah, ya'll started having nightmares about HIMARS..*

Wagner was never elite. Their success early in this war was simply do to Ukraine not being properly prepared or equipped. The only time Wagner ever faced a modern military was in Syria when they bumped into US forces and they got tore up.

Deep condolences to all mother, father, children and family who lost their lives in this war. Slava Ukraine🇺🇦🇺🇦

"Failure is not an option!" (It is an inevitability). Both Russia and Wagner Group suffer from catastrophic hubris, and are now paying for it with their lives.

Wagners : hey why I don't get my equipment Putin : I pay you enough, you should bring your own equipment 😂

I appreciated CNN's rare effort to show more of the actual footage and things happening on front line rather than showing a 30 second clip and speculating, inviting so called professionals giving speeches (which is fine) but we need more of this.

And just to think 7 months ago the eyes 👀 of the world we're watching the Russian army..and now it's literally crumbling at every level the turn of events is surreal.

Mercenaries have never been known to fight to the end, but will disappear when the going gets too tough

Isn't that the 'privat army' who outnumbered the US 10:1 in Syria and still got absolutly destroyed?

It's going to be a hard winter. Cold as steel.

I’m from Ukraine here is the truth America will never tell you Former US grand strategist Zbignew Brzezinski said: “It is IMPERATIVE that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America”. Because the US has just 4% of the world’s population, and it’s isolated from the Eurasia continent which has 70% of the world’s population, or 87% with Africa included. Defensively, it’s an advantage to the US, but economically, it’s a handicap. That’s why economically, Eurasia is a competitor to the US and the Euro is a threat to the dollar. How does the US with an isolated and just 4% of world’s population maintain its position as the world’s biggest economy? The dollar must stay as the world’s reserve currency. This allows the size of the US economy to be highly scaled up, instead of being sized according to the fundamentals. To be the world’s reserve currency, the dollar must be circulated in the world. The US created a huge consumption-based economy and shifted manufacturing outside, so that dollars flow out of the US to product suppliers like China or Japan. To make products, China and Japan need energy. The US created the Petrol-dollar scheme, so that dollar is circulated to Saudi. With the US stock and financial market much more lucrative than other countries, the dollars from Saudi are attracted back to the US. Money printed in the US to exchange for goods from outside eventually ends up with the Wall Streets, where the rich gets richer. And that completes the cycle of circulation of the dollars. The American Dream attracted top talents around the world to strengthen the US’ science and technology sectors, and a technological gap is maintained between the US and other major economy like China, so that the US benefits from highly lucrative high-tech product/patent exports, while low profit manufacturing sector is outsourced to China and Vietnam. This is why world leader in 5G, Huawei, are banned in 2019. If China or Japan bring back all the dollars and exchange to their local currencies, it inflates the local currencies, making their exports expensive. So, China and Japan use some of the dollars to buy US debts (treasury bonds). That’s why the US, a rich country, is in-debt to China which has just 1/5th of the US’ GDP per capita. And by holding US treasury bills, China and Japan have to support the US dollar, for if the US dollar collapses, their hard earn money would become worthless. After Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” in 2011, which aimed to contain China, China introduced the Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) in 2013 and diverted some of the dollars into it to reduce the risk of putting all eggs in one basket, and hoping that after these countries are developed, China would have a wider trade market. With a huge population, if Asia and Africa develop rapidly, the share of the US’ economy shrinks, then the Euro could replace it as the world’s reserve currency. When that happens, the US would no longer be able to print money out of nothing without a hyper inflation like Venezuela. Then the size of the US economy has to fall back to the fundamentals, which today is quite a lot smaller than the inflated economy. That’s why no country in Eurasia is allowed to catch up with the US’ economy. When Japan was catching up fast on the US in the 1980s, they were knocked down to a three decade stagnancy by appreciating the Japanese Yen. And in the last 30 years, the US created conflicts, wars and color revolutions in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa to destabilise the Eurasia-Africa supercontinent. When the US prints a lot of money, other countries’ foreign reserves in dollars shrink in value. Furthermore, to prevent exports to the US becoming expensive, these countries have to print money too, which devalues the savings of the people, and causing inflations in these countries. It’s estimated that our savings devalue by 6-9% per year after the abolishment of the gold-backed Bretton Woods system, after which the US prints money based on just the creditability of the dollar. North America is relatively easy to defend, yet the US has a military budget more than the total of the next 9 countries in the top 10, to protect the dollar with its 800 military bases worldwide. For the record, the US had no mercy on threats to the dollar: * In 2000 Saddam Hussein said he would start selling oil in Euros not Dollars. >> Saddam was hanged by the US. * In 2009 Gaddafi made Libya export oil in Gold Dinars, not in dollar or Euro. >> Gaddafi was killed by US-backed NTC. * Syria had an independent Central Bank NOT under Federal Reserve controlled Bank of International Settlements. >> Obama attempted to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. * Iran has been trading oil in currencies other than US dollars since 2011. >> Iran was being sanctioned by the US. * After being sanctioned in 2014, Putin started to trade in non-dollar. In 2019, Putin (1) completely ditched dollars in oil trades, (2) sold almost all the US treasury bonds, (3) is now the forerunner in de-dollarization. >> The US tried to topple Putin by supporting Alexei Navalny. And now the Ukraine war to weaken Russia. * China (1) introduced the BRI in 2013 which helps many countries to develop and speed up the integration of Eurasia, (2) used non-dollar in oil trades with Iran and Russia, (3) introduced the CIPS, an alternative to the West’s SWIFT system which has been weaponized by America, (4) China’s economy and high technology are catching up fast. >> China has become the US’ #1 target. If a country supports the dollar, it’s being looted; if a country doesn’t support the dollar, the government is changed by the US. This is financial slavery. The Fed has printed 80% of all US dollars in existence since Jan 2020. There was $4.02 trillion dollars in circulation at the beginning of 2020. The number reached $20.08 trillion by Oct 2021. This amounted to an astronomical 30 trillions debt. Coupled with a global rising urge to diversify into non-dollar reserves caused by the US’ sanctions to 39 countries, the dollar is in a creditability crisis. This is the major development which shapes geopolitics in the world today. The US cannot have direct wars with Russia and China because they are nuclear armed. Proxy wars put the battlefields outside of the US, and the US would looked like an outsider. Remember in the 1980s, the US supported the Afghan Mujaheddin in a proxy war against the USSR. Russia and China have clearly defined their redlines. US would use its collaborators Zelensky and Tsai to push across the redlines to trigger the wars, and it would sell weapons to its allies in NATO and AUKUS, and get them to support the wars. After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, US President Bill Clinton had two choices: (a) to integrate Russia into Europe and abolish NATO, OR, (b) to slowly alienate Russia to keep Russia and Europe divided. Clinton chose the latter, because if there’s no more Russia “threat”, there would be no more NATO to control Europe. As the first NATO Secretary General, Lionel Ismay described the military role of NATO: “To keep America IN, to keep Russia OUT, to keep Germany (Europe) DOWN”. NATO also allows the US to place missiles in Europe, so if a war break out in Europe, missiles would be flying between Moscow the East and Lisbon in the West, while the US remains safe across the Atlantic. And politically, the EU is an American creation, as much as a European one. It’s much easier for Washington to control ruling elites at Brussels than having to control all politicians in Europe. The EU is used an ally or a sacrificial depending on the geopolitical needs of Washington. The proxy war in Ukraine: 1.Divided Europe from Russia and divided Eurasia. 2.Killed Nord Stream II gas pipeline and German firm Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg has signed up for gas from America Venture Global LNG for 20 years. The US gained control over energy supply to Europe. 3.Created continuity for the Military Industrial Complex after pulling out of Afghanistan. 4.Most importantly, the war strengthened the dollar. Dollar against Euro is now the highest since NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in Mar 1999 (happened two months after the official launch of Euro as the currency of the EU, which threatened the dollar). A strong dollar together with the Fed’s interest rise in 2022 cause capitals from all over the world to flow into the US’ economy, while collapsing other economies, like Sri Lanka. Else where, two months after ignoring a warning from Washington against his visit to Moscow, highly popular Imran Khan was ousted from the PM post of Pakistan on 9 Apr 2022. A month after ignoring Biden’s demand to increase oil production, secretary-general of OPEC, Mohammad Barkindo died unexpectedly on July 6 2022. The US isn’t relinquishing its privilege to loot. Remember after WW II, Europe and Asia were devastated, but the US emerged as the world leader and the dollar became the world’s reserve currency.

Does anyone have a link to the full versions of these Chanel’s ?

It's appalling that humans still do this to each other.

Turns out Putin's elite private army...Is Potato😔

I really want to hear the full stories of the Russian prisoners after the 6 months. Who survived an what happened. Would be good for history.

The Ukraine army has superior weapons and you can see from how their troops move that they are well trained and organised. This is gonna be a hard winter for those poor suckers drafted in Russia and sent to the front.

The sad irony is that no one threatened Russia. This is the disaster of its own making.

stay strong keep up the good fight Ukraine

Keep strong Ukraine 🇺🇦 the world is praying for you to win this war. 🙏🙏🙏 One day you will be free again the lord be with you Ukrainian soldiers

"that we know about"

30% KIA rate for 5000 bucks a month? F that lol.

UPDATE: After this interview, Mr. Gabidullin sadly fell from the window on the 37th floor of the building where he lived. Russians are calling it "a tragic fall in slippery conditions".

When you pay someone very high to die for you, you don't expect them to be alive just to take payment while you lost the battle 😂.

PMC are illegal in Russia. Wagner is headquartered on a military base. They travel on military transport. Therefore one may conclude they are actually a part of the Russian military, without the constraints of military law or pension plan.

It doesn't matter how "battle hardened" they are, without both supplies and the means to procure them they will be doomed from the start. Action movies rarely cover that part because logistics boring. Those Wagner puds are just going to wind up in a meat grinder at best, or run away in droves when they see it coming. The only reason why Russia got that far into Ukraine in the beginning was because they had enough artillery to bombard the advance into submission, now the lions share belongs to Ukraine and Russians should be asking if the whole blowing up hospitals and schools is water under the bridge. The answer is probably no.

It sounds like it’s only gotten worse for Russia and it’s military every single day for the past couple months. What a mess for them. Glad Ukraine military is doing so well, hope this war doesn’t go on to much longer

mercinaries....

Glory to Ukraine 🇺🇦.

You can do it Ukraine, Victory is so close Slava Ukraine🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

"No experience needed" to join an elite military corps at the frontlines almost immediately.... 🤦

This is a perfect example of a power hungry dictator trying to recruit poor people to fight his battle.

Vladimir Putin consulted with a fortune teller. He asked: “How long will I live?” The psychic replied: “I cannot tell that but I do know you will die on a Ukrainian holiday.” “Which holiday?” Putin asked. “Whichever day you die will be an Ukrainian holiday.”

LOVE HOW COOPER CALLED THEM "WAGNER THUGS" 🤣🤣🤣

He wants war and has no one who wants to fight for him lol

A Destructive War For Both Country’s Of Greed And Power Of One Man Feeling So much importance That Is Not Willing To Give Up At No Cost

NO NEGOTIATIONS WITHOUT RUSSIA ALSO PAYING REPARATIONS & LEAVING ALL OF UKRAINE, INCLUDING CRIMEA! 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

The rest of the video @2:50 with the Wagner asking a soldier about having body armor is absolutely brutal. They all die. One of them gets sniped through the spine.

1500 out of 5000 killed? And the wounded? Casualties less than this would break the morale and fighting ability of any force. Their overall efficiency will be falling off drastically. Inevitably, they will be less of a threat even of their numbers are topped off. The new guys will not know how to survive long enough to get good.

... and THAT'S WHY THEY SAY THAT: "WAR IS HELL!" You just saw it with your own eyes...

To think that a private army, accountable to no one and motivated by greed exists is really sad. I hope Wagner group gets hammered by the Ukrainian's and the men in charge get brought to justice.

All mercenaries should be illegal by international law. And they need to be prosecuted. ALL. Especially Erik Prince.

I really wish the U.S. could send one of our own “private army”. They can even pick for themselves, A.F. Pararescue, Army Special Forces, Seals, or Delta. Obviously each are designed for specific scenarios but hell, we can call it a “handicap”.

Brutal.

IM VERY PROUD OF THE UKRAINIAN FIGHTERS.

Surely there must be a firm to put these people in their place.. dragging dead bodies and having no regard for the meaning of life. Surely there's a team

live tv?

"the elite paramilitary group" How is a mercenary group elite? It's literally prisoners being freed from jail to fight

Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the brave Ukrainian soldiers

Kherson didn’t fall to Wagner: The city leaders were bribed, traitors, and surrendered the city to the initial Russian advance without resisting.

not long for much change

Who takes the MSM news seriously anymore? Patrick Lancaster and New Atlas knows what’s REALLY going on in Ukraine

Good bless to Ukraine 🇺🇦

Mercenary groups are not designed for static frontline war. You need very good rotations for that. They live on high moral by fast brutal strikes.

Sound's more like "The Oath Keepers ".😉😉😉😉😉.

The wagner group is used to fighting against Syrian, Libyan and Georgian untrained fighter... It's different when they are facing a real army

Stay, Wagner, stay. We will service all of you. Really. It's not a problem. We need the fertilizer.

Blessings to Ukraine 🇺🇦 🙏 Russia has lost the war already putin

6.00: “…professionalism of the Wagner…thugs”, well said!!!

What a damn shame, pray for peace people. If it doesn't come, stand up and make it come and it wil!!!

Remember when COD made us grow up thinking Russia was actually an elite fighting force?

Whoever is reading this, i pray that whatever you’re going through gets better and whatever you’re struggling with or worrying about is going to be fine and that everyone has a fantastic day! Amen

no experience needed for the meat grinder

I'm shack that CNN is back to work and give news and not politics . Good job to the beautiful lady reporter ❤️👍

Sláva Ukrayíni 🇺🇦

The Russian government has officially announced they've drafted over 200,000 men. Their original "mobilization" was supposed to be 300,000. Meanwhile, international estimates as to how many men have fled the country since the mobilization was announced, is nearly 700,000.

as said, no winners in any war 😢

5:00 and even then, they were not complete victories. You can even call them pyrrhic victories for the amount of resources and time it cost them. Each week they spent besieging Mariupol, the Ukranians entrench, train, and gather resources. In war, initiative matters, and speed is essential. Also, 6 months? you can't do jack shit in 6 months. You can get a man fit, and teach him basic wartime skills, but soldiering is a full time job. To get a man on par with the skillsets of NATO and NATO aligned countries requires years of training and doing it. Wagner essentially wants meat shields.

Cant wait till they take back Mariopol thats what I wanna see Go Ukraine ❤

as a merc you are responsible for ammo, body armour and any equipment you want or need, mercenary or soldier of fortune is a brutal and short life

A global message for this time. A universal message for this moment. STOP THIS POINTLESS WAR!

$ 5000.00 US dollars a month? What a lie. Try $50 US dollars a month!

Most important gear your body bag

One moment you're a "tough guy" mercenary thinking about what you're going to buy with your murder-money. The hours are few 💀

Imagine if the navy seals had a recruitment billboard lol.

Love and peace to the world.

it's max headroom

No way this footage was exclusive. I saw it in the wild weeks ago

Wish all the peace for innoncent human being in these two both countries

LET'S GOOO!!!

Russia: we don't allow mercs to fight Also Russia: okay send in the mercs

Melissa Bell rocks. Superb reportage.

The main reason Wagner is falling apart in Ukraine, is because PMCs today aren't suppose to be standing armies in their own right. They're mostly relegated to auxiliary and specialist roles that support the national armed forces, rather than supplant them as the bulk of frontline troops. The only modern day exception to this rule was Blackwater at the height of it's power during the Iraq War, but that was due to some unique social-political-military circumstances that war created and can't be replicated so easily.

No volume

Note their treatment of the bodies. When some Ukrainians were caught doing something similar they were sent to prison. As usual, the good guys take the high road.

War is evil , war is pain , war is destruction , war haunts . What if the world would just learn to LOVE without thinking of race , nationality , tribe , clan or religion . Peace ! Peace 🕊️🕊️ to the whole world 🙏🙏

Russia is what happens when you believe your own hype. : )

On 'Wagner": There might have been some fanatic Russian Nationalists but these days one can just read old Machiavelli 'The Prince' - the chapter about mercenaries i.o. to understand how they will behave. In a nutshell - mercenaries are a nice (apparent) force multiplier in times of of strength and on an offensive. In a retreat or desperate situation they always become a liability - no matter what they call themselves.

$5000 per month 😆 pub door men get more than that. The whole scenario is horrifying and totally unnecessary 😳

❤Ukrainian..🇬🇪