Russia recruits serial murderers to fight with Wagner in Ukraine

A video of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian Oligarch, at a Russian jail, shows him telling rows of prisoners lined up that he needs convicts who have been murdered more than once to assist Wagner on the frontline in Ukraine.

In the video, Prigozhin is also heard telling the inmates that he also requires offenders who have beaten up state officials or members of the police force.

"We need your criminal talents," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in the video while warning the men that 15 to 10 per cent of them would return to Russia "in zinc coffins".

Evidence also suggests that Russia is sending female convicts to work in occupied regions of eastern Ukraine, according to Russian rights activist Olga Romanova.

Wagner claimed that it stopped recruiting inmates in February 2023, but the Russian Defence Ministry has reportedly begun its own recruiting campaign in Russian prisons.

Russian prisoners are being promised a full pardon if they agree to serve in the Russian military for a minimum of 6 months.

There have also been economic promises made to the inmates. After warning the male convicts about death in Ukraine, Prigozhin promised that the survivors would go home with a bonus of 100,000 roubles – the equivalent of £800.

Two months prior to his latest recruit of incarcerated persons, President Vladimir Putin confirmed for the first time that he had been signing presidential pardons for prisoners who had returned from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who claims to have founded the Wagner Group to support Russian forces, has recruited 49,000 long-serving inmates to fight – out of which, only 32,000 returned.

However, according to independent researchers, the actual number of survivors is much lower – at around 20,000.

Vladislav Kanius was sentenced to 17 years in a penal colony, a distant institution that has been established for punishing the most severe crimes with forced labour and isolation from society, for brutally murdering his student girlfriend.

Vladislav Kanius stabbed Vera Pekhteleva more than 100 times and then strangled the 25-year-old with an electric cable. The attack was so vile, that it made several headlines across Russia.

Although the 25-year-old was sentenced to 17 years, Vera Pekhteleva's mother found that he was pictured wearing a military uniform and holding a gun less than a year later.

While trying to find out information on the whereabouts of her daughter's attacker, the court told Mrs Pekhteleva that Kanius' location was a state secret.

Speaking to reporters, Mrs Oksana Pekhteleva said: "This is blasphemy. It's like all of us have been assaulted. This is a signal to all scum out there: 'Do whatever you want, you won't be punished.'"

The Russian government has not commented on the reports.

In March 2023, Ukraine's General Staff said in its daily update that a train packed with prison inmates had been spotted in the Donetsk region. The update also noted that one of the train carriages was designated for women.

Olga Romanova, a Russian rights activist, told reporters that she heard about the plan to recruit female inmates in 2022. She also noted that around 100 women, who had previously been incarcerated, were sent to Ukraine in March 2023.

Romanova also shared that the Russian Defence Ministry is recruiting incarcerated individuals from the central city of Volgograd and Kemerovo regions in the south.

In January 2023, the FSIN (the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service) had a total prisoner population of 433,006. According to the FSIN, only 8.9 per cent of the incarcerated persons in Russia, are female.

Russia has been ranked fifth in the world, for holding the most people in prison – says World Population Review.