In August, Yevgeny Prigozhin, 61, the mastermind behind the Russian mercenary group Wagner, went looking for physically fit criminals in Russian prisons. By the summer, the Wagner group had persuaded up to 1,000 criminals from 17 prisons to join the fight in Ukraine in exchange for wages and pardons from Putin, Verstka reports. Anyone who refused to fight was threatened with special detention or an extended sentence.
One of these prisoners, who went to war for Russia, was Stanislaw B.*, as reported by the Ukrainian medium “Nexta” among others. Service as an artilleryman for his homeland brought him a medal for bravery – and cost the man his right leg. Videos show him listlessly receiving the medal while sitting on a couch.
Murderer only had to serve part of his sentence
Russia went looking for thieves and murderers in the Russian prison camps. And B. was one of them. As the Bulgarian medium “Actualno” and the American medium “The Daily Beast” report, in 2013 B. was sentenced to 23 years in prison – for murder!
At the time, he is reported to have killed a Russian district judge in “particularly cruel manner”. He is said to have hit him on the head with a barbell – the district judge died on the spot. Now B. is a free man because, like so many other Russian convicts, he suffered amnesia from his service at the front – without serving his full sentence for the atrocity act, the media said.
B., who is interviewed in a propaganda video after receiving the medal, proudly stated that he was “grateful” to the Wagner group for helping them find their purpose in life. “Maybe I was made for something else and not just serving a sentence and living out my life,” he said.
Grace often not legal
According to The Daily Beast, not all pardons are legal. “Someone hands out papers and medals to the convicts and tells some that this is a pardon. And others in turn that these are dismissal notices. But they look like worthless pieces of paper with someone’s stamp on them,” Olga Romanova, the founder of Rus Sidyashaya, a human rights organization that works closely with detainees, told the platform.
Romanova pointed out in a statement to Telegram on Wednesday that the pardon process is much more complicated than just handing out scraps of paper. “Only the president can grant a pardon, and this procedure is complicated and starts with the pardons of the regional People’s Chambers. The regional People’s Chambers have not checked anything, no requests for pardons. So who knows what kind of papers the convicts will get,” she wrote. chs)
* Name known