"We recruited at least three thousand people"

The head of the "Sided Rus'" foundation, Olga Romanova, told "Kholod" about sending prisoners to war. In as brief a manner as possible

At least three thousand prisoners have been recruited. This is the first batch, almost all of them have been killed. The stages continue to go: there are many who want to go to war. In the European part of the country, the Wagner PMC has not visited only the Kaliningrad region. In the other regions, they have been in all zones, except for life and special regime (and penal colonies, because the prisoners there are almost free). People are also recruited in pretrial detention centers. They are given two papers to sign: a petition for pardon and a petition for transfer to the Rostov Region FSIN Directorate. We receive official answers that they are allegedly sitting in prison, but even federal channels do not hide where they really are.

There is no legal mechanism for sending prisoners to war. A helicopter flies into the zone, men in black come out, often with Yevgeny Prigozhin , and take as many people as they need. At first, in July, they took 40-60 people, and today we are told that they are taking more than 100. First of all, they select the ruthless: murderers, those convicted of grievous bodily harm, repeat offenders. They are taken to the Rostov region. There they have dry rations, three to four hours for food and sleep, the rest of the time is serious training. After such training for 10-14 days, they are sent to the front in the Luhansk region. For some reason, Donetsk is not mentioned.

Some relatives write: "Help me get him out, they forced him." You ask a few questions, and it turns out that he went voluntarily. Most prisoners think like this: it's better to be at war than in a torture zone. Their relatives are more interested in money. Few people prevent their loved ones from going to war. Some ask us to help them enlist or receive payments . I'm not saying that no one gets paid - I know one widow who received more than five million rubles. But there are a lot of lies around this: prisoners are promised a posthumous pardon (although there is none in Russia) or that their criminal cases will be closed (although one person who was imprisoned for theft received a concussion and returned to prison).

I think that 50 thousand people can easily be squeezed out of the FSIN system for the front. The worst thing is that these people can return to freedom.

This is a rough retelling of the interview with the head of the foundation " Russia Behind Bars " "Kholoda". The phrases given are not necessarily exact quotes. The full interview can be read here .

Cover photo: Zurab Javakhadze / TASS