Russia’s notorious mercenary firm The Wagner Group has launched a second major recruitment drive in prisons.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is trying to persuade inmates, many of them jailed for murder or sex offences, to sign up in return for a Kremlin pardon.
Those who do will join roughly 50,000 mercenaries, dubbed Putin’s Private Army, who have an appalling frontline survival rate.
Within weeks of Prigozhin’s first recruitment drive, more than 1,000 Wagner fighters have been killed in Ukraine as Russia ’s military death toll in the war has reached a suspected 102,600.
The mercenary group has a track record in conflict zones such as Syria and Libya for committing war crimes against civilians such as sex attacks, looting and murder.
The swelling of their numbers increases concerns that more atrocities will be committed in Ukraine.
A Western security source said: “Increasingly Russia’s military machine is being depleted and the country it serves is going rogue with Wagner Group commanding in parts.
“Putin seems to have abandoned using Wagner fighters to distance the Kremlin from their horrific behaviour and they are becoming an integral part of his war machine.
“The fact that Prigozhin is now returning to jails he has recruited from previously means Russia commanders are becoming desperate for bodies to throw into the Ukraine war.”
Prigozhin, who served nine years behind bars for a number of gangster-related crimes, warns prisoners they will be executed if they threaten to desert once they have signed up to fight.
