About 6,000 mercenaries of the "Wagner" PMC are involved in the battles for Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. Some 20,000-30,000 recruited recruits are also fighting there.

 This was stated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, CNN reports.

 "Now they (the "Wagnerians" - ed.) are fighting mainly in Bakhmut. There are about 6 thousand or so real mercenaries and maybe another 20 or 30 thousand recruits that they are recruiting, many of whom are released from prisons Milly says.

 The American general noted that a group of mercenaries suffered huge losses in the Bakhmut area, calling the battle for the city a "slaughterhouse" for the Russians.

 "The Ukrainians are putting up a very effective defense that has proven to be very costly for the Russians. In the last 20-21 days or so, the Russians haven't made any progress in and around Bakhmut. So it's a slaughter for the Russians. They're getting hit in the Bakhmut area, and the Ukrainians are fighting very, very well," Milli emphasized.

 About Russian losses

 We will remind, earlier the Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov explained the importance of keeping Bakhmut, in particular, by the fact that the enemy suffers huge losses in battles.

 According to him, only on the Bakhmut direction, the Russians lose an average of 500 killed or wounded per day.

 It also became known that the "Wagner" PMC is no longer capable of independently providing offensive work in the Bakhmut area and is forced to ask for support from the Russian regular army.

 Let's add, as previously calculated in the mass media, for every Ukrainian soldier who died during the defense of Bakhmut, the occupiers lost at least five people.

 Although, the Ministry of Defense gave an example that in the east there are days when the ratio of losses of Ukraine and the Russian Federation reaches 1 to 10.