Russian ex-prisoners granted amnesty for mercenary service reportedly include convicted murderer

The first group of Russian ex-prisoners to be granted amnesty for their participation in the war in Ukraine with PMC Wagner includes people who were convicted of murder, robbery, organized crime, and amphetamine production, according to the independent outlet Agentstvo and the BBC’s Russia Service.

On Thursday morning, PMC Wagner founder Evgeny Prigozhin reported that for the first time, a group of prisoners who were recruited to join the mercenary group had finished their six-month tours in Ukraine and been granted amnesty. The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published a video showing the men (with their faces blurred), while Prigozhin’s own news agency RIA FAN posted photographs of them (with their faces clearly visible).

The BBC’s Russian Service identified one of the men as Anatoly Salmin, a 34-year-old from the Leningrad region who’s been convicted of multiple crimes, including murder. In 2011, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for drowning a friend when the two went fishing.

Another one of the freed prisoners, according to Agentstvo, is a veterinarian from St. Petersburg named Dmitry Karavaichik, who was sentenced in 2019 to 17 years in prison for producing and distributing amphetamine. Karavaichik claimed that the drugs were planted by police, and that he only sold crushed-up pills that he falsely claimed were amphetamine in order to earn money for prosthetic limbs for animals. Media reports at the time likened him to Walter White from the show Breaking Bad, another drug dealer.

Agentstvo also reported that the group of ex-convicts might include a man named Alexander Suetov, who was sentenced in 2020 to 10 years in prison for his role in organizing a crime ring responsible for robbing a jewelry store in St. Petersburg; a man named Denis Kinev, who was given a five-year sentence in 2011 for robbery; and a man named Stanislav Usachev, who was sentenced to 13 months in prison for car theft no later than 2016.