Not only Prigozhin

The Ministry of Defense has been recruiting prisoners for war since at least September 2022. It became widespread by December

The Ministry of Defense has been recruiting prisoners to participate in the war since at least September last year, Vorstka found out together with the Sitting Rus' Foundation. At the same time, cases of mobilization of prisoners into the official army became more frequent at the end of last year: over the course of three months, representatives of the Ministry of Defense visited colonies in four regions of Russia. Prigozhin’s public refusal to mobilize prisoners is associated with the Ministry of Defense’s dissatisfaction with the successes of its PMCs and recruitment methods in colonies, about which relatives of convicts complained.

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Without PMC, but with PMC

Since July last year, representatives of the Wagner PMC have been engaged in mass recruitment of prisoners. However, last week the head of this PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, publicly announced that the company had stopped recruiting prisoners. The media, citing sources, noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense could now take up this matter.

“I would like to note that back in the fall, several times in several zones, Prigozhin said that come with us, because we have a brotherhood, a team, a family, conditions, and the Ministry of Defense will still take you to war when I leave, but without asking,” comments the head of the Sitting Rus' Foundation, Olga Romanova. “He spoke about this several times, so we can assume that this was the plan when the Ministry of Defense comes in after Prigozhin .”

Based on appeals from prisoners and their relatives to the Sitting Rus' Foundation, Vorstka analyzed how often representatives of the Ministry of Defense visited colonies and convinced convicts to go to war in Ukraine.

The first mass recruitment of prisoners into the ranks of the official army became known in September . Then recruitment took place in IK-7 in the Novgorod region (Pankovka). According to an informant from Sitting Russia, about 60 prisoners were taken from the colony and went to war as part of the army “as if from a military registration and enlistment office.”

In addition, from December 2022 to February 2023 , representatives of the Ministry of Defense, judging by the data of Sitting Russia, visited penal colonies in five colonies in the Astrakhan and Kemerovo regions, as well as in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug and Altai Territory.

Thus, from IK - 6 in the Astrakhan region and IK - 44 in the Kemerovo region , 20 convicts were taken to war as part of the army. Also in Yurga, about 56 people went to war from IK-41. It is known about visits and recruitment of prisoners to IK-44 in the Kemerovo region, but the number of convicts who agreed is unknown. In addition, according to Sitting Rus', recruitment took place in one of the colonies in the Altai Territory, but the number of the colony and the number of those who agreed to participate in the war were not specified.

As Olga Romanova reported , at their own request, convicts in the colonies of the Volgograd region are taken to war : “Representatives of the Ministry of Defense do not come to them and do not campaign, no one campaigns at all. But so far, almost everyone who wants to is taken to war. You just need to write a statement - they say, I want it. And then sometimes a person is taken away immediately if there are already 15 applicants. So far, such parties are easy to recruit. Over the past week, 15 people were sent every three days. Once they even brought back 9 people - they didn’t calculate it, they couldn’t fit on the plane, they were waiting for the next departure. The GUFSIN is in charge of the process to the plane.”

Sitting Russia notes that recruitment to PMCs and the army differs in the process of organizing a visit . In the case of PMCs in the colonies, according to human rights activists, official communications were cut off and the reception and transmission of letters was suspended. In the case of visits by representatives of the Ministry of Defense, this does not happen. Another difference is in the promises not to carry out extrajudicial executions .

“Now the Ministry of Defense is selecting. They want people with skills, but still promise to come back for the rest,” says Romanova. - Again, they recruit people with skills, but from those who remain, excuse the expression. For now we are talking about purely voluntary recruitment. And it must be said that the prisoners are not just pushing, but they really want to. The same conditions as Wagner PMC, but minus extrajudicial executions. They [representatives of the Ministry of Defense] start with this and talk about it every five minutes of their speech: “We are a government agency, we are an army.” They focus on this. The absence of such executions is very attractive to prisoners.”

Today, another video of an extrajudicial execution appeared on one of the Telegram channels associated with Wagner PMC. As the publication says, it features a native of Crimea, Dmitry Yakushchenko. A video later appeared refuting the execution.

According to Romanova, relatives of prisoners have already contacted the fund, asking for help to protect their loved ones from recruitment into PMCs, but at the same time noting that they would not mind if their relative went to war as part of the official army. “Vorstka” has already told about one of these stories. Irina from the Tver region filed six complaints to various authorities to stop recruitment in the colony where her husband was imprisoned.

Then, in a conversation with a “Vestka” correspondent, she noted: “If the conversation was that this would be a contract with the Ministry of Defense, according to the law, on a state initiative, and the husband would not be drawn into violating the law again, we would agree, and he would go there.” Later it turned out that her husband still went to war as part of a PMC and died in the first weeks.

Despite Prigozhin’s formal statement about stopping recruitment into PMCs in penal colonies, some of them report that representatives of the organization still continue to visit institutions and recruit convicts to participate in the war. According to Vorstka, last week recruiters from PMCs visited IK-4 in the Tula region. This became known from the words of relatives of one of the convicts.

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For Soledar and recruitment

In mid-January, a number of large media outlets loyal to the authorities received advertising contracts for Prigozhin’s “Mochilovo”, a source close to the Ministry of Defense told Vorstka. The information was confirmed by an interlocutor in one of these media: according to him, the military department was unhappy with the situation with the PMC. The black PR campaign, however, was never launched: the businessman managed to come to an agreement with the Ministry of Defense. The condition of the agreement was that Wagner PMC refused to recruit prisoners, both sources say.

Several factors caused dissatisfaction with the Ministry of Defense, a source close to the ministry told VERSTKA. Firstly, military leaders reacted negatively to the obvious successes of Prigozhin’s company on the Ukrainian front: Soledar was the last straw, he claims. In January, PMCs began an assault on the city, and, according to the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar, they accepted groups “formed from the best reserves of the Wagnerites.” Two days later, Prigozhin announced that Soledar had been completely taken under control by representatives of his company. He separately emphasized that only they took part in the assault on the city.

The success of the “Wagnerites” was then highly appreciated in the Kremlin and put before the Ministry of Defense; A source close to the department called this gesture “a real slap in the face” to the official military leaders. After this, in the ministry, where Prigozhin was not liked before (“Vorstka” wrote about his conflict with the military and problems with removing the bodies of PMCs), it was decided that the “Kremlin cook” should be put in his place. In this regard, negotiations began that Wagner PMC should abandon the recruitment of prisoners, which until recently was quite successful.

The second complaint of the military department against PMCs is related precisely to recruitment methods. “ The relatives [of those recruited] are then bombarded with letters from the Ministry of Defense: prisoners are recruited, among other things, under the threat of tougher punishments , they [PMC representatives] are not shy, and then the Ministry of Defense has to disentangle it,” explained the source of “Vestka.” Also, the dissatisfaction of the families of recruited prisoners is often due to the fact that the “Wagnerites” do not keep their promises: they do not pay the due money and do not deliver the bodies of the killed mercenaries to their families, the interlocutor of “Verstka” concluded.

He found it difficult to say whether the PMC and the Ministry of Defense agreed on a complete ban on the recruitment of prisoners by the Wagnerites or just decided that this should be done “quietly.” “But, you know, if they [Wagnerites] continue to recruit in the colonies, I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “They are like that, you know... even worse than the Ministry of Defense.”

Regina Gimalova, Maria Ilyina