Prisoners and immigrants are being forced to fight for Russia in Ukraine

Putin has become desperate for soldiers to send to Ukraine. The "special military operation" has gone on far longer than the Russian president ever expected and the Russian government is looking for ways to get more men to the front.

It is well known that the private mercenary Wagner group openly recruited Russian prisoners to fight and die in Ukraine. However, a CNN exclusive by Nick Paton Walsh, Darya Tarasova and Jo Shelley claimed that the Russian Minister of Defence is also directly employing Russian prisoners.

The CNN reporters claimed to have talked to several former prisoners who say they were directly recruited by the Russian Ministry of Defence.

A claim that Andriy Usov, a Ukrainian intelligence official, confirmed. “They (the captured Russians) emphasize to us that they are not Wagner, that they were invited officially by the defence ministry,” Usov, told CNN.

Furthermore, Usov told CNN that he believes that the recruitment of prisoners by the Russian Ministry of Defence is a sign of the "echoes of internal squabbling among the Russian military leadership."

Andriy Usov told the media outlet that he believes that Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister of Russia and Valery Gerasimov, who is in charge of the "special operation" in Ukraine, were hoping to create a "convict resource they could directly control through the ministry's own private companies."

Much has been written about how the Wagner Group basically used ex-convicts as disposable soldiers in the war in Ukraine. From the looks of it, it seems the Russian Ministry of Defence has similar plans for these men.

According to CNN, Andriy Usov said that even though the ministry did not have many convicts at the moment, those they did have "will be used in the same way (as Wagner) … as cannon fodder."

It indeed does seem that Putin is desperate for men to fight his war in Ukraine. According to an article by the BBC, "Russian authorities openly sign up people to join the armed forces at the migration centre in Moscow."

The news outlet reports that advertisements can be found in Moscow written in "Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik languages offering citizens of these countries a fast track to obtain a Russian passport if they join the armed forces."

However, it seems that these migrants are often not signing up to go off to war of their own free will.

Valentina Cupik, a defender of migrant rights, spoke to the BBC and said that it is not unusual for police officers to stop Central Asian immigrants on the streets of Moscow and, through intimidation and the threat of deportation, get these individuals to sign a military contract.

Cupik highlighted that many of these migrant workers did not have the proper paperwork and often violated migration rules, thus making immigrants easy prey for military recruitment officers.

The BBC spoke with a man who asked to be called Aziz, who holds dual Russian and Tajik citizenship. Aziz told the publication that he was apprehended at the construction site where he works during a police raid.

Even though Aziz was told he was going to a police station to confirm his identity, he soon found himself in a military enlistment office.

However, perhaps Aziz's Russian citizenship helped him to be bold enough to speak up. According to the BBC, Aziz "started shouting at police officers demanding why they had lied to him, they twisted his arms and threw him back into the bus," and later, he was released.

Naturally, many migrants are not in a situation to speak up. If they are in the country illegally or are somehow working in an unregulated, unapproved manner, they are too terrified to oppose police officers. Making them prime targets for officers of the law who are pressuring them to sign up for war.