The population of Russian colonies has decreased markedly amid reports of prisoners being sent to the front

In just one month in October, the population of Russian penal colonies decreased by 13,000 people at once. This is almost the same as the number of people who left the colonies in the previous nine months, combined. The Agency writes about this, referring to the official statistics of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

So, according to the agency, in just ten months of 2022, the number of convicts in correctional colonies (without pre-trial detention centers, prisons and institutions for minors) decreased by 28,304 people. Of these, 15,132 left the colonies between January and September, and the rest in October.

At the same time, the total decline in the population of Russian colonies has already exceeded the same figure for the whole of 2021, when a total of 23,205 people left the colonies.

The authors of the publication note a sharp contrast between the number of monthly convicts leaving the colonies at the beginning of the year, when PMC Wagner and the Ministry of Defense were not recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine, and the numbers in recent months, when reports of such recruitment began to arrive regularly.

At the same time, the director of the Public Verdict Foundation, Natalya Taubina, is convinced that, despite the obviously anomalous statistics, it is impossible to draw an unambiguous conclusion from these data about the number of prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine. In her opinion, the statistics may mean the death of some of the prisoners, as well as the fact that the recruits were not included in the correctional system.

This summer, human rights activists began leaking reports about the recruitment of prisoners for the war in Ukraine to the press. The number of such messages kept growing, until videos appeared in which the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, personally recruits men in the colony. At some point, Prigozhin himself stopped denying the fact of such recruitment. “Either your children, or PMCs and prisoners,” he then replied to his critics.

In autumn, the first reports appeared that not only Wagner PMCs, but also the Ministry of Defense were recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine. Also in the autumn, amendments to the legislation were introduced for consideration by the State Duma, allowing sending people serving sentences to the front.

Sergei Babinets, head of the Team Against Torture, said that his organization is aware of the recruitment of prisoners in colonies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Orenburg and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the Krasnodar Territory, and almost all regions of the North Caucasus.

In turn, the head of the Rus Seated Foundation, Olga Romanova, reported on the recruitment of not only prisoners serving sentences, but also those under investigation who are in jail.

In total, according to her estimates, by October about 20 thousand prisoners were recruited to the front.

Source: "Agency. News"

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