He was recruited into a Russian prison for the war in Ukraine in September 2022 and captured after a day on the front lines. In an interview, an anonymous Wagner fighter now reveals what prisoners were promised.
A Russian fighter from the Wagner mercenary group told a Ukrainian blogger how the head of the group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close friend of Putin, was campaigning in Russian prison camps for participation in the Russian war against Ukraine. Prigozhin came to the penal colony by helicopter, the mercenary said in an interview for blogger Ramina Eshakzai's channel. He managed to convince half of the prisoners that going to war would be attractive to them.
"He said you had to take Bachmut, you would get a cash allowance and a clean slate." In other words, not only should prisoners be released from prison, their previous convictions should also be erased from the files. This would make it easier for those affected to find a normal job. This should apply after six months of service. "That's a lie," the mercenary commented. "But there were no rumors that Wagner was cheating. If there had been such rumours, nobody from my colony would have accepted."
From the prison camp of the mercenary, who was later captured in Ukraine, 300 to 400 of a total of 655 prisoners agreed. According to his own account, the mercenary only realized how dangerous the assignment was for him in Ukraine. "If you surrender [to the Ukrainians] as a prisoner, your own people will kill you there. We didn't find out about it until we were there." In the prison camp, Prigozhin spoke about the operation "so colorfully that even the head of the colony liked it," said the mercenary.
His group was first sent to the village of Krymske in the Luhansk region. "We dug trenches and stood at checkpoints. Then we were sent to a base in Luhansk. There we completed three weeks of training. We went to shooting ranges and shot two to four shots at a time. Then we went to Bakhmut." For the way there they would have received "march rations and strange water". "About two minutes after we drank the water, we were running around happily, smiling from ear to ear and having loads of energy. I don't know what was in that water." He was only at the front for one day. "I was the only one who survived and surrendered to the Ukrainian forces".
Last summer, Prigozhin toured Russian penal colonies to recruit prisoners for the war against Ukraine. How many prisoners he was able to commit is not known for sure. According to estimates, it could be 40,000 to 50,000 men.
Recruitment lasted until recently and has only decreased significantly in recent weeks, according to British intelligence. Prigozhin has officially announced that it will stop recruiting prisoners in February 2023. He accused the Russian Defense Ministry of having deprived him of this opportunity to recruit.
