Wagner boss: 32,000 ex-prisoners released from military service
According to Wagner’s private army, 32,000 of the convicts recruited in Russian prisons for military service in Ukraine have returned home. They had fulfilled their contract and commitment to the fighting, Prigozhin said on Sunday. Women and human rights activists have in the past expressed concern that so many criminals, including murderers and other violent criminals, are being pardoned and released back into Russian society prematurely. Some of the convicted criminals had already committed new murders.
On the other hand, the Wagner boss sees military service as a major rehabilitation program. In a voice message published on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin claimed that those released subsequently committed only 83 crimes in total. That is 80 times fewer crimes than those who were released after serving their sentence.
Prigozhin, who is a close confidant of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin chief, recruited some of the prisoners himself in the penal camps. Putin pardoned those who then signed a contract for military service. The condition was to complete at least six months of combat missions in Ukraine.
In March, Prigozhin put the number of released ex-prisoners from the Wagner ranks at 5,000. After capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, he announced that he had lost 20,000 men in the fighting there, 10,000 of them ex-prisoners alone. In many cases he had worked to ensure that the criminals received military burials.
Human rights activists complain that Russia continues to recruit criminals in prisons for military service on a massive scale. Accordingly, the Ministry of Defense in particular now uses the penal system to recruit fighters.