Fighting in Ukraine against a reduced sentence. This is what the Wagner group, a private military company associated with the Russian presidency, offers to common law prisoners. After more than four months of war in Ukraine, the Russian army seems to suffer from a lack of manpower. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not decreed general mobilization, so he is struggling to ensure a rotation of troops in combat. To avoid a shortage of fighters, the Wagner group recruits in Russian prisons in exchange for reduced sentences.
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The prisoners who accept will go to fight in the Donbass, the main front of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. At least 15 people died on Sunday July 10 in a strike that hit a building in Chassiv Iar, north of Donetsk. Rescuers estimate that 24 people remain under the rubble. The balance sheet is therefore likely to increase.
The Wagner militia conducts a recruitment campaign in the prison ofObukhovo in Saint-Petersburg. Nadezhda’s boyfriend is serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence there for drug trafficking. The partner of another detainee told him the news: prisoners who undertake to go to war for six months in Ukraine will be able to have their sentence reduced.
“She told me that the proposal was valid for six months, after six months it’s ‘total amnesty’“explains the Russian. “My friend called me and confirmed the thing. He said that indeed in the penal colony, we only talk about that: we recruit for the war! He tells me that a lot of prisoners are still thinking about it. ” One inmate of this prison has already gone to war.
The Wagner Group recruits Russian prisoners for the war in Ukraine
to listen
Journalist Julia Krasnikova, of the online media Vajnie istorii collected many other testimonies. For her, it is clear that the Wagner group is in charge of these “recruits”. “It was the detained section heads who openly announced to the others that the Wagner group was recruiting. One of them even mentioned Prigojine’s name”explains the journalist.
Evgueni Prigojine alias “Vladimir Putin’s cook”, is considered the real boss of the Wagner group. Western military sources confirm that most of the Russian fighters present on the Ukrainian Donbass front are either Chechens or auxiliaries recruited by Wagner.