Wagner Group tells recruits: Don’t have sex with locals or livestock
The head of a notorious pro-Kremlin mercenary group has told inmates at a Russian prison that they will be set free if they survive a six-month tour of duty in Ukraine, but executed if they try to desert.
The offer was made to convicts at a prison camp in central Russia by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy tycoon who runs the Wagner Group private military contractor. The group’s fighters have been accused of war crimes in Ukraine and Syria.
“In six months you will go home, having been pardoned,” Prigozhin, 61, told inmates at the prison in central Russia. “There is no chance of returning to prison.” Those who refuse to fight after arriving in Ukraine would be classified as deserters, he said. “And then they will be shot.”
Prigozhin said Wagner fighters were barred from drinking or using drugs while at the front. He also said they were forbidden to “have sexual contact with local women, flora, fauna, men, whoever.” Russian forces have been accused of raping Ukrainian women in occupied towns.
He also said that prisoners would be handed two grenades when they arrived at the front — a thinly veiled command that they should blow themselves up rather than allow themselves to be captured. “No one is retreating. No one backs down. No one is being taken prisoner,” he said, according to a video that was posted online by allies of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Kremlin critic.
“Is there anyone else who can free those of you with ten-year prison terms? There are two — Allah and God — they can get you out in a wooden box. But I can get you out alive,” Prigozhin said.
The video is believed to have been filmed at a prison camp in the Mari El region of Russia, 500 miles east of Moscow. Prigozhin is known as “Putin’s chef” because his company provides catering services to the Kremlin, including a lucrative contract for school dinners in Moscow.
Moscow has stepped up efforts to recruit “volunteers” from Russian prisons to plug the gaps in its demoralised and under-trained army, which was recently forced to retreat in disarray from northeast Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. The Wagner Group is said to be especially interested in prisoners who have been convicted of murder and other violent crimes. At least 10,000 prisoners have so far been recruited for the war, Olga Romanova, a prisoners’ rights activist, told the Current Times website. Russian law does not allow for prisoners to be given amnesty in return for military service.
Last month, Putin posthumously awarded Russia’s medal of honour to a convicted murderer who was serving a 25-year sentence before he was freed and deployed to Ukraine. Ivan Neparatov, the head of a criminal gang near Moscow, was found guilty of killing five people in 2013. He was praised by the Kremlin for his “courage and heroism” after being killed in action.
Prigozhin, a former hot-dog salesman, served nine years in prison for robbery in Soviet times. He was convicted of choking a woman before stealing her boots and gold earrings, among other offences. The British Ministry of Defence says his Wagner fighters have been used by Russia to “reinforce frontline forces” in Ukraine. He is believed to have been awarded Russia’s medal of honour by Putin in a secret Kremlin ceremony this summer.
“The war is tough,” Prigozhin told inmates. “It isn’t like any Chechen wars or anything. We’ve been using two and half times more ammunition than they used at [the battle of] Stalingrad.” He said the first group of prisoners to travel to the front had been men serving long sentences in St Petersburg.
“Forty of them went into the enemy’s trenches and cut them up with knives,” he said. “We had three dead and seven injured. One of the dead was 52 years old. He’d been serving 30 years but died a heroic death.” He said the Wagner Group would consider applications from inmates aged 22 to 50, although exceptions could be made. “Any questions?” he asked at the end of his speech. “You have five minutes to think things over.”
