The inmates at the St. Petersburg penal colony anticipated a visit from officials and assumed it would involve some form of inspection. Instead, uniformed soldiers showed up there and offered them a pardon in exchange for joining the Russian army in Ukraine.
According to a lady whose partner is serving a sentence there, roughly a dozen people left the prison over the course of the next few days. She spoke under the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation and revealed that although her partner wasn’t one of the volunteers, he “couldn’t think about it” given the remaining years of his sentence.
Russian casualties in its invasion of Ukraine, which is approaching its sixth month, continue, but the Kremlin has refrained from declaring a full-scale mobilization, which might be highly unpopular with President Vladimir Putin. Instead, this has resulted in a clandestine recruitment drive that uses prisoners to fill the labor gap.
Additionally, there are allegations that hundreds of Russian soldiers are attempting to resign from the military and refuse to engage in combat.
“We’re seeing a significant outflow of people who want to leave the combat zone,” said Alexei Tabalov, a lawyer who oversees the Conscript’s School legal aid organization. “These are people who have been serving for a long time and those who have just recently signed a contract.”
In an interview with reporters, Tabalov claimed that the organization has received a large number of requests from men who want to end their agreements. “I personally get the idea that everyone who can is eager to go away,” Tabalov said. And the Defense Ministry is searching far and wide for potential recruits.
The Defense Ministry disputes the existence of any “mobilization activities,” but it appears that the government is making every effort to increase enlistment. This is The Job, which exhorts men to enlist in the professional army, is advertised on billboards and in-transit signage in different areas. In some cities, including one in Siberia where a half marathon was held in May, authorities have set up mobile recruiting centers.
“Volunteer battalions” are being organized by regional governments and advertised on state television. At least 40 such organizations were identified by the business newspaper Kommersant, with representatives promising volunteers bonuses and monthly salaries ranging from the equivalent of $2,150 to roughly $5,500.
On job search portals, reporters discovered thousands of postings for various military expertise.
This week, the British military reported that Russia has created the 3rd Army Corps, a sizable new combat force, from “volunteer battalions,” looking for individuals up to 50 years old with only a middle-school education and promising “lucrative monetary bonuses” if they are deployed to Ukraine.
Although these stories cannot be independently verified, complaints are also making their way into the media that some people aren’t receiving their promised compensation.
Early in August, according to Tabalov, he started receiving several requests from reservists who had been mandated to participate in two-month training in regions close to the Ukrainian border for legal assistance.
According to Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the prisoner rights organization Gulagu.net, who cited contacts his organization, has made with prisoners and their families recruiting of convicts has been taking place in as many as seven districts in recent weeks.
This is not the first time that authorities have employed such a strategy; during World War II, the Soviet Union created “prisoner battalions.”
Russia is not the only country either. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, made an amnesty guarantee to prisoners of war who volunteered to fight early in the conflict, however, it is unclear if anything came of it.
According to Osechkin, Russia’s mysterious private military group, the Wagner Group is currently recruiting inmates rather than the Defense Ministry.
In a written statement made public by his agents this month, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef” due to his catering agreements with the Kremlin and reportedly Wagner’s manager and financier, dismissed claims that he personally visited prisons to recruit inmates. In fact, Prigozhin disputes that he is connected to Wagner, which is accused of sending military contractors to countries like Syria and sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Osechkin, the offer to send prisoners to Ukraine was initially only made to those who had prior experience in the military or in law enforcement, but it was eventually made to prisoners from a variety of backgrounds. He calculated that as of late July, perhaps 1,500 people had applied, drawn in by the promises of substantial pay and potential pardons.
He continued by saying that several of those volunteers—or their families—have since been in touch with him to try and back out of their promises, saying things like, “I really don’t want to attend.”
The offers to leave the prison, in the words of the lady whose partner is serving his sentence at the correctional colony in St. Petersburg, are “a gleam of hope” for release. Of the 11 volunteers, she claimed he had told her that eight had perished in Ukraine. One of the volunteers expressed sorrow for his choice, she continued, and he doesn’t think he’ll make it back alive.
Her account was unconfirmed but was consistent with several allegations by independent Russian media and human rights organizations.
These organizations and military lawyers claim that some law enforcement personnel have refused to go to Ukraine or are attempting to leave the country after a few weeks or months of battle.
Although there have been media stories about certain soldiers declining to fight in Ukraine since the spring, it wasn’t until last month that rights organizations and attorneys started discussing the refusals reaching hundreds.
About 150 men were able to end their contracts with the Defense Ministry and return from Ukraine to Buryatia, a region in eastern Siberia that borders Mongolia, according to information from the Free Buryatia Foundation in the middle of July.
Repercussions are coming for a few of the service members. According to their relatives, over 80 additional troops who attempted to void their contracts were held in the Russian-controlled town of Bryanka in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, according to Tabalov, the legal assistance attorney. He claimed last week that the Bryanka prison facility was closed due to media attention.
However, the parent of one cop who was jailed after attempting to break his contract revealed last week to reporters that several are still being held in the area. The parent requested anonymity out of concern for their safety.
According to Tabalov, a serviceman can end his contract for a compelling reason, which is typically not difficult; however, the choice is typically made by his commander. However, he said, “Under hostilities, no leader would admit something like that, for where would they find people to fight?”
The president of the Free Buryatia Foundation, Alexandra Garmazhapova, told reporters that troops and their families have complained of commanders ripping up termination papers and threatening to bring legal action against “refuseniks.” The nonprofit reported receiving hundreds of requests from soldiers looking to terminate their contracts as of late July.
Garmazhapova stated, “I receive messages daily.
According to Tabalov, some soldiers say that they were misled about their destination and didn’t anticipate ending up in a conflict zone, while others are too worn out from fighting to continue.
Rarely, if ever, did they seem to be driven by antiwar convictions, the attorney claimed.
According to military researcher Michael Kofman, Russia will still have issues with soldiers who refuse to fight, but one shouldn’t underestimate Russia’s capacity to “muddle through… with half-measures.”
According to Kofman, director of the Center for Naval Analyses’ Russia Studies Program in Virginia, “they’re going to have a lot of people quitting or having folks who really don’t want to deploy.” And they’ve taken a number of steps to attempt to maintain order. They can’t really do much, though, in the end.
