“No one ever uses a helicopter to come down here. We were curious what the big deal was,” recalls Ivan, one of the prisoners. Half an hour later, he and the others were ordered to report to the main square of the prison where two heavily guarded men were waiting. “We couldn’t believe our eyes, he would actually come to visit us,” said Ivan, who is halfway through a 23-year sentence for murder and, like other inmates interviewed, asked to use a pseudonym out of concern. for his safety. “But there he was standing before us: Prigozhin, in the flesh, urging us to join the private military group Wagner and fight in Ukraine.” Since the beginning of the summer, reports have emerged that Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin and the alleged head of the Wagner Group – a claim he has repeatedly denied – was recruiting soldiers from Russia’s sprawling prison system in an attempt to compensate for the intense shortages of domestic personnel on the battlefield in Ukraine. Last week a leaked video of a man who closely resembled Prigozhin went viral on Russian social media. The man appeared to tell inmates at another prison 500 miles north of Tabov that they would be freed if they served six months with his group, the first time the enlistment process had been caught on camera. “When I saw this video, I thought that Prigozhin must be on a very busy schedule because that’s exactly what he told us too,” Ivan said. “He promised we’d be free if we fought for six months. But he warned that few would return.” The Guardian spoke to four prisoners and three close family members of prisoners in different penal colonies in Russia, all of whom gave similar accounts of how Prigozhin personally conducted prison recruitment. Ivan declined the job offer, but said about 120 prisoners had signed up and were now fighting in Ukraine after a week’s training. He said he would join now if Prigozhin came again. “I have 11 more years to spend in prison,” he said. “Whether I die in this hole or die there, it doesn’t really matter. At least I will have a chance to fight for my freedom. We all compare it to Russian roulette. “Also, at the moment, registration is voluntary. Soon we may have no choice and be forced to leave,” he said, a belief echoed by other detainees contacted by the Guardian. An inmate at Prison Colony No. 2 in Russia’s isolated northern Komi region described a similar visit by Prigozhin in mid-July. Vladimir, who had just three weeks on his sentence for theft when Prigozhin arrived, also decided not to sign up, but said his cousin, who had spent 15 years behind bars, was one of 104 inmates there who agreed to fight in Ukraine. The Guardian was unable to verify all the details of the detainees’ accounts, but their stories corroborated earlier reports by Russian investigative outlets Important Stories and Meduza. According to Vladimir, the prisoners were shown videos during Prigozhin’s visit of Russian soldiers who “fought bravely” in Ukraine and were promised that their actions in the country would not be punished. “Prisoners will know they can act with complete impunity,” said Vladimir, who has since left prison. “Prison turns you into an animal and a lot of hatred grows inside you. Their hands will be untied there,” he added. All the prisoners interviewed said they were promised a presidential pardon after six months and a salary of 100,000 rubles (£1,400) a month. Vladimir said Prigozhin told the team during his visit that they were recruiting “prisoners of all backgrounds, as long as they are healthy,” but warned that alcohol, drug use, looting and desertion in Ukraine would be punishable by execution. The exact number of Russian prisoners recruited is difficult to determine. A US official said on Monday that Wagner, who has been accused of war crimes and human rights abuses in Ukraine and other conflicts, was trying to recruit more than 1,500 convicted criminals. An undated photo released by Ukraine’s security service shows Wagner Group mercenaries at an undisclosed location. Photo: brochure But Olga Romanova, head of Jailed Russia, a prisoner rights NGO, believes the number is much higher. According to Romanova’s estimate, about 11,000 Russian prisoners have already registered to go to Ukraine, a number she said was growing rapidly. “The process is accelerating. Just this morning, we received reports of 600 prisoners being transferred from Nizhny Novgorod.” Military experts have raised questions about the potential impact of ill-disciplined and poorly trained Russian prisoners of war. Rob Lee, a military analyst, said Moscow’s latest recruiting push may “plug some holes” in the short term but would do little to address Russia’s “critical” manpower shortage. The Kremlin’s reliance on unorthodox methods to continue fighting in Ukraine is worrying for Russia, according to Lee. “Russia no longer has a professional army in the traditional sense. It now consists of some professional units, mixed with paid short-term contract soldiers, mercenaries and now, apparently, prisoners. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee added. “I can’t even imagine what disciplinary problems the prisoners will bring.” On Tuesday, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, himself behind bars, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and drugs.” He said: “What could such an army achieve even in battle?” In addition to efficiency issues, Romanova said the process of recruiting prisoners to fight for a private military organization while promising presidential pardons was “completely illegal on so many levels.” Her team is now focused on helping families prevent inmates from registering. “Every detainee who doesn’t go there is potentially a Ukrainian life saved,” he said. But for some families, Romanova’s offer of help will come too late. One woman, Irina, said her husband, who was in prison in Nizhny Novgorod, had told her two weeks ago that he would be leaving for Ukraine the next day. “He told me he did it for me and our baby. So that we can meet again,” said Irina. “But what good is this dead man to us? I wish Prigozhin would never come.” Prigozhin’s personal recruitment of prisoners has made the previously shadowy businessman one of Russia’s most visible pro-war figures. Although the Wagner Forces had previously deployed to Syria and several African conflicts, its operations were shrouded in secrecy until the invasion of Ukraine brought it out of the shadows. Despite Prigozhin’s previous denials of any link to Wagner, a spokesman for Concord’s company said when asked about the recruitment video that the man in the video “looked like and spoke to Mr. Prigozhin.” Prigozhin, whose photo now appears on Wagner’s posters, commented on the video criticizing those who opposed the recruitment of prisoners. “They are either private military contractors or prisoners [fighting in Ukraine] or your children – decide for yourself,” he said on social media. Inmates said Prigozhin seemed at ease within the walls of Russia’s notorious prisons. “You could see that he respected the prisoners,” said Mikhail, a third prisoner, from the Ivanovo region, whose penal colony Prigozhin visited in August. “He wasn’t trying to sweet talk us. He said we were going to hell, but that it could be our lucky ticket.” He said Prigozhin’s speech made a “great impression” on the prisoners, with 170 fellow prisoners signing up to fight. Telegram groups linked to Prigozhin are now sharing videos of prisoners turned Wagner soldiers encouraging other prisoners to join their ranks. But not all prisoners going to Ukraine appear to be ready to fight for Russia. Yury Butusov, a Ukrainian journalist, published an interview last week with a Russian prisoner recruited to fight in Ukraine and captured by Kyiv, who said he had used the opportunity Prigozhin gave him to surrender to Ukraine. “I told myself that when I come, I will do whatever it takes to surrender,” the prisoner said, citing his anti-war stance and adding that he hoped to fight for Ukraine against Russia. Romanova, the prisoner rights activist, expects recruitment efforts in Russian prisons to intensify in the coming weeks. In a country that has the world’s fifth-largest prison population per capita, Prigozhin’s helicopter is likely to keep flying, he said. “They cover more ground every day.” Whatever the ultimate impact on the war, the stunning video of Prigozhin recruiting prisoners has already been described by observers as one of the defining, grim images of Putin’s presidency. “The truth is,” said Ivan the Tabov prisoner, “we thieves and murderers are now fighting Russia’s war.”
