Convicts recruited by the Wagner Group to fight in Ukraine have continued to cause havoc and commit new crimes since their return home to Russia.
The Russian paramilitary outfit was led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a private jet crash in August 2023, shortly after leading a march on Moscow over what he said were failures by the Russian Defense Ministry to provide his men with sufficient ammunition for the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has since said the group has been absorbed by the Russian Defense Ministry. The Wagner Group's manpower relied heavily on recruiting Russian prisoners, including those sentenced for high-level crimes such as murder and rape.
Male prisoners were offered commuted sentences and cash incentives in return for six months of military service in Ukraine. In December 2022, Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who has interviewed former members of the Wagner Group, told Newsweek that as many as 30,000 prisoners had been recruited from jail and deployed to Ukraine.
Many former Wagner mercenaries have made headlines since returning to Russia, accused of committing crimes including murder and kidnapping.
In December, independent Russian news outlet Verstka analyzed Russian court records and found that in 2023, at least 190 criminal cases were initiated against Wagner Group fighters who were pardoned in exchange for fighting in Ukraine. Some were charged with up to eight crimes, the publication found.
On Wednesday, a court in the city of Kirov in western Russia sentenced a former Wagner Group fighter to 22 years in prison after he was found guilty of raping and killing an elderly woman. He was serving a 14-year prison sentence for a prior murder case when he was recruited.
Another pardoned former mercenary from the Russian paramilitary outfit was detained on Monday for the murder of a woman from St. Petersburg, local website 78.RU reported. When he was recruited by the Wagner Group, he had been serving a 12-year sentence for murder since 2018.
Verstka reported in March that a pardoned Wagner recruit was imprisoned after killing a man and urinating on his body. He had previously been sent to prison for murder, but had his sentence commuted after fighting in Ukraine.
The Kremlin continues to recruit inmates from prisons across the country to be deployed to fight in Ukraine.
Newsweek contacted Russia's Defense Ministry for comment via email.
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Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel ... Read more
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