Posted on 02/09/2023 7:10:55 AM PST by Salohcin
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has halted its recruitment of prisoners to join the fight in Ukraine, the head of the notorious paramilitary outfit said Thursday.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s claims, which could not be immediately verified, follow independent media reports of Wagner resuming its prisoner recruitment process this winter as it takes heavy losses in Russia’s months-long assault on eastern Ukraine’s Bakhmut.
Responding to a press inquiry claiming that Russian inmates have not been recruited into Wagner for more than a month, Prigozhin said:
“The recruitment of prisoners in the Wagner PMC has completely stopped.”
He did not provide an explanation for why the prisoner recruitment had been stopped.
Prigozhin, speaking through his press office, said Wagner is “fulfilling all its obligations to all those who work with us now.”
According to the Mediazona and Agentstvo online news outlets, fewer inmates were willing to join Wagner when its recruiters returned to Russian prisons this winter, after reports of convicts being sent to their deaths on the battlefield filtered back into prisons.
The two independent news websites said Wagner started threatening reluctant inmates with new prison sentences for refusing to enlist.
While there are no exact casualty figures available, special “Wagner cemeteries” set up in southern Russia have grown seven times in size since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner is believed to have as many as 50,000 fighters deployed in Ukraine.
These include thousands of Russian convicts who were promised pardons and early release from jail in exchange for signing six-month contracts to fight in Ukraine — but threatened with execution if they deserted.
In October, independent media reported that the Russian Defense Ministry had also started recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine.
"If the [Defense Ministry] takes over that source of manpower, Wagner's size and capabilities will be reduced. One way for the [Defense Ministry] to reassert itself and minimize Wagner's role," Rob Lee, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, tweeted Thursday.
With 90K volunteers, they must have figured out that they don’t need to recruit jail-birds...
Why would they end the prisoner recruitment plan? It’s the best of both worlds. Use them as cannon fodder and never spend a penny on having to feed them and maintain their housing.
“Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has halted its recruitment of prisoners”
they were bound to run out of prisoners sooner or later ...
Human rights activists: Of the first thousand Wagner prisoners, 20 returned home
https://odessa-journal.com/human-rights-activists-of-the-first-thousand-wagner-prisoners-20-returned-home/
What 90K "volunteers"?
The last time Putin claimed to have 90K volunteers was back in August 2022
around 700K Russian men left before the partial mobilization (so Putin never managed the 300K
so, what are you talking about ganee?
Yup, plus hundreds of criminals with military-grade weaponry is always a plus in Putin's Tsardom
That's about a 2% survival rate - better than I expected
In fact, far from 90k volunteers Russia has been busy emptying their prisons and sending untrained criminals off to fight and die. Few last more than 10 days. They have been grabbing men off the street including senior citizens. But that isn’t like trained troops. Those are just cannon fodder.
They probably ran out of prisoners with longish sentences but docile(?) enough to not be a bigger threat to others around them than the Ukies’ threat to those others...
Otherwise, the choice might be, say, 5 years (typically) of bad conditions and getting out alive, vs. maybe 5 weeks of hell and then going to real hell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.