1/ Huge numbers of casualties in eastern Ukraine have left Russian prisoners wary of joining the Wagner Group. As many as 80% of those from some penal colonies are said to have been killed, which has deterred those remaining from signing up to fight. β¬οΈ
2/ The independent Russian media outlet Mediazona reports that Wagner, which is now desperately short of manpower after the battles for Bakhmut and Soledar, is not having much success in finding replacements among Russia's convict population.
3/ Although Wagner has been carrying out an intensive recruitment campaign, Mediazona reports that many prisoners no longer have faith that they will be pardoned and believe β almost certainly correctly β that they have a very high chance of being killed.
4/ One convict in a penal colony says that a recruited convict serving near Bakhmut told him "he regretted going there. He said that 20 per cent of those who left here were alive." In a Yaroslavl penal colony, at least 30-40 convicts out of 110 recruited in 2022 have been killed.
5/ Reports of massive casualties have spread among the prisoners, who have been following what has been happening in Ukraine. Convicts serving there have been able to make phone calls to their friends back in the penal colonies. Relatives have also passed on news.
6/ As a result, the numbers being recruited have dropped from several hundred at a time in some colonies to the low dozens. Recent Federal Penitentiary Service figures show that the number of convicts is no longer declining, suggesting a collapse in Wagner recruitment.
7/ A prisoner in the Urals says: βThe first time [Wagner] arrived at the beginning of October, and recruited more than 300 people on 23 October. The second time they came at the end of December, and on 6 January they also left, but took only about 20 people."
8/ Wagner's head Yevgeny Prigozhin is no longer leading the recruitment campaign, which is now scouring penal colonies in remote regions of Russia for fresh blood. Prigozhin's charisma and extravagant claims had previously convinced many recruits to join.
9/ A prisoner who saw Prigozhin recruiting recalls what was said: "He said that the Russian army is shit, they all lost, they are all worthless. And here we are Putin's hope to win this war."
10/ Prigozhin viewed convicts with "ten years of imprisonment ahead and ten years behind them" as ideal candidates for recruitment and promised that only 15% of them would die in battle. Many convicts saw this as an acceptable risk. However, the odds turned out to be much worse.
11/ The Wagner recruiters are now being given a much harder time by the prisoners. "He couldn't get the crowd going," says one prisoner. "And when he started saying that now your people are being released and they need a replacement, he started a discussion with the prisoners.
12/ And one particular question hit him in the eye, as they say in prison: "How many percent of our people who left are still alive?" At this point he started stammering, he couldn't answer anything and ended his speech altogether".
13/ Some prisoners were reportedly forced to join Wagner. "They threatened them with solitary confinement, threatened to take them to a secure facility somewhere in the administration building. They forced those who were undesirable to the administration to leave in this way."
14/ At the same time, Wagner is reportedly being more discriminating about who it is recruiting from prisons. "Wagner rejects half of those who want to be sent away for various reasons," says a prisoner. Those who are too unfit to serve or who misbehave are being rejected.
15/ In one reported instance, a prisoner was accepted for Wagner, got drunk to celebrate his imminent departure for the war and was deprived of the opportunity to go there β presumably as his drunkenness was seen as a sign of his unfitness for military service.
16/ Prison administrators are also reportedly now far less cooperative with Wagner. They had previously not stood in the way of its recruitment activities because "no one understood anything, everyone was scared of serious dudes" from Wagner.
17/ However, large-scale recruitment has had adverse economic impacts. Many Russian prisons operate forced-labour factories where prisoners make products for the government and military. Their output has been jeopardised by Wagner's recruitment drives.
18/ "The administration is holding on to the convicts because they are working, they don't want anyone to leave," says a prisoner. "I suspect [some] convicts were not allowed to leave precisely because [of the need to work in the industrial zone].
19/ There were people who wanted to, but they are very important in the penal colony.β
His own colony has an industrial zone which houses garment factories making clothes for the Russian military.
His own colony has an industrial zone which houses garment factories making clothes for the Russian military.
20/ "They got a state order to sew shoes and overalls for the mobilised men, they fell far short of their quotas, plus then Prigozhin flew in, and a hefty chunk of those who worked in the industrial zone also left. So they're correspondingly short-staffed. They are panicking.
21/ They are now pushing hard for [prisoners to attend] vocational schools. Well, they try to entice them with more carrots than sticks, they promise all sorts of privileges. People don't really buy it.
22/ They don't force them to do it yet, but they have no choice, because they are under pressure, as I understand it, from the Ministry of Defence."
23/ Likely because of its combat losses, Wagner may now be skipping training and pushing untrained newly recruited convicts directly onto the battlefield. A Wagner recruiter reportedly told a prisoner, "Your training is the battlefield."
24/ Wagner may also no longer be recruiting foreigners, following backlashes against the deaths of African convicts who joined it. Zambian Lemehani Nyirenda and Tanzanian Tarimo Nemes Raymond both died in Ukraine last year, causing diplomatic problems for Russia.
25/ Wagner's brutal methods of discipline have become an issue as well. The group does not deny its approach when questioned by prisoners.
26/ One Wagner recruiter told convicts: "If anyone surrenders, he will be traded for 15 people [from among the captured Ukrainians], for 20, as many as necessary, and in front of the formation he will be shot as an example."
27/ The recruiter said that the families of the executed "didn't get the five million [in compensation], because [the victims] themselves had broken the contract." Brutal discipline, a low chance of survival and doubts about pardons have made Wagner much less appealing. /end
Source:
zona.media
zona.media
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