"Surrounded by Bait... Brutal Treatment" Russian Side Halts Prisoner Mercenary Recruitment

Russian Prisoners Deployed in Ukraine War... Estimated 40,000
"Not Treated as Humans"... Observations of 'Discipline Collapse'

The Russian private military company Wagner Group, deployed in the Ukraine war, has announced that it will no longer recruit prisoners as mercenaries.

On the 9th (local time), according to Reuters and others, Wagner Group's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed through the Russian social networking service VKontakte (VK) that "the recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner Group has been completely stopped."

On October 5 last year (local time), Russian reservists mobilized under a partial mobilization order participated in military exercises conducted in Vladimir Oblast near the capital, Moscow.
[Photo by TASS·Yonhap News]

Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February last year, the Wagner Group has recruited prisoners from various Russian prisons as mercenaries. It is reported that they offered a condition that prisoners who survived on the battlefield for six months would be pardoned. In fact, Russian authorities announced last month that they pardoned 24 prisoner-turned-mercenaries who survived six months on the battlefield, according to Wagner Group's conditions.

The official scale of prisoner mercenaries has not been disclosed. However, according to U.S. intelligence, out of approximately 50,000 mercenaries deployed by the Wagner Group in the Ukraine war, 40,000 are known to be former prisoners. They have been leading the Russian offensives on the eastern front, including in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.

"Pardon is bait, treated brutally"... 'Mutiny' also detected

Mercenaries belonging to the Wagner Group stand outside a building destroyed by concentrated fire in a village north of Donetsk Oblast.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

However, according to Ukrainian soldiers, Wagner Group mercenaries are reportedly treated brutally on the battlefield. They face threats of execution if they fail to advance, and there have been cases where they were massacred and their bodies abandoned on the front lines.

In fact, on the 17th of last month, Andrey Medvedev, a former Wagner Group commander who refused to extend his service in Ukraine and fled to Norway, testified to CNN that "three prisoner mercenaries who were wounded and hospitalized attempted to desert and were shot dead in front of 10 new recruits."

He said about Wagner Group bringing Russian prisoners to the fierce battlefields in Ukraine using pardons as bait, "Once the prisoners arrived (at the front), they were not treated as human beings," and "This was a warning that if they failed to advance or refused to fight, this would happen."

The image shows Andrey Medvedev, a former commander of the Wagner Group who defected to Norway on the 17th of last month. [Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Also, according to the Ukrainian think tank Defense Strategies Center, the Russian military command recently changed tactics in the Bakhmut area, deploying soldiers for prolonged combat, with cases where attacks had to continue for up to 10 hours straight.

Meanwhile, on the 6th, the British Guardian reported that a video captured Russian mercenaries collectively assaulting a superior officer. The footage was filmed by the Ukrainian Seneca Battalion using a drone and released through a Ukrainian Telegram channel.

The video shows four soldiers belonging to the Wagner Group dragging a severely injured commander by his arms and legs behind a warehouse in a residential area of Bakhmut, then repeatedly hitting him with an object presumed to be a shovel. The fate of the assaulted commander is unknown.

The Guardian stated, "This mutiny shows that the morale of the Russian mercenary units has declined."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.