In yet another sign that Russian combat losses are far higher than officials are willing to admit, representatives of the Wagner Private Military Company, a quasi-state force close to the Kremlin, are now recruiting volunteers from among prisoners in Russia’s penal institutions.
They are promising prisoners a monthly pay of 200,000 rubles (3,000 US dollars) for six-months service and cancellation of the remainder of their sentences; and they are told that their families will receive a payment of five million rubles (70,000 US dollars) in the event of their deaths, an outcome they are warned is entirely possible (svoboda.org, istories.media and t.me/NetGulagu).
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In reporting this development, Moscow historian Boris Sokolov notes that what Putin is doing now represents a revival of a policy Stalin used during World War II. More than 975,000 prisoners and approximately a million special settlers were sent to the front, forming approximately five percent of the Soviet Red Army (graniru.org).
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No data are publicly available as to how many of these former prisoners and special settlers died, but the percentage almost certainly was higher than the 60 percent of all Soviet citizens in uniform who did given that such people were often used as cannon fodder during that conflict too and put in harms way more often to spare other units.
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