Russia’s Armed Forces are now the ones recruiting from prisons

The Russian Armed Forces have adopted the Wagner Group’s old method of recruiting soldiers and are drafting new troops from their prisons according to intelligence reports. 

On May 11th, the British Ministry of Defence reported in their daily Ukraine war update that Russia had likely been recruiting its prison population in order to boost its numbers. 

The British intelligence update noted that the scheme had been going on since the start of 2023 and had likely allowed Russia to recruit upwards of 10,000 new fighters in April.

Russia recruiting from its prisoner population might sound very familiar. But this time it's the Russian military doing the drafting rather than Moscow’s private military companies. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group used Russia’s prison system as the main source for its recruits throughout the summer of 2022 according to the British intelligence update.

In February 2022, Prigozhin announced in a Telegram statement released by his press service that Wagner had stopped recruiting new soldiers from Russia’s penal system.  

"The recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner private military company has completely stopped," Prigozhin said according to a translation from Newsweek’s Isabel Van Burgen.

"We are fulfilling all our obligations to those who work for us now," Prigozhin added. But the move likely wasn’t one the 61-year-old mercenary captain had a choice in making.  

Britain’s Ministry of Defence pointed out that the Wagner group likely lost access to this poll of recruits in the wake of the group's public feuds with Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

At the time, Prigozhin was embroiled in a bitter dispute with Russia’s Defense Ministry over the latter's alleged unwillingness to supply Wagner with badly needed ammunition.  

During the feud, Prigozhin resorted to accusing several important Russian officials of “high treason” and started publicly posting images of his mercenary group's losses while blaming those who didn’t provide him with more munitions for the men’s violent deaths.

“This is just one of the collection points for the dead,” Prigozhin said in one post according to a translation from, The Guardian “These are guys who have died because of so-called ‘shell hunger.’ There should be five times fewer of them. Five times.”

Photo by Telegram @concordgroup_official

“Who is to blame for the fact that they died?” continued Prigozhin. “Those who should have decided to supply us with enough ammunition are to blame,” he added, going on to say that neither Valery Gerasimov nor Sergei Shoigu would send him more ammo. 

Whether or not this dispute lost Wagner its access to Russia’s prisoners is something we may never know. But we do know that Wagner likely didn’t stop recruiting due to the lack of men since British intelligence believes Russia is still recruiting from its prisons. 

The British Ministry of Defence update also stated that the Russian campaign to recruit from the country’s prisons was also likely part of a broader scheme to bolster the military’s numbers as a means to avoid a second round of “mandatory mobilization.”

On May 8th, Britain’s Defence Ministry reported that Russia was targeting central Asian migrant workers offering signing bonuses and fast-tracked Russian citizenship as part of a plan to meet Moscow’s goal of reaching 400,000 volunteers for the fight in Ukraine.