INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Andrei had been serving his second prison term in St
Petersburg for car theft when he was released and sent to the frontline in Ukraine.The 22-year-old is one of the thousands of Russian
Prigozhin.Mikhail Metzel / TASSSimultaneously, the Wagner group, run by the Kremlin-linked magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been growing
social media in recent months have shown a man closely resembling Prigozhin attempting to recruit inmates by promising them their release in
in 2014, following years of denial
in exchange for military or mercenary service
But the Prigozhin-linked media outlet RIA FANpublished a video this month in which former convicts were shown being granted pardons after
to have their sentences commuted
conviction, including those who committed a serious crime.Despite Russia's "partial" mobilization last month aiming to shore up the
military's manpower, the Defense Ministry also appears to have been recruiting convicts jointly with Wagner since that time, the
independent iStories media outletreported
One Russian woman told iStories that the ministry recruited her relative to the war while he was serving his prison term in the southern
4 in the Vologda region last week in the hopes of recruiting 160 prisoners to Wagner, while media reports suggest that Wagner is also
recruiting people in Turkmenistan, Afghanistan andKyrgyzstan to join the Russian military.Human rights activists say that in some cases
Ukraine, but that the authorities had so far not revealed his location.Some of those recruited have issued calls to their fellow inmates to
