Mediazona and BBC Russian Service: During the war in Ukraine, the Wagner PMC recruited about 50 thousand prisoners
During the war in Ukraine, the Wagner PMC recruited at least 48,366 prisoners, according to calculations by journalists from Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service, based on internal PMC documents on payments to the families of the deceased. Representatives of the PMC, including their deceased leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, began traveling around Russian prisons in the summer of 2022, offering prisoners the chance to go to war in Ukraine in exchange for a pardon.