Moscow (EFE).- More than 5,000 Russian prisoners have been pardoned by the courts after fighting as mercenaries in Ukraine, Yevgueni Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner group, admitted today.
The inmates were pardoned once their six-month contracts expired, Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel.
In addition, he stressed that only 0.31% of them commit crimes upon their return to Russia after regaining their freedom.
“I can safely say that we have reduced crime rates in Russia tenfold,” he said.
When justifying the recruitment in Russian prisons, Prigozhin responded to critics that it is better for mercenaries or convicts to fight in Ukraine “than their sons”.
At the beginning of February Prigozhin announced that his military company stopped recruiting convicts, who, according to other sources, the Kremlin pardoned before they arrived at the front.
Wagner recruited some 50,000 Russian prisoners and according to the UN that could constitute a war crime
Wagner would have recruited some 50,000 Russian prisoners since the start of the Russian military campaign, according to Rus Siadiaschi, an organization that watches over prisoners’ rights.
According to the well-known activist Olga Románova, at the beginning of the year there were only about 10,000 prisoners left in Ukraine, since the rest died, disappeared, deserted or were imprisoned.
Recently, UN experts warned that the recruitment of prisoners, which would also take place in prisons located in the territories occupied by Russian troops in Ukraine, could constitute a war crime.
They also ensured that these recruits from prisons suffer frequent threats and mistreatment by their superiors, some of them publicly as a warning to their colleagues, while some who tried to desert ended up executed.
In turn, the Ukrainian General Staff denounced in the middle of this month that Russia sent a train full of common prisoners to the territories it controls in the Donetsk region to compensate for the numerous casualties suffered in its assault on the Bakhmut stronghold.
Вентили латунные 15б3р для систем подачи инертных жидкостей.
mpspipe.ru