A convicted murderer released from prison to fight for Russia against Ukraine as "cannon fodder" has surrendered and defected to the other side.
Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, was serving a 24-year jail term for killing one person and wounding another in 1999.
He was released after one of Putin's henchmen Yevgeny Progozhin offered convicts the chance to serve in a private military company for six months and then - if still alive - to gain their freedom and a presidential pardon.
One report says, that on Putin's authority, 28,000 murderers, rapists, burglars and other criminals have been freed in an unprecedented mass release to fight for Russia's struggling forces in Ukraine.
A video shows the tough prisoners from penal colonies in Tambov region who signed up as fighters reportedly taken by a dozen jail vans to a “training camp” in the south of Russia.
Deserters have been warned they will be summarily “shot”.
But for those who survive six months, they will be pardoned by Vladimir Putin and allowed to resume their lives no matter how heinous their crimes.
“We were in training for seven days, the 7th squad was an assault unit,” explained Nuzhin, who said he'd been visited by Yevgeny at a prison in Russia's Ryazan region.
“I don't even know how to explain the task of assault squads, I realised for myself - cannon fodder.
“You do something wrong - they zero out, it's called a firing squad.”
Nuzhin told Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov that he had decided in advance to surrender to Ukraine, where some of his family live.
He was held on September 4, when he and other convict fighters had been ordered to retrieve Russians slain in a gun battle.
The convicted killer said he was being treated humanely.
He added: “I would like to continue fighting on the side of the Ukrainians so I surrendered and made my decision a long time ago.
“Because it was not Ukraine that attacked Russia, it was Putin who attacked Ukraine.
“I cannot go to war against my relatives, my sister, my uncle, my daughter.”
It is unclear what will now happen to this convicted murderer whose wife and a child are still in Russia.
Meanwhile, speaking to loyalist Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Prigozhin has said: “Of course, if I were a prisoner, I would dream of joining this friendly team in order to be able not only to redeem my debt to the Motherland but also to repay it with vengeance."
So far, Putin has balked at launching full-scale mobilisation under which all males over 18 could be sent to the war.
But there are rumours he is poised to announce a partial mobilisation in certain regions.
