This article is from Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet. The article was translated into English by on-line translation aps and then "intelligently corrected" by hand. There may be some errors and distortion from the original meaning, but not much.
by Anna Pavlova
In the summer, Wagner's Private Military Company (PMC) began to actively recruit Russian prisoners to participate in the war - Yevgeny Prigozhin personally came to recruit them. So thousands of convicts ended up in Ukraine. Many have already died. At the end of last year, recruiters began to travel around the prisons for the second time, Mediazona found out. But now there are much fewer volunteers, and "word of mouth" promises them death. Against the backdrop of failures with recruitment, Prigozhin's media has launched a PR campaign, in which they regularly talk about prisoners who survived and have already returned home.
The main thing about the recruitment of prisoners
- In winter, recruiters from the Wagner PMC began to come to the colonies for the second time, from where they had already taken prisoners in the summer and autumn.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin no longer does recruiting himself, arriving by helicopter, but instead sends subordinates.
- This time there are much fewer volunteers: if after Prigozhin's first visit several hundred prisoners signed up for the war, now it is rather several dozen.
- Prisoners say they no longer believe in the pardons being offered, and news from the recruits convince them that the risk of death is too high.
- Against this background, the media associated with Prigozhin have begun to actively talk about prisoners who have survived the war and returned home after six-month contracts.
- In some prison colonies, they are even promising to bring prisoners recruited earlier from the same prisons to aid in recruitment.
Since the end of last year, recruiters from Wagner PMC have been coming to the prison camps for the second time, where in the summer or autumn they have already recruited volunteers for the war in Ukraine. But now it is not such a grand occasion: the entire prison no longer lines up on the parade ground, and Yevgeny Prigozhin himself no longer arrives by helicopter - they make do with recruiters of a lower rank.
The prisoners have also stopped believing the promises of the Wagnerians: news in the media and telephone conversations with recruits convinced many that not everything at the front is "as wonderful" as the founder of Wagner PMC and his subordinates say.
"The last time [at the end of last year] a person who is near Bakhmut was contacted. He said he regretted going there. He said that 20% of those who left here are alive," says a prisoner of one of the prison camps in the Urals in a conversation with Mediazona.
And if in the summer and autumn a couple of hundred prisoners were summoned from one colony to go to war, now a few dozen are barely recruited. Perhaps it was problems with recruitment that prompted Prigozhin to start a new round of his PR campaign. Since the beginning of January, stories and videos about prisoners who signed up, fought in Ukraine for six months, and now, allegedly, have returned home as free men have been regularly appearing in the media associated with him.
From the first secret visits of recruiters to funerals with honours
The fact that Russian prison colonies were recruiting for the war became known in July last year from the prisoners themselves. But soon Wagner PMC began to talk openly about this itself. Yevgeny Prigozhin promised the prisoners money and release after six months of the contract, but he also warned them that they would be shot for desertion, looting, and drug and alcohol use.
In September, Ukrainian journalists published an interview with a Russian prisoner Yevgeny Nuzhin, and in mid-November, a video appeared on a channel linked to Wagner PMC in which Nuzhin, who had returned from Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange, was beaten to death with a sledgehammer. Andrei Medvedev, a mercenary of Wagner PMC who fled to Norway, in whose unit Nuzhin fought, said that after the beginning of the recruitment of prisoners, the execution of "refuseniks" and deserters became a general practice. Medvedev claims that he is reliably aware of ten such cases.
John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications of the White House National Security Council, noted in late December that mercenaries of Wagner PMC have been playing a significant role in the offensive on Bakhmut in the Donetsk region since the summer. For example, on January 11th, Yevgeny Prigozhin reported, before the Russian Defense Ministry, on the capture of Soledar, stressing that "no units were involved in the assault, except for the fighters of Wagner PMC."
The Ministry confirmed the occupation of the city two days later, and for the first time in an official statement mentioned the mercenaries (perhaps for the first time in the war):
"As for the direct assault on the city quarters of Soledar occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this combat task was successfully solved by the courageous and selfless actions of the volunteers of the Wagner assault squads."
Exactly how many prisoners are fighting in Wagner PMC is unknown. In November, Mediazona found out that in September and October 2022, the number of prisoners decreased by 23 thousand people. After that, the Federal Penitentiary Service did not update the statistics for two months, and at the end of January it finally released new data: it follows that the number of prisoners stopped decreasing after a record drop in the autumn, that is, the rate of recruitment to the Wagner PMC probably decreased significantly.
According to the United States, it is the prisoners who make up a significant part of Prigozhin's detachments, with 40,000 of the 50,000 mercenaries fighting in Ukraine being convicts recruited from Russian prisons. Approximately the same assessment was given by the head of the "Sitting Rus" Foundation, Olga Romanova, according to whom "at the end of December, 43,000 thousand" prisoners were recruited.
By the beginning of February, Mediazona was able to confirm the death of 567 recruited prisoners. These are only public reports of deaths, with names and other data, that make it possible to identify with certainty the deceased as a convict who joined Wagner PMC.
At first, it was only possible to get this information from the reports of relatives, but by the end of the year Prigozhin himself began talking about the "dead heroes", and prisoners began to be buried with honours. For example, in December, one of the mercenaries recruited in prison was buried in the "Alley of Valour" of the Beloostrovsky Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Initially, the city authorities refused to bury the prisoner as a hero, but abruptly changed their mind after Prigozhin's complaint to state Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin.
The heavy losses among the recruited prisoners are mentioned not only by human rights activists, but also by the convicts themselves, who remain in the prisons. From time to time they can still contact comrades who left for the war by phone.
"It seems to me that at least 30-40 deaths are known for sure, for sure," said a prisoner from the Yaroslavl Penal Colony 2, from where 110 men were recruited in August. According to this prisoner, with whom Mediazona spoke before his departure for the war, the volunteers from this prison stopped communicating from mid-autumn, but reports of their deaths have not yet been received in the prison.
Obviously, no matter how many prisoners are recruited, Wagner PMC constantly lacks fighters, so the recruiting efforts continue. Starting from the European part of Russia, recruiters have already reached Yakutia and the Primorsky Territory and now, apparently, have decided to make a second circuit around the prison colonies that they have already visited before.
Prisoners have heard about becoming "cannon fodder"
"The first time they came in October, more than 300 men left [were recruited]. The second time they came, at the end of December and January, they left with about 20 men, "says a prisoner from the Urals.
For the first time, as in many other prisons at that time, Yevgeny Prigozhin personally arrived for the recruiting. He flew in by helicopter. All the prisoners were gathered on the parade ground, and the head of the regional Federal Penitentiary Service was also present.
In general, the speech of the founder of Wagner PMC repeated what he is reported as saying in other colonies.
"He said that the Russian army has screwed up, they have all lost, they are all worthless. And here we are, Putin's hope to win this war," the prisoner interviewed by Mediazona quoted Prigozhin as saying.
The founder of Wagner PMC called the ideal candidates those convicts who "have ten years ahead of them and ten years behind them in prison." According to the prisoner, Prigozhin then assured them that only 15% die in battles, which means that the chances of survival were said to be still great.
The second time, in December, they went to a meeting with the recruiter of their own free wills. The prisoner said the visitor was "less charismatic" than Prigozhin.
"Not a psychologist, he couldn't get a crowd in. And when he began to tell us that now earlier recruits are being released and they needed a replacement, the discussion began with him", the convict recalled. "One particular prisoner, as they say in prison, hit him between the eyes, asking: 'How many percent of the survivors are left of those who left from here?' With that, he started to stumble, couldn't answer anything, and finished his speech."
According to the same prisoner, who was from the Urals, if for the first time more than a thousand people were recruited from the whole region, then in the second round only 340 were recruited. He notes that the prisoners went to the PMC voluntarily, although there were cases of pressure, when people "who are undesirable to the administration" were persuaded by threats.
Other prisoners interviewed by Mediazona insist that in their prison colonies they went to war "exclusively voluntarily." A prisoner from Penal Colony No. 4 in Plavsk, near Tula, said he learned about the forced transfer "only at the level of rumors" from other colonies.
"Wagner rejects half of those who want to do it, according to various criteria, so why would they suddenly they take them forcibly? In my opinion, if they are so in need, they would take everyone they want to," he reflects. "For example, in one case a prisoner got drunk celebrating his imminent departure for the war, but he was deprived of the opportunity to go. It sounds like an anecdote, but it turned out that, for bad behaviour, they were not allowed to go to the war. There were no threats to send them, but what is interesting is that in general, the conditions [in the colony] have become much tougher, and many believe that this is what this is for, although I am not sure."
In Penal Colony No. 4, the second round of recruiting took place in November. The prisoners were taken to Ryazan several times, but then returned. They were finally taken to the front only on January 10th, the convict said.
"When one of those who was recruited, after talking with representatives of the PMCs, asked how much training there would be, they answered: 'Your training is a battlefield.' It is possible that they are already directly involved," he says.
According to his estimates, about 300 people signed up for the war the first time (150 of them were taken), the second time only half (and only about 50 of them were selected).
The prisoner interviewed by Mediazona notes that the administration of the prison colony has "greatly cooled down" to recruitment, and among the prisoners there are no longer those who want to "even discuss the possibility" of going to war.
"The administration is holding on to the convicts because they are working. They don't want anyone to leave," he says. "As I suspect, [for the second round of recruiting] some of the convicts were not allowed to leave precisely because of [the need to work in the industrial zone]. There were those who wanted to, but they are very important in the prison industries."
According to him, for the first round of recruiting, the administration of the colony did not prevent the removal of prisoners at all, because "no one understood anything, everyone was frightened by the serious uncles" from Wagner PMC.
Human rights activist and former political prisoner Ivan Astashin wrote that recruiters again began to come to the prison camps of Mordovia at the end of November:
"In particular, for the second time, representatives of the Wagner PMC visited the IK-10 camp of the special regime, where this time about 60 convicts enlisted in the ranks of Prigozhin's army."
The creator of the Telegram channel "Resident of MLS" in December reported on the "new set" in prison camps Smolensk IK-6, Karelian IK-9 and Chelyabinsk IK-1. He told Mediazona that, according to his information, they came again to the prison colony in Voronezh. The first time 107 men were recruited there, the second time about 40.
In his prison colony, there has been no second recruitment, but in the autumn about 250 people were recruited from around twice as many who applied. Someone, according to "Resident of MLS", was "rejected" by FSB officers for talking with relatives.
"The bottom line is that although there are potentially still some people [who may agree to go to war], there is now more skepticism," he notes.
He associates the increased concerns about the benefits of joining Wagner PMC with rumours from the "word of mouth radio" that half of those who left to fight from their prison colony are no longer alive (although, in some cases, reports of the deaths of specific prisoners were later refuted by their relatives).
"But a number [of those who left for Ukraine], who, for example, telephoned here, said that there are losses and they are not small," the prisoner said. "But again, the exact numbers are not to be said, because everyone who was taken away was divided into small groups and scattered around the front."
They do not take foreigners and there is fear of the sledgehammer
At the end of last year, recruiters again came to prison camp IK-2 in the Yaroslavl region, which the founder of Wagner PMC had already visited in the summer. This time, the administration of the colony prepared volunteers in advance, out of 200 volunteers, only about 40 people were selected, one of the prisoners told Mediazona. The new lists are now compiled by employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service itself, "Resident of MLS" informed us.
Perhaps this is due to the fallout from the death in the war of a student from Zambia, Lemehani Nyirenda: he was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison after drugs were found in a parcel that he delivered while working as a courier. Prigozhin confirmed that the Zambian was recruited by Wagner PMC. According to the prisoner of IK-2, in the summer a foreigner was also taken from their colony, a citizen of Tanzania, named Tarimo Nemes Raymond, who died at the end of October near Bakhmut.
Lemehani Nyirenda: Killed fighting for Putin
A source from SG-2 notes that for the second time the recruiters made higher demands on physical training.
"Physical fitness tests: 40 push-ups and 40 sit ups, and being asked to run. This is due to negative experience: such people come and immediately begin to complain about their health, refuse to work, and they have to eliminate them," says the prisoner.
He also hinted at deaths and executions, and dead recruits' families not being paid "because they themselves violated the contract."
The prisoner says that Wagner PMC made the sledgehammer its symbol after the publication of the video showing the execution of Nuzhin, who was killed with a sledgehammer.
"[a recruiter for Wagner] said, 'If anyone surrenders, he will be exchanged for 15 people [from among the captured Ukrainians], for 20, as many as are necessary, and in front of the formation he will be demonstratively shot. Well, you've probably heard of that. And yes, we ordered covers for sledgehammers for the new year," the source reported.
According to him, in the second round of recruiting, about fifty people were taken to the war, including those 40 prisoners who signed up as volunteers even before the arrival of the recruiter.
"They said, maybe they would bring our happy and free comrades to the prison to show that it is possible to survive there and be released in this way, after finishing their contracts."
Prigozhin's media talk about those who have returned from the war and gained their freedom
For example, RIA "FAN" wrote how "another group of ex-prisoners" successfully completed a six-month contract with Wagner PMC, received pardons, and returned home.
"Of those who were recognized, five are at least 'bastards,' that is, the blood of prisoners is on their hands."
It is still unknown what the legal process is to send prisoners, who have not yet served their time, from the prison colonies to the war. Sources in the colonies say that recruits are asked to write petitions for pardon, and theoretically, a pardon can be issued by a decree from Vladimir Putin. (Mediazona reported on the increased number of secret decrees during the war in the spring). But there is no reliable evidence that the warring prisoners have been legally pardoned.
It is also unclear whether those prisoners who have now been allowed to return from Ukraine are now absolutely free and can live like ordinary people. For example, one of the detainees identified by Rotunda published on [social media site] VKontakte a certain document stating that he was "forbidden to commit acts and to lead an immoral lifestyle" during vacation.
In one of the videos with the prisoners returning from the front, they all claimed that they themselves wanted to return to the war.
At the same time, at the end of January, the publication 47news.ru reported on a former prisoner from St. Petersburg, who, allegedly, after the end of his contract with Wagner PMC, was able to fly to Turkey. 66-year-old Alexander Tyurin in 2021 received 23 years for organizing the murder of his own niece and the family of an acquaintance of an entrepreneur. According to the publication, he was recruited last summer, although the representatives of Wagner PMC themselves said that they were not taking volunteers over 50 years old. In December, writes 47news.ru, Tyurin "without a single wound" returned from the war, and on January 17 flew to Turkey. Later, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he was indeed released from punishment after serving as a mercenary.
The head of "Russia Sitting" in his telegram channel wrote about Tyurin:
Neither the Federal Penitentiary Service nor the Prosecutor General's Office could explain how prisoners find themselves at war. The departments limit themselves to "references to the Criminal Code, the Constitution and the Regulation on the Federal Penitentiary Service."
In early January, another Human Rights Council member, Eva Merkacheva, said that prisoners were formally released on pardon even before being taken to the war, but "the decrees themselves were closed because of state secrets."
Nikolai Troshkin told Mediazona that he decided to join Wagner PMC in prison, but then escaped and returned home. However, he was assured that he no longer had a criminal record.
After sending some of the convicts to the war, life in the prison colonies has also changed
The recruitment of detainees also indirectly affects the lives of the remaining prisoners in the colony. For example, the author of the channel "Resident of MLS" told Mediazona that those who worked in the industrial zone also signed up as volunteers in his colony, so now the administration is trying to somehow make up for the shortfall.
He argues that for the first time recruiters took less than half of those who signed up, but it is unlikely that those screened out will want to get into Wagner PMC if there is another round of re-recruitment. Despite propaganda videos showing freed mercenaries, the prisoners are now not sure that they will really be pardoned, even if they survive.
The original Russian language article can be found here
The head of "Russia Sitting" in his telegram channel wrote about Tyurin:
"I have no doubt that this animal has not been to the front for a day. In general, this is a very common business: releasing others from prison under the noise of those who are being released to fight."
Neither the Federal Penitentiary Service nor the Prosecutor General's Office could explain how prisoners find themselves at war. The departments limit themselves to "references to the Criminal Code, the Constitution and the Regulation on the Federal Penitentiary Service."
"They confirm by their statistics however that this is illegal. Those convicted for serious crimes are also promised a pardon and these people find themselves with weapons on their hands," Natalia Evdokimova, who was subsequently expelled from the presidential Human Rights Council, told reporters.
In early January, another Human Rights Council member, Eva Merkacheva, said that prisoners were formally released on pardon even before being taken to the war, but "the decrees themselves were closed because of state secrets."
Nikolai Troshkin told Mediazona that he decided to join Wagner PMC in prison, but then escaped and returned home. However, he was assured that he no longer had a criminal record.
After sending some of the convicts to the war, life in the prison colonies has also changed
The recruitment of detainees also indirectly affects the lives of the remaining prisoners in the colony. For example, the author of the channel "Resident of MLS" told Mediazona that those who worked in the industrial zone also signed up as volunteers in his colony, so now the administration is trying to somehow make up for the shortfall.
"I don't think it's directly [related], but we have an industrial zone where there are sewing shops," he says. "They received a state order for making boots and uniforms for the mobilized, but they failed to meet the order. Plus Prigozhin then flew in, and some of those who worked in the industrial zone also left. That is, they have a labour shortage. They're panicking. The prisoners are now being herded into vocational classes, using more carrots than sticks -- all sorts of privileges and promises. People are not very used to this. But they have no choice, because, as I understand it, the Ministry of Defense is putting pressure on them. And in addition, there are attempts to begin tightening the regime."
He argues that for the first time recruiters took less than half of those who signed up, but it is unlikely that those screened out will want to get into Wagner PMC if there is another round of re-recruitment. Despite propaganda videos showing freed mercenaries, the prisoners are now not sure that they will really be pardoned, even if they survive.
"It makes a lot of people think," says "Resident of MLS". "They should have taken everyone in one go. It would have been better for Wagner PMC, because then there was very little information about what was happening at the front."
The original Russian language article can be found here
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