![]() ![]() Sergei, a Russian soldier who said he also wound up at the camp after telling the military command he wanted out of the war, told iStories he’d seen captives snatched up and taken in an “unknown direction” by men he identified as Wagner fighters, one of whom wound up dead on his way to the front line, supposedly from shelling. ![]() After he refused to do so, they bashed him over the head, he said. ![]() “They said, ‘Lie down on the ground so your brains don’t splatter everywhere, and count to ten,’” he recalled. Roughly speaking, the firing zone was inward,” he said.ĭmitry said his son was repeatedly beaten for refusing to go back to the front-and was at one point dragged off to face execution. And then they saw that all the posts were deployed inside the camp. “In Bryanka, they were first told that posts had been set up because they were guarding against all sorts of. Wagner has also been deployed to crack down on regular Russian troops trying to ditch the war, according to soldiers interviewed by iStories.įamily members of Russian soldiers and some soldiers themselves say Wagner mercenaries have been guarding makeshift camps in the occupied Luhansk region where troops who try to leave the war are being held against their will in basements.ĭmitry, the father of a soldier who wound up at such a camp in Bryanka, told iStories his son became alarmed after arriving and noticing the set up. Long accused by Western officials and investigative journalists of financing Wagner, Prigozhin has denied having any links to the paramilitary force, a shadowy group that has left a long trail of war crimes allegations in its wake in Ukraine, Syria and the Central African Republic. So far, according to the independent outlet Verstka, which has also closely covered the alleged Wagner recruiting drive, the mercenary group has recruited more than 1,000 inmates at 17 different penal colonies throughout Russia. A friend of an inmate in Plavsk interviewed by Mediazona earlier this month said Wagner representatives had told prisoners they’d be back for another visit in two or three months if they “run out” of inmates from the first wave of recruitment. Human rights groups and inmates alike have both also expressed concerns that the Wagner recruiting drive that has so far been voluntary may soon become forced. “On TV they show one thing, but in reality everything is probably different,” he said. He went on to say that, after talking to more people outside of prison about the war, he’d learned no one was getting paid the compensation they were promised and that it was all really just a “meat grinder.” I think they were accepting those who had nothing to lose, but I was unlucky,” he was quoted saying. I passed all of the tests, I passed the commission, but at the last stage FSB officers came, and they rejected me because of my tattoos, I had a swastika tattoo. The recruiters, he’d said, had announced they were looking for inmates convicted of murder, to be sure that they’d be prepared to kill again. Identified only as Ivan, the staffer told The Insider that Prighozhin had visited personally on July 24 and told inmates the regular Russian military was “weakening” and “cannot cope” with the war. That’s according to several explosive new reports out Thursday by the independent Russian investigative news outlets iStories and The Insider, both of which uncovered disturbing new details about the notorious Wagner Group’s alleged role in the war.Īfter myriad reports in recent weeks that Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has been personally touring Russian prisons and promising inmates full amnesty if they fight for Wagner in Ukraine, a staffer at a high-security penal colony in the Tula region has revealed the real reason behind the desperate recruiting drive. Nearly six months into Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine, it appears Vladimir Putin has pinned his hopes for claiming victory on a self-described “organized crime syndicate” that is now trawling prisons for cold-blooded killers and deploying mercenaries to straighten out fed-up troops. ![]()
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