Wagner chief: American killed in Ukraine
The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced in a video clip on Tuesday the death of an American volunteer working alongside Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine.
Prigozhin appeared in the recording, which was published by Russian military bloggers, in front of a “corpse of a soldier” who said he was an American, amid the rubble of a building.
Prigozhin appeared in the short video while he was walking around with his men at night, while muffled explosions were heard around him, without specifying the exact location or time of the scene.
“He came to meet us. A citizen of the United States of America,” he said, in a solemn and sarcastic tone at the same time, as he stood next to the corpse of a soldier lying on his back, bare-chested and wounded in the stomach.
Prigozhin showed in the dark what appeared to be the soldier’s personal documents. “We’ll take him back to the United States,” he said. “We’ll put him in a coffin with the American flag. With respect, because he didn’t die in his grandfather’s bed, but in the war.”
And the agency “Agence France Presse” could not independently confirm the validity of Prigozhin’s statements.
In a message published by his media office on Tuesday evening, Prigozhin said, “I will definitely hand over the body” of this fighter to the US authorities.
He added sarcastically: “I will do this especially for the (Washington Post)” newspaper, days after the American daily announced that he had offered the Ukrainian intelligence to provide it with information on the locations of Russian army units in return for the withdrawal of Kiev forces from Bakhmut.
On Monday, Prigozhin described this information as “laughable”.
