Russia’s Wagner Group halts prisoner recruitment marketing campaign, the founder says

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has stopped recruiting prisoners to battle in Ukraine, Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin mentioned on Thursday.

“The recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner non-public army firm has fully stopped,” Prigozhin mentioned in a response to a request for remark from a Russian media outlet revealed on social media.

“We’re fulfilling all our obligations to those that work for us now,” he mentioned.

Wagner started recruiting prisoners in Russia’s sprawling penal system in summer time 2022, with Prigozhin, a catering entrepreneur who served 9 years in jail in the course of the Soviet Union, providing convicts a pardon in the event that they survived six months in Ukraine.

Wagner has not offered data on what number of convicts joined its ranks, however Russian penal service figures revealed in November confirmed the nation’s jail inhabitants dropping by over 20,000 between August and November, the most important drop in over a decade.

In keeping with figures revealed in January, the decline had largely stopped.

In December, Reuters reported that the US intelligence group believes that Wagner had 40,000 convict fighters deployed in Ukraine, making up the overwhelming majority of the group’s personnel within the nation.

The Wagner Group has in current months performed an more and more distinguished position in Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, with the mercenary drive spearheading a months-long assault on the Donetsk area city of Bakhmut.

Beforehand secretive, Wagner and its founder Prigozhin have assumed an ever extra public profile towards the backdrop of the combating in Ukraine, with Prigozhin criticizing Russia’s army management and sure officers.

In January, Russian state media launched footage of Prigozhin assembly the primary group of convict fighters to finish their stints in Ukraine and obtain pardons.

In a single video, Prigozhin was seen telling fighters: “Keep in mind life has given you this opportunity: you did not dodge the dignity, you did not arse it up: you defended the Motherland, all of you had been able to die on this previous 180 days”.