23,000 missing jail inmates may be invasion mercenaries

THE Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group may have recruited as many as 23,000 convicts and sent them to fight in Ukraine to shore up Russia’s faltering invasion.

The analysis by Mediazona, a Russian news website operating in exile, showed a sudden 6.5 per cent drop in the male population of Russian prisons now compared with August, when Wagner started recruiting convicts.

“Historical data on the number of convicts in prisons show that this number has never been reduced so sharply, even during amnesties,” it said.

There are still about 325,000 men in Russian prisons. Thousands of convicts had signed up to fight for Wagner in Ukraine, according to reports, but this is the first authoritative assessment of the extent of the mercenary group’s prison recruitment drive.

Russian convicts have been promised pardons in exchange for signing up to fight in Ukraine for six months.

The recruitment process was quick, and often involved Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin flying into remote jails on a helicopter to give a pep talk.

Recruiters reportedly had no issue with taking murderers out of prison to bolster Russia’s forces in Ukraine.

After a training camp usually lasting a couple of weeks, the convicts-turned-mercenaries are sent to the frontlines in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas and told that if they try to flee or surrender, they will be killed.