Russia Recruits Abused and Raped Prisoners To Join Their Fighting Units

Yevgeny Prigozhin has been touring Russian prisons in an increasingly desperate bid to recruit more soldiers to send into Ukraine.

The Wagner supremo is now accused of using “pressure” to recruit raped and abused prisoners from Russia’s penal colonies to join the mercenary group’s frontline fighting units where they are being slaughtered with little training and poor equipment.

Russian prison observers said that ‘The Shamed’ are being recruited by Wagner—Putin’s private army—as cannon-fodder who rarely survive long in “Prigozhin’s meat grinder.” In an audio message, a convict in the IK-7 prison colony in Novgorod says his recruited friends were “thrown into the battle” after just one week of training.

Both prison administrators and other convicts use the label to sexually abuse or urinate on weaker prisoners, who are made to tackle the worst jobs like cleaning the toilets and are treated as though they are contagious outcasts.

“Prisoners in the Wagner mercenary army have no chance to survive, ‘The Shamed’ are dying as if they are pushed through a meat grinder,” says Olga Romanova, the founder of the Russia Behind Bars group of independent prison observers.

According to Russia Behind the Bars, Prigohin has recruited over 6,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine promising them amnesty and a monthly salary from $1,500 to $3,000 a month.