Estimates say Wagner alone recruited as many as 49,000 troops from prisons After serving six months, the surviving hardened criminals – having witnessed brutal combat in Ukraine – returned to Russian society as free men. Desperate for soldiers to fight his faltering war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin in 2022 recruited troops out of Russian prisons, promising pardons to thousands of convicts. But now, having served their required time in the army and having witnessed the horrors of war, a wave of hardened criminals have returned to Russia as free men including paedophiles, murderers and even cannibals. The societal impacts of this have already been felt. In the last two days alone, two men who were released from prison to fight for Russia have been either accused or convicted of sexually assaulting young girls. Other reports have detailed pardoned convicts killing upon their return, terrorising their hometowns, and neighbours who thought they had seen the back of them. (…) Prigozhin told Wagner’s convict soldiers that they would be used as shock troops – leading attacks against Ukraine’s defences. The reality, according to captured Wagner soldiers, was that they were used as ‘little more than cannon fodder’ – ordered to throw themselves against defensive positions in great numbers to wear down Kyiv’s stockpiles and find defensive weak points. Thousands of convict soldiers were deployed in the ‘meat grinder’ Battle of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian media reported the convicts were ‘dumped onto the front after 2-3 weeks of poor training and used as cannon fodder’ by Wagner’s more elite units. Any soldiers who attempted to flee, or refused orders, were executed. According to Prigozhin himself, of the 49,000 prisoners recruited by Wagner, only 32,000 returned. Independent researchers believe the real number to be even lower, around 20,000, according to the BBC.
Categories: Rechtsextremismus