Evgenia Sokolenko07:59, 11.06.24

It is not yet known what duties the conscripts will perform at the front.

At the end of May, Russia released a group of women from prisons to participate in combat operations in Ukraine. This may indicate a new stage in the Kremlin’s use of criminals in the war .

This  is reported by  The New York Times with reference to ex-prisoners who maintain contact with those who are still in prison. According to them, military recruiters took several women from a prison near St. Petersburg. It is not yet clear whether their firing is an isolated incident, a pilot program or the start of a larger wave of recruitment.

As of the beginning of 2022, about 30,000 women were serving sentences in Russian prisons. Recruiters began a tour of prisons for women throughout the European part of Russia in the fall of 2023. However, until now the convicted women who joined the military service remained imprisoned without official explanations.

“The recruitment of female convicts comes at a time when the Russian government is resorting to increasingly unconventional schemes to attract volunteers from the fringes of Russian society in an attempt to avoid yet another unpopular draft. In addition to prisoners, these recruitment schemes target debtors, those accused of crimes and foreigners “, the journalists say.

It is not yet known what duties the conscripts will perform at the front. Recruiters offered prisoners contracts to serve as snipers, combat medics, and front-line radio operators for one year. At that time, only about 40 of the 400 prisoners of the colony agreed.

They were offered a pardon and a salary equivalent to about $2,000 a month, about 10 times the minimum wage in Russia.

As the former prisoners explained, the women made the decision to go to the front, in particular, because of the harsh conditions in Russian prisons. They were forced to be constantly silent and spent up to 12 hours a day performing mandatory work in the prison’s sawmill workshop, even in sub-zero temperatures in winter.

Mobilization in Russia

According to the Financial Times, by the end of 2024 – the beginning of 2025, a new wave of  “partial mobilization” may be announced in Russia .

Despite heavy losses, the army of occupation is now 15% larger than when full-scale war began. Financial incentives that raised military salaries to unprecedented levels played the biggest role in persuading Russians to go to war.

The Institute for the Study of War estimated that replenishment of the occupying army with recruits would not allow the Russian Federation to conduct large-scale offensive operations  in the summer in several directions. New reserves will not be able to act as penetration forces of the first or second echelons.

(c)UNIAN 2024