Russia has tapped on so many inmates to fuel its war effort in Ukraine that it’s closing down some prisons, a local official said on Thursday.
Mark Denisov, a human rights commissioner for Russia’s Krasnodar region, told lawmakers that the decision was prompted by “a one-time large reduction in the number of convicts,” per the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
According to Kommersant, several prisons, including a men’s correctional colony for repeat offenders in the village of Gromadsk and a men’s penal colony for first-time offenders in the village of Areiskoye, will be shuttered.
The decision, Denisov said, would help “optimize and save money.”
Russia’s military has been recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine. The military’s reliance on inmates to plug its manpower gaps has caused Russia’s prison population to plummet.
Russia’s Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov revealed in October that the country’s prison population plunged from 420,000 before the war to a historic low of 266,000, per The Washington Post.
The Wagner Group also boosted its numbers by recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine. Wagner promised inmates full pardons if they survived a six month stint on the battlefield.
The US Department of Defense estimated in December 2022 that Wagner had around 40,000 prisoners serving on the frontlines.
Russia’s Defense Ministry then adopted the practice itself in 2023, per the UK Ministry of Defense.
But prisoners conscripted to fight in the war aren’t just being told to fight for six months. According to a February BBC report, Russian prisoners will likely have to keep fighting until the war ends.
They’ll only be released from the fighting if they get too old or are incapacitated, per the BBC. And instead of full pardons, prisoners will instead be given conditional releases.
“If you sign up now, be ready to die,” a man named Sergei wrote in a forum for Russian prisoners fighting in Ukraine, the BBC reported.
