Inmates describe visits by Yevgeny Prigozhin, reported head of the Wagner group, who is said to offer pardons for those who enlist. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades. One woman, Irina, said her husband, who was in jail in Nizhny Novgorod, had told her two weeks ago that he was departing for Ukraine the next day. Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The exact time and date of the video, which appeared on a pro-Russian Telegram channel, is unclear. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian Army. For some, it was the start of a bewildering, five-country journey highlighting the wars absurdity. He described himself as a "patriot" and complained many of the prisoners sent to the front were "green. The sequential assaults on Ukrainian lines by small units of former Russian prisoners have become a signature Russian tactic in the effort to capture Bakhmut. Prisoners will know they can act with complete impunity there, said Vladimir, who has since left jail. According to Vladimir, prisoners were shown footage during Prighozins visit of Russian soldiers bravely fighting in Ukraine and were promised that their actions in the country would not be punished. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. For some, it was the start of a bewildering, five-country journey highlighting the All prisoners interviewed said they were promised a presidential pardon after six months and a salary of 100,000 rubles (1,400) a month. The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault. A second prisoner, himself a veteran of previous Russian conflicts, said he was employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense last year, a decade into his sentence for murder, after being overlooked initially when Wagner recruited from his prison. He was balding and wore shoes without laces. We were hit by machine-gun fire, said the soldier, a private named Sergei. Captured Russian inmates who have been sent to the front lines in Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group, an infamous mercenary organization with ties to the Kremlin, say they've witnessed public executions of deserters and disobedient troops, according to a Tuesday report from Polygon Media and the independent Mozhem Obyasnit news outlet. When Russian troops left Kherson, they took with them 2,500 Ukrainian convicts from local prisons. WebRussian prisoners sent to the front lines in Ukraine have been publicly executed for not charging into enemy fire, captured inmates say. January 12, 2023 / 8:09 AM "People walk around [the hospital] with bullet wounds, with shrapnel stuck in their legs.". The truth is, said Ivan, the inmate from Tambov, we, thieves and killers, are now fighting Russias war., Alleged Wagner Group fighters accused of murdering civilians in Ukraine, Wagner-linked Putin ally: Dying west thinks Russians are third world scum, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Though they are prisoners of war overseen by Ukrainians, the Russians said they spoke freely. While some recruited prisoners may desert or disobey orders, others "are just fucked up and bulldoze their way through," Drozdov said, adding that these fighters "are very different from ordinary mercenaries.". For months, Russia has been using the shadowy. Do the sources know the information? Latvias Border Guard and Interior Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. From Olga Voitovych. We met three former POWs, survivors, in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. In one instance, according to The Beast's translation, Novikov said: "Shelling began, one of the prisoners laid down and didn't cover his own [men]. "Everything is completely destroyed. Those who get there and say I think Im in the wrong place will be marked as deserters and shot.. Under Russian law, all pardon petitions are evaluated by specialized regional committees before arriving at the Kremlin. Some were beaten unconscious, he said. "Those who disobey are eliminated and it's done publicly," Yevgeny Novikov, a former inmate who the report said was recruited by the mercenary group, said, according to a translation of the report from The Daily Beast. 
He spent three months at the front as a stretcher bearer before being ordered forward. 
Have they proved reliable in the past? But not all prisoners going to Ukraine appear to be ready to fight for Russia. He was convicted of killing an unarmed civilian. WebRussia has accused Ukrainian forces of executing a group of Russian prisoners, an action it has described as a war crime. 
He said they were threatened with summary executions, and at least one man in his unit was taken away after disobeying orders and never returned. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated but conformed with assessments of the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Western governments and military analysts. Help me, please! the private said, though no help arrived. In at least one Kherson prison, inmates said the retreating Ukrainian officials pillaged food supplies, leaving them to their fate under the guard of the few officers who remained at their posts. Those who ran away, used drugs or alcohol or had sexual relations, he warned, would be killed. Mr. Yastrebov, 22, who had been serving time for theft, returned home a changed man. On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. The soldiers in Sergeis squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. Everyone hates this Russian Federation, because we all know that were nobodies there, he said, speaking by telephone from his hometown in central Ukraine. From there, some are returned to Russia in prisoner exchanges. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also elaborated on the legality of the pardons that Wagner has insisted convicts are given, telling reporters last month any presidential decrees pardoning prisoners were likely classified. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Sevalnev is buried at a cemetery outside of Moscow. Russia is recruiting prisoners and advertising on billboards to urge men to join the army. Some come here, hear the machine gun, and run. Then they were unexpectedly, and with no explanation, shipped to Russian-controlled territory. Anyone can read what you share. Russian forces have been pushing hard to take the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region and have managed to make some advances in recent days into the nearby town of Soledar, according to assessments from the US military and British Defense Ministry. Although Wagner forces have previously been deployed in Syria and several African conflicts, its operations were wrapped in secrecy until the invasion of Ukraine brought it out of the shadows. Since the start of the summer, reports have emerged that Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin and the reported head of the Wagner group an allegation he has repeatedly denied was recruiting soldiers from within Russias extensive penitentiary system in an attempt to compensate for the countrys acute personnel shortages on the battlefield in Ukraine. Just this morning alone, we got reports of 600 prisoners being transported from Nizhny Novgorod.. Source: Ukrinform with reference to Dmytro Lubinets, Verkhovna Another had fallen silent too, but was sending his brother his salary, collected monthly from a rented office in a sealed plastic bag. At first, Kherson prisoners thought they would be pressed into the convict battalions that Russias Wagner mercenary group had formed. A soldier points a rifle and fires two shots at the body, pauses, then fires another. At least 2,500 Ukrainians who remained in prison in the occupied territories of Ukraine were taken to Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is seen in a video aired on January 12, 2023 by Russian state media addressing a group of men identified as the first set of former prisoners released in exchange for serving in Russia's war in Ukraine. Their hands will be untied there, he added. A former convict with military experience, he says he was put in charge of a detachment of prisoners who were dispatched on nearly suicidal missions around Bakhmut. He wasnt trying to sweet talk us. Last week, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said he would end the practice of recruiting convicts. Besides, right now, signing up is voluntary. The scheme to send convicts to the war appears to have grown fast, with figures obtained by CNN from Russia's penal system showing a 27,000 drop in the prison population between March and November last year, when the scheme was just three months old. The video first verified by the New York Times shows a group of soldiers with Ukrainian patches and blue arm bands on a road following a firefight. We all compare it to Russian roulette. President Vladimir V. Putins decision to allow a mercenary group to recruit Russian convicts in support of his flagging war effort marks a watershed in his 23-year rule, say human rights activists and legal experts. CNN is withholding his name and those of the other surviving convicts for their safety. It also shows them eating and joking just behind the frontlines the night before they began an assault on a key factory in Soledar, which would prove fatal for the majority of Sevalnev's unit, survivors said. Now, Andrei Yastrebov, who was among tens of thousands of convict soldiers, is part of a return from the battlefield with potentially serious implications for Russian society. Novikov said there were "squadrons of liquidators" that dealt with troops considered problematic. The first That video, posted on April 2, shows a blasted Russian armored column. Makrene Kigoga told CNN that Tarimo's family didn't know anything about his whereabouts until they were informed of his death. 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