The inmates of the penal colony in St. Petersburg were expecting a visit from officials, assuming it would be some sort of inspection. Instead, men in uniform arrived and offered them amnesty – if they agreed to fight alongside the Russian army in Ukraine.
About a dozen left prison in the days that followed, according to a woman whose boyfriend is serving a sentence there. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals. She said her boyfriend wasn’t with the volunteers, although with years to go on his sentence, he “couldn’t think about it.”
As Russia continues to suffer losses in its invasion of Ukraine, now approaching its sixth month, the Kremlin has refused to announce a full mobilization — a move that could be deeply unpopular for President Vladimir Putin. That has instead led to a covert recruitment effort, which includes the use of prisoners to fill the labor shortage.
This is also happening amid reports that hundreds of Russian soldiers are refusing to fight and are trying to leave the army.
“We’re seeing a huge outflow of people looking to leave the war zone — those who have been in service for a very long time and those who have recently signed a contract,” said Alexei Tabalov, a lawyer who heads the legal department at the conscript school. help group.
The group has seen an influx of requests from men wanting to end their contracts, “and I personally get the impression that anyone who can is ready to walk away,” Tabalov said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And the Department of Defense is digging deep to find those it can convince to serve.”
Although the Ministry of Defense denies that “mobilization activities” are taking place, the authorities appear to be doing everything they can to strengthen conscription. Public transport billboards and advertisements in several regions proclaim “This is the job,” calling on men to join the authorities. Authorities have set up mobile recruitment centers in some cities, including one at the site of a Siberian half marathon. in May.
Regional administrations form “volunteer battalions” that are promoted on state television. The business newspaper Kommersant counted at least 40 such entities in 20 regions, with officials promising volunteers monthly salaries ranging from the equivalent of $2,150 to nearly $5,500, plus bonuses.
The AP saw thousands of job postings on job boards for various military specialists.
The British Army said this week that Russia had formed a large new ground force called the 3rd Army Corps of “volunteer battalions” seeking men under 50 who needed only a high school education, while offering “lucrative cash bonuses” once they are broadcast to Ukraine.
But there are also complaints in the media that some are not getting their promised payments, although those reports cannot be independently verified.
In early August, Tabalov said he received multiple requests for legal assistance from reservists who had been instructed to participate in two-month training in areas near the border with Ukraine.
Prisoner recruitment has been underway in as many as seven regions in recent weeks, said Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the Gulagu.net prisoner’s rights group, citing inmates and their relatives his group had contacted.
It is not the first time the authorities have used such a tactic, with the Soviet Union employing “prisoner battalions” during World War II.
Russia is not alone either. Early in the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised amnesty to military veterans behind bars if they volunteered to fight, though it remains unclear whether anything came of it.
In the current circumstances, Osechkin said, it’s not the Defense Department that recruits prisoners — instead, it was Russia’s shadowy private military force, the Wagner Group.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, an entrepreneur known as “Putin’s chef” for his catering contracts with the Kremlin and allegedly Wagner’s manager and financier, brushed aside reports that he personally visited prisons to recruit convicts, in a written statement that his representatives sent month released. In fact, he denies having any ties to Wagner, who has reportedly sent military contractors to places like Syria and sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Osechkin, detainees with military or law enforcement experience were initially offered to go to Ukraine, but that was later extended to detainees from different backgrounds. He estimated that about 1,500 people would have applied by the end of July, lured by promises of high salaries and possible pardons.
Now, he added, many of those volunteers — or their families — are contacting him and trying to get out of their obligations by telling him, “I really don’t want to go.”
According to the woman whose boyfriend is serving his sentence in the penal colony in St. Petersburg, the offers to leave prison are “a glimmer of hope” for freedom. But she said he told her that of the 11 volunteers, eight died in Ukraine. She added that one of the volunteers expressed regret at his decision and does not believe he will return alive.
Her account could not be independently verified but matched multiple reports from independent Russian media and human rights groups.
According to those groups and military lawyers, some soldiers and law enforcement officers have refused deployment to Ukraine or are trying to return home after a few weeks or months of fighting.
Media reports of some troops refusing to fight in Ukraine began to surface in the spring, but rights groups and lawyers only started talking about the number of denials reaching the hundreds last month.
In mid-July, the Free Buryatia Foundation reported that about 150 men were able to terminate their contracts with the Ministry of Defense and return from Ukraine to Buryatia, a region of eastern Siberia bordering Mongolia.
Some of the soldiers are confronted with repercussions. Tabalov, the legal aid lawyer, said about 80 other soldiers seeking to cancel their contracts were detained in the Russian-controlled town of Bryanka in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, according to their relatives. Last week, he said the Bryanka detention center was being closed due to media attention.
But the parent of an agent detained after trying to get out of his contract told the AP this week that some are still being held elsewhere in the region. The parent asked not to be identified for security reasons.
Tabalov said a soldier can terminate his contract for compelling reasons – normally not difficult – although the decision is usually up to his commander. But he added: “In the conditions of hostilities, no commander would recognize such a thing, because where would they find people to fight?”
Alexandra Garmazhapova, head of the Free Buryatia Foundation, told the AP that soldiers and their relatives are complaining about commanders tearing up termination orders and threatening “refuseniks” with prosecution. In late July, the foundation said it had received hundreds of requests from soldiers seeking to terminate their contracts.
“I get messages every day,” Garmazhapova said.
Tabalov said some soldiers complain that they were misled about where they were going and did not expect to end up in a war zone, while others are exhausted from fighting and unable to continue.
They rarely, if at all, seemed motivated by anti-war convictions, the lawyer said.
Russia will continue to have problems with soldiers refusing to fight, military analyst Michael Kofman said, but one should not underestimate Russia’s ability to “mud through with half measures.”
“They’re going to have a lot of people who quit or have people who don’t actually want to deploy,” Kofman, director of the Center for Naval Analyzes’ Virginia-based Russia Studies Program, said on a recent podcast. But in the end there isn’t much they can do.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
