This is how Moscow recruits prisoners to go to the battlefield

The solution when war broke out was to allow the private Wagner militia, now eliminated, to recruit in prisons, but their numbers were limited. That is changing. At the end of March, the Russian Duma approved a legal reform that It allows the Armed Forces to recruit from prisons and even people who are being investigated for crimes but have not yet been convicted.

In exchange for their participation in the war, if they manage to return to Russia alive they receive freedom. The most reliable calculations say that Russia could thus increase the number of soldiers in Ukraine by 150,000. Cannon fodder.

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Several laws facilitate this recruitment, often forced, but the latest goes further. Any person who is being investigated for a crime, is in preventive detention or awaiting trial in freedom, You will see the entire judicial process eliminated if you enlist for war.
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The definitive release of the prisoners will only become effective, says the reform, when the war ends. So they will be on the front lines for the entire duration of the war or they will return to prison. Only those whose injuries are incompatible with their participation as soldiers will escape. Those will be able to return home, not to prison.

The law has exceptions. Those convicted of terrorism, treason to the State, organized crime or “discredit of the Armed Forces” cannot benefit from it.. Those who criticize the war are condemned for this crime. But in practice it seems that the latter type of convicts are recruited. Especially if they are famous people who protested against the war.

Oleg Orlov, co-founder and member of Memorial, the prestigious Russian human rights NGO, Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament and Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, received a letter from the Prison Administration offering to change his sentence of two and a half years in prison (he protested against the war) for the same period of service on the front in Ukraine. Orlov is 70 years old.

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The Russian Armed Forces do not shy away from murderers, rapists or corrupt people of any kind. And among the latter, the mischief begins to grow, according to what the Moscow correspondents of several major European newspapers say in their notes. Corrupt officials or politicians who were sentenced to a few years in prison are allowed to enlist in units that are far from the front or in the military industry.

The war is thus emptying Russian prisons. In August 2022, when the prisoner recruitment system began, There were 349,000 people imprisoned throughout the prison system (in addition to another 100,000 awaiting trial). At the end of the year there were less than 250,000 people. According to a cable from the American agency Associated Press, prisons are being closed in several regions because they are left empty.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia have published official accounts of their losses since the start of the war. At the end of February, Ukraine estimated the number of its dead soldiers at 31,000, while the Russian army avoids reporting its military losses.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, resorted this Wednesday to the “law on state secrets” and the “particular case” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to justify the absence of official communication about the military losses of his army.

Last August, however, the New York Times, citing US officials, estimated Russian military losses at 120,000 dead soldiers. And on January 29, in a written response to an MP, British Defense Minister James Heappey put the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded at 350,000.
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Another count carried out this week by the BBC’s Russian-language service and the Russian site Mediazona estimates that more than 50,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022.

The calculation, published after joint research and completed on April 7, 2024, is based on various sources of information, such as official press releases, news in the press and social networks, or visits to cemeteries.
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​In their work, BBC Russian and Mediazona were particularly interested in the fate of Russian prison inmates recruited to fight on the front.

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According to the investigation of the two media, on a sample of more than 1,000 prisonershalf of those recruited by the Russian army had died two months after being sent to the front. Those recruited by the Wagner paramilitary group generally died three months after their enlistment.

The two media also point out that more than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of the conflict “which illustrates the enormous human cost of the territorial gains” obtained by the army sent by the government of Valdimir Putin.