Meet a new hero of Russia: Igor Kusk, a Russian mobster serving a 23-year prison sentence for murder and other crimes. Kusk was killed near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region while fighting with the Wagner Group, Vladimir Putin’s shadowy mercenary army.
And Kusk’s death in combat is not an anomaly. Putin has grown increasingly desperate to compensate for Russia’s severe personnel shortages on the battlefield in Ukraine, turning to the country’s sprawling penal colonies for cannon fodder.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef,” has been making the rounds of Russian penal colonies to recruit convicted criminals to fight as mercenaries for the Wagner Group in Ukraine. He’s also on the FBI’s most wanted list (but more on that later).
Olga Romanova, a leading expert on Russia’s prison system, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group is recruiting some of Russia’s “worst criminals.” She said Putin’s plan is to “recruit at least 50,000 convicts” to send to Ukraine. She told The Guardian that about 11,000 Russian prisoners have already signed up to go to Ukraine, and the number is growing rapidly.
In an interview on the YouTube channel Popular Politics, Romanova said:
Romanova heads the non-governmental organization Russia Behind Bars. which provides legal and charitable aid to Russia’s prison population and their families. She said her team recognized at least one prisoner they had helped in a video released by Ukrainian officials of a captured Russian fighter. The former inmate said the Wagner Group had provided him with just one week of training before sending him off to the battlefield.
Earlier this month, a leaked video featuring a man closely resembling Prigozhin went viral on Russian social media. The man was shown telling inmates that they would be freed if they served six months on the front lines with the Wagner Group in Ukraine. “We need only shock troops,” the man said, emphasizing that the war is harder than the fighting in Chechnya. And he warned that any deserters would be executed by firing squad.
The Guardian spoke to four prisoners and three close family members of inmates across different penal colonies in Russia who all gave similar accounts of how Prigozhin was personally conducting recruitment in prisons. The prisoners said Prigozhin was offering a salary of 100,000 rubles ($1,650) per month. If they died, their families were to receive a lump sum payment of 5 million rubles ($82,600).
On social media, Prigozhin defended his recruitment of prisoners, telling his critics: “It is either private military contractors and prisoners [fighting in Ukraine] or your children—decide for yourself,” The Guardian reported.
And just which prisoners are being recruited by the Wagner Group? An attorney for Russia Behind Bars, Ruslan Vakhapov, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group originally grabbed “mostly those convicted for homicide … and robbery.”
Wagner Group mercenaries have mostly been fighting in the Donetsk region where they have made incremental advances in intense fighting centered on capturing the town of Bakhmut. But they have been taking heavy casualties as they keep trying to secure at least one victory for Putin when Russian forces are retreating elsewhere.
CNN reporter Nick Paton Walsh recently visited the front at Bakhmut and filed this report:
YouTube Video
Walsh reported that the Ukrainian forces under attack in Bakhmut are face-to-face with Russian mercenaries, including convicts sent to the front line:
Romanova told The Daily Beast that her team started hearing reports about prison recruits being deployed to Ukraine as early as June.
Some Wagner Group mercenaries have already been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Members of the mercenary group have also been linked to human rights abuses in Syria and several African countries where they have been deployed to serve Putin’s interests. There are real fears that the inmate recruits could have a propensity to commit atrocities in Ukraine if given the opportunity.
Rob Lee, a military analyst, told The Guardian that recruiting prison inmates might “plug some holes” in the short term, but would do little to address Russia’s “critical” shortage of manpower. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee said. “I can’t even begin to imagine what disciplinary problems prisoners will bring.”
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for opposing the Putin regime, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and substances.” He said: “What could such an army even accomplish in combat?” (His full Twitter thread is worth reading.)
Romanova told The Guardian that Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners to fight for a private mercenary army was “completely unlawful on so many levels.” Her group is trying to help families dissuade prisoners from signing up with Wagner. “Every prisoner that doesn’t go there is potentially a saved Ukrainian life,” she said.
And now that Putin has announced a “partial mobilization,” it’s unclear whether the recruited prisoners will be allowed to go home with a pardon after six months. The mobilization orders have indefinitely extended the contracts of regular Russian army troops until the end of the “special military operation.” It’s not known whether the same rules will be applied to a private mercenary army.
Not all inmates recruited to fight in Ukraine want to die for Mother Russia. Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov interviewed a Russian POW, Yevgeniy Nuzhin, who had surrendered to Ukrainian forces. In the interview, Nuzhin recounted his journey from a prison in Russia’s Ryazan region where he was serving a long sentence for murder to a Wagner boot camp in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, and finally to the battlefield on Sept. 2. He said several recruits at the Wagner boot camp were summarily executed for insubordination.
Nuzhin was captured by Ukrainian troops on Sept. 4.
Prigozhin himself is not unfamiliar with the Russian prison system: He spent nine years in prison after being convicted of robbery, fraud, and involving teenagers in crime. After his release from prison, Prigozhin and his stepfather set up a lucrative business selling hot dogs. Within a few years, he had established a restaurant, catering, and casino business in St. Petersburg. He earned the reputation as Putin’s chef when he established a luxury floating restaurant known as New Island, which Putin used to celebrate his birthday and entertain visiting leaders such as former French President Jacques Chirac and former U.S. President George W. Bush.
After becoming a confidante of Putin, Prigozhin received lucrative contracts to serve less fancy meals to school children, government workers, and the military. Opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices.
For years, Prigozhin denied reports that he was closely connected to the Wagner Group, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. But on Monday, the oligarch admitted that he founded the private mercenary company in 2014, in a statement released on social media via his company Concord Catering. In his statement, Prigozhin said the catalyst for founding the Wagner Group in May 2014 was to support the Russian-backed separatist movements in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, according to CNN.
Asked why he has now ceased denying his involvement with the Wagner group, Prigozhin said in his social media post: “For a long time I avoided the blows of many opponents with one main goal – so as not to frame up these guys [fighters], who are the basis of Russian patriotism.”
Putin annexed Crimea and backed the separatists in Donbas after Euromaidan Revolution ousted the pro-Russian President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, was paid millions of dollars as a political consultant for Yanukovych’s party.
CNN suggested that Prigozhin’s emergence from the shadows “may reflect shifting power balances in Russia as Putin’s campaign in Ukraine falters.” CNN wrote:
And in the U.S., Prigozhin has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of funding and organizing operations for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 presidential election.
His St. Petersburg-based troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, has been accused of attempting to undermine the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Donald Trump.
Prigozhin is on the FBI’s wanted list and the State Department has offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency. The U.S. froze the assets of Prigozhin and his family after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And Kusk’s death in combat is not an anomaly. Putin has grown increasingly desperate to compensate for Russia’s severe personnel shortages on the battlefield in Ukraine, turning to the country’s sprawling penal colonies for cannon fodder.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef,” has been making the rounds of Russian penal colonies to recruit convicted criminals to fight as mercenaries for the Wagner Group in Ukraine. He’s also on the FBI’s most wanted list (but more on that later).
Olga Romanova, a leading expert on Russia’s prison system, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group is recruiting some of Russia’s “worst criminals.” She said Putin’s plan is to “recruit at least 50,000 convicts” to send to Ukraine. She told The Guardian that about 11,000 Russian prisoners have already signed up to go to Ukraine, and the number is growing rapidly.
In an interview on the YouTube channel Popular Politics, Romanova said:
Romanova heads the non-governmental organization Russia Behind Bars. which provides legal and charitable aid to Russia’s prison population and their families. She said her team recognized at least one prisoner they had helped in a video released by Ukrainian officials of a captured Russian fighter. The former inmate said the Wagner Group had provided him with just one week of training before sending him off to the battlefield.
Earlier this month, a leaked video featuring a man closely resembling Prigozhin went viral on Russian social media. The man was shown telling inmates that they would be freed if they served six months on the front lines with the Wagner Group in Ukraine. “We need only shock troops,” the man said, emphasizing that the war is harder than the fighting in Chechnya. And he warned that any deserters would be executed by firing squad.
The Guardian spoke to four prisoners and three close family members of inmates across different penal colonies in Russia who all gave similar accounts of how Prigozhin was personally conducting recruitment in prisons. The prisoners said Prigozhin was offering a salary of 100,000 rubles ($1,650) per month. If they died, their families were to receive a lump sum payment of 5 million rubles ($82,600).
On social media, Prigozhin defended his recruitment of prisoners, telling his critics: “It is either private military contractors and prisoners [fighting in Ukraine] or your children—decide for yourself,” The Guardian reported.
And just which prisoners are being recruited by the Wagner Group? An attorney for Russia Behind Bars, Ruslan Vakhapov, told The Daily Beast that the Wagner Group originally grabbed “mostly those convicted for homicide … and robbery.”
Wagner Group mercenaries have mostly been fighting in the Donetsk region where they have made incremental advances in intense fighting centered on capturing the town of Bakhmut. But they have been taking heavy casualties as they keep trying to secure at least one victory for Putin when Russian forces are retreating elsewhere.
CNN reporter Nick Paton Walsh recently visited the front at Bakhmut and filed this report:
YouTube Video
Walsh reported that the Ukrainian forces under attack in Bakhmut are face-to-face with Russian mercenaries, including convicts sent to the front line:
Romanova told The Daily Beast that her team started hearing reports about prison recruits being deployed to Ukraine as early as June.
Some Wagner Group mercenaries have already been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Members of the mercenary group have also been linked to human rights abuses in Syria and several African countries where they have been deployed to serve Putin’s interests. There are real fears that the inmate recruits could have a propensity to commit atrocities in Ukraine if given the opportunity.
Rob Lee, a military analyst, told The Guardian that recruiting prison inmates might “plug some holes” in the short term, but would do little to address Russia’s “critical” shortage of manpower. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee said. “I can’t even begin to imagine what disciplinary problems prisoners will bring.”
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for opposing the Putin regime, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and substances.” He said: “What could such an army even accomplish in combat?” (His full Twitter thread is worth reading.)
Romanova told The Guardian that Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners to fight for a private mercenary army was “completely unlawful on so many levels.” Her group is trying to help families dissuade prisoners from signing up with Wagner. “Every prisoner that doesn’t go there is potentially a saved Ukrainian life,” she said.
And now that Putin has announced a “partial mobilization,” it’s unclear whether the recruited prisoners will be allowed to go home with a pardon after six months. The mobilization orders have indefinitely extended the contracts of regular Russian army troops until the end of the “special military operation.” It’s not known whether the same rules will be applied to a private mercenary army.
Not all inmates recruited to fight in Ukraine want to die for Mother Russia. Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov interviewed a Russian POW, Yevgeniy Nuzhin, who had surrendered to Ukrainian forces. In the interview, Nuzhin recounted his journey from a prison in Russia’s Ryazan region where he was serving a long sentence for murder to a Wagner boot camp in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, and finally to the battlefield on Sept. 2. He said several recruits at the Wagner boot camp were summarily executed for insubordination.
Nuzhin was captured by Ukrainian troops on Sept. 4.
Prigozhin himself is not unfamiliar with the Russian prison system: He spent nine years in prison after being convicted of robbery, fraud, and involving teenagers in crime. After his release from prison, Prigozhin and his stepfather set up a lucrative business selling hot dogs. Within a few years, he had established a restaurant, catering, and casino business in St. Petersburg. He earned the reputation as Putin’s chef when he established a luxury floating restaurant known as New Island, which Putin used to celebrate his birthday and entertain visiting leaders such as former French President Jacques Chirac and former U.S. President George W. Bush.
After becoming a confidante of Putin, Prigozhin received lucrative contracts to serve less fancy meals to school children, government workers, and the military. Opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices.
For years, Prigozhin denied reports that he was closely connected to the Wagner Group, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. But on Monday, the oligarch admitted that he founded the private mercenary company in 2014, in a statement released on social media via his company Concord Catering. In his statement, Prigozhin said the catalyst for founding the Wagner Group in May 2014 was to support the Russian-backed separatist movements in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, according to CNN.
Asked why he has now ceased denying his involvement with the Wagner group, Prigozhin said in his social media post: “For a long time I avoided the blows of many opponents with one main goal – so as not to frame up these guys [fighters], who are the basis of Russian patriotism.”
Putin annexed Crimea and backed the separatists in Donbas after Euromaidan Revolution ousted the pro-Russian President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, was paid millions of dollars as a political consultant for Yanukovych’s party.
CNN suggested that Prigozhin’s emergence from the shadows “may reflect shifting power balances in Russia as Putin’s campaign in Ukraine falters.” CNN wrote:
And in the U.S., Prigozhin has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of funding and organizing operations for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 presidential election.
His St. Petersburg-based troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, has been accused of attempting to undermine the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Donald Trump.
Prigozhin is on the FBI’s wanted list and the State Department has offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency. The U.S. froze the assets of Prigozhin and his family after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.