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Putin's 'chef' recruits Russia's 'worst criminals' from prisons to fight as mercenaries in Ukraine [1]
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Date: 2022-09-27
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef,” has been making the rounds of Russian penal colonies to recruit convicted criminals to fight as mercenaries for the Wagner Group in Ukraine. He’s also on the FBI’s most wanted list (but more on that later).
Olga Romanova, a leading expert on Russia’s prison system, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group is recruiting some of Russia’s “worst criminals.” She said Putin’s plan is to “recruit at least 50,000 convicts” to send to Ukraine. She told The Guardian that about 11,000 Russian prisoners have already signed up to go to Ukraine, and the number is growing rapidly.
In an interview on the YouTube channel Popular Politics, Romanova said:
“All kinds of criminals are accepted, but preference is given to murderers, robbers and looters, as Prigozhin himself said. Those who went to prison for causing grievous bodily harm are also welcomed. And now they've started recruiting people who were convicted of rape, but they're to serve in a separate unit. We know two stories from the Saratov colonies, absolutely horrid places, there is a very special one among them. They recruited a maniac from there who had, so to speak, cannibalism in his portfolio. He also went to war.”
Romanova heads the non-governmental organization Russia Behind Bars. which provides legal and charitable aid to Russia’s prison population and their families. She said her team recognized at least one prisoner they had helped in a video released by Ukrainian officials of a captured Russian fighter. The former inmate said the Wagner Group had provided him with just one week of training before sending him off to the battlefield.
Earlier this month, a leaked video featuring a man closely resembling Prigozhin went viral on Russian social media. The man was shown telling inmates that they would be freed if they served six months on the front lines with the Wagner Group in Ukraine. “We need only shock troops,” the man said, emphasizing that the war is harder than the fighting in Chechnya. And he warned that any deserters would be executed by firing squad.
x We took a closer look at the video in which a man, who strongly resembles a Putin associate, Yevgeny Prigozhin, promises inmates release from prison in return for a six-month combat tour in Russia's war against Ukraine:
https://t.co/ICFIQ8WTVi pic.twitter.com/CUEXZSjsrN — Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) September 16, 2022
The Guardian spoke to four prisoners and three close family members of inmates across different penal colonies in Russia who all gave similar accounts of how Prigozhin was personally conducting recruitment in prisons. The prisoners said Prigozhin was offering a salary of 100,000 rubles ($1,650) per month. If they died, their families were to receive a lump sum payment of 5 million rubles ($82,600).
On social media, Prigozhin defended his recruitment of prisoners, telling his critics: “It is either private military contractors and prisoners [fighting in Ukraine] or your children—decide for yourself,” The Guardian reported.
And just which prisoners are being recruited by the Wagner Group? An attorney for Russia Behind Bars, Ruslan Vakhapov, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group originally grabbed “mostly those convicted for homicide … and robbery.”
“But now, their fishing net takes everybody in, including man-eaters. So far we know of one case of recruitment among Russian cannibals,” Vakhapov said. “It’s time to look into this phenomenon now, before they start recruiting in orphanages.” “The murkiest characters go to Ukraine,” he added. “I just spoke with the wife of a serial killer convicted in Kostroma. He was supposed to spend five more years behind bars, but Wagner had freed him, so the wife was terrified he might [come back] and attack her for filing for divorce.”
Wagner Group mercenaries have mostly been fighting in the Donetsk region where they have made incremental advances in intense fighting centered on capturing the town of Bakhmut. But they have been taking heavy casualties as they keep trying to secure at least one victory for Putin when Russian forces are retreating elsewhere.
CNN reporter Nick Paton Walsh recently visited the front at Bakhmut and filed this report:
Walsh reported that the Ukrainian forces under attack in Bakhmut are face-to-face with Russian mercenaries, including convicts sent to the front line:
This city has been the focus of Russian forces in the past weeks, even as they abandon positions around Kharkiv and appear to struggle to hold ground elsewhere. Wagner mercenaries have been deployed to that fight, according to multiple reports from Russian media, and have been making gains around the eastern edges of the city. The mercenaries’ attacks are often devastatingly callous: the Ukrainians tell CNN that the Wagner fighters rush at them with small arms attacks, causing the Ukrainians to fire at them to protect their positions. The gunfire then gives away where the Ukrainians are, allowing the Russian artillery to target with greater accuracy. The attacks are regular, and the shelling is almost constant. … Here, a Ukrainian officer, known by his call sign “Price”, tells CNN about the last Russian they took prisoner… “There was one Wagner guy we caught. He was a convict, from Russia – I don’t remember exactly where from. It was get shot or surrender for him. They act professionally, not like usual infantry units,” he said.
Romanova told The Daily Beast that her team started hearing reports about prison recruits being deployed to Ukraine as early as June.
“Pretty much all murderers we have on our watch have been recruited and they die like flies in Ukraine. Out of the first 42 convicts recruited in the first group, only three survived, out of the second group of 66 convicts, only six returned, including one who had lost his arm,” Romanova said.
Some Wagner Group mercenaries have already been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Members of the mercenary group have also been linked to human rights abuses in Syria and several African countries where they have been deployed to serve Putin’s interests. There are real fears that the inmate recruits could have a propensity to commit atrocities in Ukraine if given the opportunity. Rob Lee, a military analyst, told The Guardian that recruiting prison inmates might “plug some holes” in the short term, but would do little to address Russia’s “critical” shortage of manpower. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee said. “I can’t even begin to imagine what disciplinary problems prisoners will bring.” Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for opposing the Putin regime, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and substances.” He said: “What could such an army even accomplish in combat?” (His full Twitter thread is worth reading.)
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https://dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/27/2125165/-Putin-s-chef-recruits-Russia-s-worst-criminals-from-prisons-to-fight-as-mercenaries-in-Ukraine
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