Prisoners in the St. Petersburg penal colony expected a visit from an official, thinking it would be some sort of examination. Instead, uniformed men arrived and offered them an amnesty — agreed to fight alongside the Russian forces in Ukraine
A woman whose boyfriend was in prison for several days afterward, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said her boyfriend was not among the applicants, but his With years left on his sentence, he said he "couldn't think about it."the Kremlin refused to announce a full-scale mobilization. President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it has led to clandestine recruitment practices, such as using prisoners to fill staffing shortages.
This comes amid reports that hundreds of Russian soldiers are refusing to fight and are leaving the military.
Attorney Alexei Tabarov said: "We are seeing a massive exodus of people who want to leave the war zone, some of whom have been in the service for many years and others who recently signed contracts," he said. who runs the legal aid group at Conscript's School.
The group has been inundated with requests from men wanting to terminate their contracts. "And the Department of Defense is digging deep to find someone who can be persuaded to comply." The authorities appear to be doing everything in their power to boost enlistment. Billboards and public transport ads in various regions proclaim "this is the job" and urge men to join the professional army. It has set up mobile recruitment centers in some cities, including in The economic daily Kommersant counted at least 40 such organizations in 20 regions, and officials promised that the monthly salaries of volunteers would be equivalent to $2,150 to $5,500, plus bonuses. Did.
AP saw thousands of job openings on various military professional job search sites.
The British military announced this week that Russia had formed a major new ground force called the 3rd Corps from a "volunteer battalion". If they are deployed in Ukraine, they will be offered a lucrative cash bonus.
However, complaints have surfaced in the media that some people have not received their promised payments.
In early August, Tabarov began receiving multiple requests for legal assistance from reservists who had ordered him to participate in two-month training in areas near the Ukrainian border. said.
Vladimir Osekkin, founder of the Gulagu.net Prisoner's Rights Group, said prison recruitment has been going on in seven regions he has been contacting in recent weeks. He cited inmates and their relatives.
This is not the first time authorities have used such tactics, with the Soviet Union employing "prisoner battalions" during World War II.
Russia is not alone. . Early in the civil war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised to grant amnesty to veterans behind prison if they volunteered, but it remains unclear if anything was gained from that.
In the current situation, Osekkin said it was not the Ministry of Defense that was recruiting prisoners, but Russia's secret civilian military, the Wagner Group.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's Chef" due to his catering deal with the Kremlin, was reportedly a manager and investor of Wagner, and was responsible for incarcerated prisoners. He dismissed reports of personal visits to prisons for recruitment. In fact, Prigogine denied any ties to Wagner, who reportedly sent military contractors to places such as Syria and sub-Saharan Africa. Prisoners with military or law enforcement experience were initially offered to go to Ukraine, but since then the offer has been extended to prisoners of various backgrounds, with approximately 1,500 applicants as of late July. and may have been enticed by the promise of a large salary and eventual pardon.
Now many of these volunteers and their families have reached out to him to try to break their promises and say, "I really don't want to go," he added.
According to a woman whose boyfriend is serving time in a St. Petersburg penal colony, the offer to get out of prison is "a glimmer of hope" for freedom. But she said he told her eight of the 11 volunteers had died in Ukraine, one of the volunteers regretting her decision and saying, She added that she did not believe he would come back alive.
Her account could not be independently verified, but was consistent with multiple reports by independent Russian media and human rights groups.
Some soldiers and law enforcement officers have refused to be sent to Ukraine or are trying to return home after weeks or months of fighting, according to lawyers for these groups and the military.
Media reports that some troops were refusing to fight in Ukraine began to surface in the spring, but human rights groups and lawyers began talking about the number of denials reaching the hundreds last month.
In mid-July, the Free Buryatia Foundation reported that about 150 men had terminated their contracts with the Ministry of Defense and returned from Ukraine to Buryatia, a region in eastern Siberia bordering Mongolia. did.
Some military personnel are affected. Tabarov, a legal aid lawyer, said about 80 other soldiers who had asked to have their contracts voided were detained in the Russian-controlled town of Bryanka in Luhansk province in eastern Ukraine, according to their relatives. rice field. Bryanka detention center was closed last week due to media attention, he said.
But the parent of one police officer detained trying to terminate his contract told The Associated Press this week that others were still being held elsewhere in the area. He requested anonymity out of concern.
Tabarov said military personnel could terminate contracts for compelling reasons. Usually not difficult, but the decision is usually up to the commander. However, he added:
Alexandra Garmazapova, head of the Free Buryatia Foundation, told his Associated Press that the soldiers and their relatives threatened that the commander would destroy the dismissal notice and prosecute "the vetoes." said he was complaining. The foundation said it had received hundreds of requests from soldiers seeking termination of their contracts as of late July.
"I get messages every day," Garmazhapova said. I was.
According to Tabarov, some soldiers complained that they had been deceived about where they were going and never thought they were going to a war zone, while others were exhausted from the battle.
Lawyers said they seldom, if ever, appeared to be motivated by anti-war beliefs.
Russia Soldiers will continue to face problems refusing to fight, military analyst Michael Coffman said. in half measures.
"They're going to either quit a lot of people, or there's people who basically don't want to deploy," said Coffman, director of the Naval Center's Virginia-based Russian Studies Program. Analysis of a recent podcast. "And they've employed a lot of means to try to keep people in line. But at the end of the day, there's not much they can do."
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