The Russian army is facing serious setbacks. To be able to supply the front, Russian criminals are taken out of prison. The crimes don’t seem to matter.
Former Rostov-on-Don police officer Sergei Kadatskyi was among the prisoners recruited. In 2018, according to the Kremlin-critical news portal Meduza, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of his wife and the attempted murder of his father-in-law.
The Russian is said to have fallen at the front and therefore, despite his bloody past, he received a special honor: he was posthumously awarded the Medal for Courage. “He died a courageous death on the battlefield, displaying courage and bravery,” the letter reads, Meduza reports.
«After half a year you go back home»
Kadatskyj is not the first convict to receive an award for his participation in the war. Earlier, the leader of an organized crime gang near Moscow, Ivan Neparatov, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes, was posthumously awarded a similar medal. The accompanying decree is said to have even been signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (70), Meduza writes.
Reports surfaced as early as August that “Putin’s cook” and head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (61), was recruiting mercenaries in prison camps. In September, a video surfaced showing Prigozhin himself in a prison in the city of Yoshkar-Ola, 760 kilometers east of Moscow.
In it he explained to the prisoners what to expect and what opportunities they had. «After half a year you return home. You will be amnestied. Those who want to stay with us, stay with us.” Prigozhin promises that no one will have to go to prison anymore. (jmh)