Wagner Ends Convict Recruitment, Days After Fighters Filmed Beating Officer With Shovel

The Russian private military company Wagner has stopped recruiting convicts from prisons to fight in Ukraine, according to a statement attributed to the group’s owner.

A former senior NATO intelligence official told VICE World News that significant losses on the battlefield in Ukraine had made it harder for Wagner to recruit from jails.

Wagner signed up an estimated 40,000 prisoners for Russia’s war in Ukraine, alongside 10,000 contracted fighters. 

“The recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner private military company has completely stopped,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s boss said on social media in a response to a request for comment from a Russian media outlet.

Wagner, which has played a high-profile role in the now nearly year-long Russian invasion of Ukraine, has been designated as an international crime group by the US Department of Treasury for its activities in Ukraine and more than 20 other countries for human rights abuses, murder, and the looting of natural resources. It is suspected that Wagner soldiers have been involved in war crimes such as the murder of civilians.

Earlier this week drone footage emerged of four Wagner soldiers beating their own commander with a shovel on a battlefield in the Russian occupied Donbas region of Ukraine. There is no evidence to show Prigozhin’s decision was prompted by the shovel attack video.

The former NATO intelligence official currently helping investigate Wagner for sanction busting and war crimes told VICE World News that it’s unclear what the shift means in terms of Russia’s internal dynamics.

“There’s unconfirmed reports that the Defence Ministry took over recruiting of prisoners from Wagner, but there’s also clear signs that heavy casualties and poor treatment of the contracted prisoners has made it difficult for Wagner to recruit,” said the former official, who cannot be identified because of the sensitive nature of their work. 

With the Russian military facing massive losses in the invasion of Ukraine, with more than 100,000 casualties and epic amounts of military equipment lost since last February, Wagner began recruiting inmates from across Russian prisons, including murderers and rapists, offering pardons in exchange for six months of service on the frontlines. The prisoners were used in brutal, high casualty frontal assaults on Ukrainian positions around the contested city of Bakhmut.

Yet since prisoners helped replace lost its troops, Russia has mobilised more than 300,000 conscripts that were sent into training last year, so is less reliant on Wagner to supply prisoners. 

Prigozhin and Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov appear to have made a hardline political alliance in an effort to impress Russian President Vladimir Putin. They have often pursued an open rivalry with the Russian army and defence establishment. 

Wagner has long worked as a semi-deniable force for Russia in the Middle East and Africa but its value in the invasion of Ukraine led the Russian state to openly embrace the mercenary company, even allowing a recruitment centre and office in St Petersburg despite Russian laws prohibiting its citizens from working as mercenaries. 

“One hopes this [decision to stop recruiting prisoners] is a sign Prigozhin has lost some influence with the boss and that his rivals in the army are pushing him aside,” said the former NATO official. “Internal rivalries make combating these gangsters [in Wagner] easier and strengthen Ukraine’s hand.”