2023-11-10 15:29:46
Russian convicts hired in Ukraine within the Russian army in exchange for a future amnesty “are expiating their crime with blood”, said Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitri Peskov on Friday, a strategy criticized by the NGO but which the Kremlin assumes.
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“Convicted people, including those for serious crimes, atone for their crime with blood on the battlefield,” Peskov told reporters.
“They atone with blood (by being) in assault units, under bullets, under shells,” he argued.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson was responding to a question regarding Vladislav Kaniouss, a man sentenced to 17 years in prison for the sordid murder of his ex-partner, who, according to some Russian media, was released following fighting on the Ukrainian front .
The Vladislav Kaniouss affair aroused great emotion among women’s defense organizations in the country.
Tens of thousands of repeat offenders, including some convicted of murder or rape, have in fact been recruited since last year in prison to come and fight for several months in Ukraine in exchange for an amnesty.
This strategy was put in place in parallel with the mobilization of several hundred thousand reservists, therefore civilians, in the fall of 2022.
According to Olga Romanova, an exiled former journalist who campaigns for the rights of prisoners and opposition activists in Russia, Moscow has recruited a total of 100,000 prison fighters. The Kremlin, for its part, has never given an official figure.
This was particularly the case of certain Wagner fighters, poached directly from their cells or from the courtyard of their prison by the former leader of the paramilitary group, Yevgeni Prigozhin, who died in August in the mid-air explosion of his plane two months ago. following an abortive rebellion.
But this strategy can prove dangerous for society when these habitual offenders return from the front, NGOs have already warned.
In recent months, the local Russian press has reported several cases of released prisoners having committed serious crimes, including murder or rape, following leaving the army, once amnestied.
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