# Battle of Bakhmut The **Battle of Bakhmut** was the longest and bloodiest fight of the first phase of the [[Russo-Ukrainian War]]: roughly ten months of attritional assault on a small city in Donetsk Oblast, from attacks on surrounding settlements in August 2022 to the [[Wagner Group]]'s claim of capture on May 20, 2023. Wagner was the main Russian assault force, and most of its infantry were convicts recruited from Russian prisons. ## The convict model [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] began touring prisons in July 2022, promising inmates 100,000 rubles a month and a pardon after six months at the front. A BBC Russian and Mediazona count of compensation records found at least **48,366** prisoners recruited; of about **19,500** Wagner dead identified at Bakhmut, some **17,100** were former prisoners. Wagner said in February 2023 that it had stopped recruiting prisoners. ## Casualty claims | Figure | Source | |---|---| | More than 20,000 Wagner killed, about half convicts | Prigozhin, May 23–24, 2023 | | About 19,547 Wagner killed, 17,175 of them convicts (likely an undercount) | BBC Russian / Mediazona, June 2024 | | About 9,000 Wagner killed and 30,000+ casualties across Ukraine as of Feb 2023 (not Bakhmut alone) | US NSC, John Kirby | ## The feud it fed In early May 2023 Prigozhin posted videos blaming Defence Minister [[Sergei Shoigu]] and [[Valery Gerasimov]] for ammunition shortages and threatened to pull out of Bakhmut; supplies resumed days later. The quarrel ran straight into the [[Wagner Group Mutiny]] six weeks after the city fell. ## See Also - [[Wagner Group]] · [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] · [[Wagner Group Mutiny]] · [[Russo-Ukrainian War]] · [[Ukraine]]