UK says Russia "accelerates program to recruit prisoners" to fight in Ukraine

The Intelligence services of the United Kingdom have indicated this Thursday that the Russian Government “has accelerated a program to recruit Russian prisoners” to fight in the war in Ukraine, unleashed in February 2022 by the invasion order given by the president of Russia , Vladimir Putin.

“Since the beginning of 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry has accelerated a program to recruit Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.. It is likely that up to 10,000 convicts have signed in April alone,” they said, according to a statement published by the British Ministry of Defense through its Twitter account.

Thus, they have maintained that “since the summer of 2022, the prisoners were a key source of recruits for the operations in Ukraine of the private military company Wagner Group”, although they have qualified that “the group probably lost access to the Russian penal system in February of 2023 in full rebound of his public dispute with the Ministry of Defense”.

Try to avoid compulsory mobilization

The owner of the Wagner Group, the Russian oligarch Yevgeni Prigozhin, assured in February that the recruitment of mercenaries in Russian prisons had ended with a view to their shipment to conflict zones, including Ukraine.. “The recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner Group has been completely stopped,” he stressed.

Finally, the British Intelligence services have stated that “the Russian prisoner recruitment program is part of a broad and intense effort by the Russian Army to increase its membership while trying to avoid a new compulsory mobilization, which would be highly unpopular with the Russian population”.