Yana Gelmel, a lawyer, and Oksana Asaulenko, a former member of the Perm regional PMC, told the Agency that prisoners in Russian colonies are being forced to join the Wagner PMC, threatening with new terms. In addition, according to their information, the pre-trial detention center promises to close the cases of those who agree to go to war in Ukraine.
Gelmel, who defends the rights of prisoners, says that she is aware of such cases in the colonies of the Krasnodar Territory, Rostov and Samara regions, as well as regions of the North Caucasus. She receives information about this from several sources in the penitentiary system.
Second round. The Wagner PMC recruiters again go around the colonies, from where they have already taken prisoners — but now they are almost not believed
“The operatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the FSB arrive, promise to raise old cases 10-20 years old, for which the statute of limitations has already passed, they scare that they will initiate cases against those who refuse to go to war,” the lawyer told the Agency.
According to human rights activist Oksana Asaulenko, the mother of one of the prisoners in the colony in the Perm Territory, whose term is ending, told her that her son was being threatened by threats to join the Wagner PMC. Another lawyer, who asked not to be named, said that active recruitment of prisoners is now taking place in colonies near the border with Ukraine — in the Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions.
Also, according to the interlocutors of the Agency, they know that those arrested in Samara SIZO-1 and Moscow SIZO-5 are offered to go to war in Ukraine, promising to close criminal cases. Asaulenko also spoke about recruitment in the pre-trial detention center in Perm, but she does not know what they offer in exchange for consent.
Gelman explains such methods of recruitment by the fact that now far fewer prisoners are ready to join the Wagner PMC than in the spring and summer of 2022. According to her, information about those killed and wounded in the war in Ukraine reaches the colonies.
Mediazona wrote that since the end of 2022, Wagner PMC recruiters began to go around Russian colonies for the second time, from where prisoners left for the war in Ukraine in spring and summer. How many prisoners are fighting under the command of Yevgeny Prigozhin is unknown. In November last year, Mediazona found out that over the previous two months, the number of prisoners in Russia had decreased by 23,000 people.