How the Ministry of Defense of Russia is recruiting prisoners for the war against Ukraine

In February 2023, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that his company no longer recruits prisoners. Around this time, reports emerged that people posing as employees of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation began recruiting prisoners to be sent to war. BBC correspondents managed to find out how it was arranged and what happens to the recruits later.
A funeral
Alfia buried her 25-year-old only son on March 17 (the name of the spouse and the region of residence have been changed, the BBC newsroom has documents confirming her identity). Her son Vadim raised three-year-old twins, because their mother died of complications during the coronavirus pandemic.
Alfia felt that her son should not have been drafted as a single father, but the call came in February, after the authorities announced the end of the mobilization wave. The man went to the military commissariat with a birth certificate and went to a meeting. When the woman asked why the only person who cared for her children was taken away from her, the Military Committee advised her to "complain".
The woman did not go anywhere to complain, she says that there was no time, she dealt with registering the guardianship of her grandchildren, without which she could not send them to kindergarten or to the doctor, and work - now she is the sole breadwinner in the family. After a week of training, Vadim was sent to the front, where, although he had never served in the army or held a weapon, he died within seven days.
Alfia buried Vadim, and his children, friends and work colleagues were at the funeral. The father, with whom Vadim was very close, according to Alfia, could not attend the funeral: he was serving the eighth year of a ten-year sentence in a high-security prison in a neighboring region.
"Sasha is a good man, but explosive," says Alfija. "In his youth, he was convicted of serious bodily harm, he got into a fight. He also got into a fight the second time and accidentally killed a neighbor. The family of the murdered man still communicates with me, they understand that it was not intentional, that's his character. He didn't even drink."
After Vadim was buried, Alfia waited for her husband's call to inform him of what had happened. But there were no calls for two weeks, and then at night an unknown man called her from prison: "Sasha has been taken." "Wagner?" Alfia asked startled. "No, only soldiers!"

Yevgeny Prigozhin came to the prison where Alexander was serving his sentence a few months earlier (this is also confirmed by the travel plan of the founder of the Wagner Group, indicated on his official channel). The incendiary speech did not make an impression on Alexander.
"He grew up in Ukraine," says Alfija. "We went there all the time, his brother is still in Mykolaiv, and his mother is buried there. He knows that the stories about Ukrainian fascists are lies, he was very afraid for his brother, he kept asking me how he was, we stay in touch."
Aleksandar, physically strong and free of drug addiction, aroused the interest of recruiters with the murder verdict, they personally persuaded him to leave. "I rejected them," Alexander succinctly says in correspondence with Alfia.
But he failed to avoid being recruited by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Recruitment

Some relatives, with whom the BBC was able to speak, claim that people posing as employees of the Ministry of Defense have been recruiting prisoners for the front since the end of September. But then the recruitment was in prisons, where former security forces served time. Prisoners from "ordinary" prisons, judging by the testimonies of their relatives, began to be actively recruited since January of this year.
Interviews with convicts in prisons were conducted according to the same scheme previously used by Wagner Group recruiters. Before the arrival of the recruiters, communication was cut off in all prisons – both official and unofficial channels. The prisoners were offered to sign a six-month contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense in exchange for a "full pardon with deletion of criminal records from databases" for half a year plus a monthly salary. After that, those who agreed were asked to fill out questionnaires with personal information.
On social networks, relatives from many regions of the Russian Federation report on the recruitment of prisoners by the Ministry of Defense. As the wife of one of the convicts said, on April 20, her husband was taken to war from prison 11 of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District. This is the latest of all known recruitments.
According to relatives of the convicts, the recruitment in the prisons of Mordovia was carried out by a person whose data completely coincides with a Russian army officer in the rank of major general, deputy commander of the troops of one of the military districts.
On social networks, the relatives of the convicted state that many have decided to voluntarily go to war, wanting to shorten the term of serving the sentence and erase the criminal record. But other relatives say that "such conditions have now been created in prisons from which you can escape to the end of the world and even to war."
Under the difficult conditions in this case, the prisoners do not think of the pressure in case of refusal of conscription, but of the general situation in a number of Russian prisons. Russian human rights defenders have repeatedly noted that prisoners are often tortured in places of deprivation of liberty, and prisoners who are ill often cannot receive any medical assistance.
The BBC managed to speak to three relatives of prisoners who were taken to war without explanation.
According to conversations with relatives, since January, prisoners who gave their information to unnamed representatives of the Ministry of Defense were taken from the colonies and forced to sign a request for pardon. According to the relatives of the six prisoners, according to the documentation, the convicts were then allegedly transferred from their prison to correctional prison No. 12 of the Rostov region to continue serving their sentences.

The process

Recruited prisoners were brought to training camps near Donetsk or Luhansk. Here they were offered to sign a six-month contract with the Ministry of Defense - but not with Russia, but with the "Luhansk or Donetsk People's Republic". The contract was signed on behalf of a volunteer who wants to join the "people's militia" units of the self-proclaimed "DPR" or "LPR".
One of the BBC interlocutors says that it was "an offer that cannot be refused, neither in front nor in the basement, it was made clear".
After the training, the prisoners were sent to military units on the territory of Donbass, where they were "persistently asked" to sign another contract - this time for one year. Thus, according to relatives, the prisoners will serve in the so-called "army" of the self-proclaimed "DPR" or "LPR" for a year and a half. After the first six months of service, they are promised a two-week vacation.
Prisoners who arrived through the Ministry of Defense most often end up in the "DPR" "Somalia" detachment, battalion of the military unit 52892, located near Donetsk, or are assigned to the "LPR" military unit # 08807 (now reformed).
The "Somalia" battalion is considered an elite assault unit of the "people's militia of the DNR". This unit became famous during the battles for Ilovaisk and Donetsk airfields. The first commander of "Somalia" is a native of Ukraine, Mikhail Tolstykh, better known by his nickname "Givi".

He is accused of ordering the shooting of Ukrainian military personnel who were leaving the pre-arranged "green corridor" from the vicinity of Ilovaisk, as well as of abusing Ukrainian military personnel. Several moments when Tolstich beat the prisoners were captured on video and shown by Russian TV channels. On February 8, 2017, Mihail Tolstyh died in his office at the "Somalia" battalion base in the city of Makievka as a result of fire from a Jmil jet flamethrower.
Detachments formed from prisoners are often called "Storm", while in the structure of the Russian army there are several detachments with the same name, which are not related to formations in which prisoners participate.
Prisoners who were taken from prisons for former security forces in the fall of 2022 were often given neither military cards nor badges to identify military personnel. Military cards of the self-proclaimed republics were already issued to those who came to fight in the winter-spring of 2023, but they differed from similar documents of other military units.
A relative of such a "volunteer" says that the only document that indicates the true status of the convict is the so-called "form-100", i.e. the certificate of injury. Last year, such certificates issued to prisoners were marked "ZK RF", and now the letter "Š" is attributed as an abbreviation of the name of the unit "Storm".

Money
Money
Novac
The money
Novac

The convicts are promised a monthly salary of 150,000 to 200,000 rubles, as well as the return of military ranks and benefits for those deprived of them by court decision. But all the relatives of the prisoners, whose testimonies the BBC managed to get in touch with, note that those who were recruited for the war do not receive more than 40,000 rubles a month.
Many convicts fighting in Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group send money to their relatives. Those who left prison with the help of the Ministry of Defense do not have such an opportunity. They receive money on a bank card. Several prisoners managed to pass on the login and password needed to remotely control the card to their wives. After entering the bank's application, the women saw that the card was highlighted with the name "Army of Russia".
Information on supplies and equipment is conflicting. Some tell their loved ones that they got new weapons and uniforms, winter and summer kits. Other convicts, on the contrary, complain that they received only one jacket and pants, as well as very bad berets and ask their relatives to send money to buy the necessary equipment.
Before being sent to a combat zone, prisoners who have signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense undergo an average of only 10 to 14 days of military training. This expression was used in a conversation with the BBC by three prisoners, who do not know each other. According to military experts, this is a very short deadline. Experts say seven or 10 days of training could be enough to refresh the skills of those who already have combat experience. By comparison, conscript soldiers in the USSR were trained for about four to six months before being sent to Afghanistan.

Dead and wounded

Not much is known about the fate of the dead prisoners who went to fight through the Ministry of Defense. Anna's brother (name changed) was a war veteran, he left prison on September 20th and died on October 14th.
"The body was brought, the documents were handed over to us - military card, passport and death certificate. It says that he died in Soledar. He was buried with honors, for which we thank the local military commissariat. I wrote to the prison administration where he served his sentence. They told him there that he was pardoned, and they don't have anything like that. The military commissariat doesn't give any explanations at all."
Relatives of two other prisoners said that they learned about the death of their loved ones from colleagues in the service of convicts, but there is no official information yet. Identifying the bodies of the dead and sending them home may take a long time, relatives were told on the phone line of the Russian Defense Ministry. It was explained to them that the bodies of the dead must first be removed from the battlefield, then delivered to the morgue of occupied Donetsk or Lugansk, and then transported to Rostov. And only after that, the relatives can receive official documents about the death of the prisoner.
Relatives of wounded prisoners also draw attention to problems with transportation. According to relatives, their loved ones who were wounded were rejected for transfer to a hospital in Russia, citing possible problems at checkpoints and the lack of passports or Russian military cards.
Despite the fact that Russia actually annexed part of the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine, there are still checkpoints under the control of Russian security forces on the border between these entities and the regions of Russia.
"No one has been operated on here. People are walking around the hospital with bullet wounds, pieces sticking out of their legs," said a prisoner fighting in the "Storm" unit 08807 "LPR" in an interview with CNN. He claims that his comrades in the service are returning to the front line from hospitals with unhealed wounds.

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Alfia constantly writes and calls the prison where her husband served his sentence. Most often, when they hear her questions, they hang up, she says.
"I was thinking of going to the gate with the children and standing there until someone came out," says Alfia.
That plan is unlikely to come true: she has not yet received payments "for her son", at work "everyone sympathizes, but no one will work for me", she says. The twins are "conflict sick", and her sick days are treated with less understanding.
"It hurts me that Sanja doesn't know about Vadik," she says. After a pause, he says: "Maybe Sanja is gone, and the three of us are left."
Her husband never called her. Alfia is sure that he would have contacted her at the slightest opportunity.
Alfia did not tell the brother of the man from Mykolaiv about sending Alexander to the front. When asked why, he briefly says: "It's a shame".