SEVERAL RUSSIAN PRISONS TO CLOSE AS INMATES FIGHT IN THE WAR: REPORT

Thu 21 March 2024:

Authorities in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region plan to close several prisons this year amid a decline in inmate numbers due to the recruitment of convicts for the war, the Kommersant newspaper reported

The newspaper cited Mark Denisov, Krasnoyarsk’s regional human rights commissioner, as saying at least two local prisons would be closed due to “a large one-time reduction in the number of convicts in the context of the special military operation [in Ukraine]”.

He criticized the decision as “impractical” and predicted that the prisons would reopen within five years.

“[The war] will end sooner or later. Everything will return to normal. After all, the social structure of society has not changed,” Denisov told regional lawmakers, according to the news outlet Prospekt Mira.

His comments came the same week as Russian lawmakers in the lower-house State Duma passed legislation to allow future suspected or convicted criminals to join the military and fight in Ukraine.

The practice of recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine was spearheaded by the Wagner mercenary group in 2022, although Russia’s Defense Ministry took over prison recruitment early last year.

Once the war began in 2022, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries, would tour penal colonies, offering prisoners a pardon if they survived six months at the front.

Following a short-lived mutiny, Prigozhin, who said he had recruited 50,000 prisoners for Wagner, was killed in a plane crash.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has since continued recruiting convicts from prisons for its own Storm-Z formations.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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