Deception, as the men in Bakhmut discovered, is central to both the Russian and the Wagner Group enterprise, especially as it fails to recognize that pitting an army of poorly trained convicts against a Ukrainian army comprised of people defending their families and their homeland is inevitably a recipe for military failure. The prisoners
interviewed by CNN explained that their incapacity was the product in no small part of the propaganda about Ukraine that they had been fed for years.
“We thought we’d be fighting Poles and various mercenaries. Germans. We didn’t think anyone was left in the Ukrainian army there. We thought they’d left the country,” said one.
“So it became clear they were just spinning lies to get us to enter into battle with the Ukrainians. No one really thought that the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] would actually fight for their own country, for their loved ones. We only learned this after going in there.”