The Ministry of Defense began to recruit prisoners, as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner PMC, has been doing for several months now. About this writes the publication "Important stories". The military offers the same conditions – a pardon, a six-month contract and a salary, while prisoners trust them more than mercenaries, the newspaper writes.
Relatives of prisoners in IK-3 "Skopin" (Ryazan Region) and IK-4 "Alexandriyskaya" (Stavropol Territory) told Important Stories that the military has been conducting recruitment activities since the end of September. Both colonies are the so-called "red" ones, where former employees of law enforcement agencies are kept.
According to the sister of one of the prisoners in IK-4, after a conversation with the recruiters who arrived from the Ministry of Defense, the brother was set on fire with the idea of going to Ukraine “to defend the Motherland,” but his family dissuaded him. The next day after this conversation, Wagner PMC mercenaries arrived in the colony, and the guy did not like their motivational speech. “They were directly told that Ukrainians could be cut to pieces. The brother said that this did not suit him, that this was not the defense of the Motherland. And the papers that they were offered to sign were some kind of filkin's letters, ”says a relative of the prisoner.
“Defend the Motherland” is offered to prisoners as part of the “Storm” battalion. The first recruits to the "Storm" of the Ministry of Defense were taken out of IK-4 on the night of October 11, the newspaper writes.
The human rights project Gulagu.net also spoke about the fact that the military began to recruit prisoners for the Storm battalion. According to the project, one of the methods of recruiting the Ministry of Defense is to “scare the Wagnerites.” The military tells the prisoners that if they do not sign the contract, they will fall into the hands of the Wagner PMC and "it will be a one-way ticket." Those who refuse to sign the contract are promised to be sent to a ShIZO or a detachment of special conditions for serving sentences under pressure. Gulagu.net also draws attention to the fact that reports of the recruitment of prisoners by the military of the Ministry of Defense come from colonies where former employees of law enforcement agencies are serving their sentences.
On October 11, it was reported that the Wagner PMC was forcibly sending prisoners to the front. They are locked up in special rooms for recruits and mobile communications are turned off in the territory of the colony so that they cannot contact families and lawyers.