‘Very dangerous people’ returning to Russia
Future still bleak for mercenary group’s convicted enlistees
He was released from a Russian prison and thrown into battle in Ukraine with a promise of freedom, redemption and money. Now Andrei Yastrebov, who was among tens of thousands of convict soldiers, is part of a return from the battlefield with potentially serious implications for Russian society.
Yastrebov, 22, who had been serving time for theft, returned home a changed man. “We all feel like he is in some sort of hypnosis, like he is a different person,” said a relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He is without any emotions.”
Thousands of convicts have been killed, many within days or even hours of reaching the front, Russian rights advocates and Ukrainian officials say. Those who return home largely remain silent, wary of retribution if they speak out.
President Vladimir Putin’s decision to allow a mercenary group to recruit Russian convicts in support of his flagging war effort marks a watershed in his 23year rule, say human rights activists and legal experts. The policy circumvents Russian legal precedent and, by returning some brutalized criminals to their homes with pardons, risks triggering greater violence throughout society.
Since July, about 40,000 inmates have joined the Russian forces, according to Western intelligence agencies, the Ukrainian government and a prisoners’ rights association, Russia Behind Bars. Most were serving time for petty crimes, but records from one penal colony seen by The New
York Times show that the recruits also included men convicted of aggravated rape and multiple murders.
“There are no more crimes, and no more punishments,” said Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars.
Last summer, Russia’s largest private military company, Wagner, and its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, began systematically recruiting convicts on a scale not seen since World War II to bolster a bloody assault on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Yet the operation remains largely cloaked in secrecy and propaganda.
Wagner has avoided oversight by exploiting the most marginalized Russian citizens, the 350,000 male inmates of its harsh penal colonies, human rights activists and lawyers said.
Dozens of survivors from the first inmate assault units began filtering back to Russia in January with
medals, sizable payouts and documents that Wagner claims grant them freedom. The releases are likely to accelerate as Wagner’s six-month service contracts expire, potentially confronting Russian society with the challenge of reintegrating thousands of traumatized men with military training, a criminal history and few job prospects.
“These are psychologically broken people who are returning with a sense of righteousness, a belief that they have killed to defend the Motherland,” said Yana Gelmel, a Russian prisoner rights lawyer who works with enlisted inmates. “These can be very dangerous people.”
Neither Prigozhin, through his press office, nor Russia’s penal service provided comment.
To document the recruitment drive, the Times interviewed rights activists, lawyers, legal workers, relatives
of inmate recruits, deserters and prisoners who decided to remain behind bars but maintain contact with companions on the front lines. They described a sophisticated system of incentives and brutality built by Wagner, with the Kremlin’s support, to refill Russia’s decimated military ranks using questionable, and possibly illegal, methods.
Andrei Medvedev said he joined Wagner within days of finishing his prison term for theft in southern Russia. A former convict with military experience, he says he was put in charge of a detachment of prisoners who were dispatched on nearly suicidal missions around Bakhmut.
“We were told: ‘Keep going until you’re killed,’ ” Medvedev said via phone from Russia after deserting in November. He has since escaped to Norway and applied for political asylum.
The campaign to recruit convicts began in July, when Prigozhin started appearing in prisons around his native St. Petersburg with a radical proposal for the inmates: paying their debt to society by joining his private army in Ukraine.
In videos published on social media, Prigozhin promised the prisoners they would receive the equivalent of $1,700 — nearly double Russia’s average monthly wage. He also offered bravery bonuses, $80,000 death payouts and, should they survive the six-month contract, freedom in the form of a presidential pardon. Those who ran away, used drugs or alcohol or had sexual relations, he warned, would be killed.
Prigozhin, a former inmate, understood prison culture, skillfully combining a threat of punishment with a promise of a new, dignified life, according to rights activists and families.
“He didn’t go for the money,” said a woman named Anastasia of a relative who enlisted with Wagner. “He went because he was ashamed in front of his mother, he wanted to clear his name.”
Prigozhin’s prison visits raised legal questions. Mercenary recruitment is illegal in Russia, and until last year he had denied that Wagner even existed. On paper, the prisoners were transferred to Russian jails near the Ukrainian border, according to information requests filed by their relatives.
When Anastasia, who asked that her last name not be used, tried to find her enlisted relative at his prison, she said the guards merely told her that he was unavailable.
To lift declining recruitment numbers, Wagner has lately been playing up the rewards for survivors, releasing videos of returned prisoners being granted freedom.
Only Putin can issue a pardon under the Russian Constitution, and the Kremlin has not published such decrees since 2020. In 2021, Putin pardoned just six people, according to the Kremlin.
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, recently told reporters that Wagner’s enlisted convicts are being pardoned “in strict adherence to Russian law.” He declined further comment.
Under Russian law, all pardon petitions are evaluated by specialized regional committees before arriving at the Kremlin. However, two members of such commissions said they had not received any petitions from enlisted convicts.
After spending just three weeks at home, Yastrebov said he was already getting ready to return to the front, despite the extraordinary casualty rates suffered by his prison’s unit, according to Russia Behind Bars.
“I want to defend the Motherland,” he said Friday.