Larisa Kozova21:01, 15.08.234 min.343

The invaders do not have enough manpower for hard labor in the occupied territories.

According to human rights activists, the Kremlin authorities, in addition to attracting prisoners to the war against Ukraine , are going to develop another “mechanism” for using this category of their citizens. 

Vera Yastrebova, lawyer, director of the public organization Eastern Human Rights Group, said this at a briefing at the Ukraine-Odessa media center.According to her, the authorities of the Russian Federation are working on a legislative mechanism that will give the right to the penitentiary services of the Russian Federation to relocate prisoners to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. 

The lawyer recalled the so-called “tourism” of builders, teachers who, for double wages and the status of a participant in hostilities, came from Russia to work in the occupied territories of Ukraine. 

“But today, realizing that de-occupation is approaching every day and staying there is not very safe for these people, it was decided to involve prisoners in hard work. That is, in fact, Putin creates his own Gulags – prisoners from the territory of the Russian Federation will be moved to the occupied territory of Ukraine , in any case, they plan to do this so that the prisoners do hard physical labor for free,” Yastrebova notes.

The lawyer explains that now, even for double pay, the invaders are not able to attract as many Russian workers to work in the occupied regions as they would like.

What was the Gulag during the Soviet era

The Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps (GULAG) is a division of the NKVD of the USSR, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the Ministry of Justice of the USSR, which managed the places of detention in 1930-1959.

The GULAG existed as part of the system of punitive organs of the USSR, and in this regard, its history is inextricably linked with the Stalinist repressions. 

The use of forced labor of prisoners occupied an important place in the economy of the USSR in the 1930s-1950s. The GULAG accounted for the development of about 10% of capital investments in capital construction. 

However, in some industries, the significance of the Gulag was key: in the extraction of coal, metals, ores, including gold and uranium, diamonds, cobalt, and apatites. 100% gold, about 70% tin and 33% nickel were mined by prisoners. 

They accounted for 15% of logging work and a significant proportion of work in hydraulic engineering and road construction. 

During a certain period of the implementation of the atomic project (1947-1948), the bulk of the capital construction of these facilities was also mastered by the forces of the Gulag.

(C)UNIAN 2023