Convicted of serious crimes were found in a Russian army unit

In the “Storm Z” unit of the 71st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, prisoners who were convicted of serious crimes are recruited from the colonies. “Verstka” writes about this.

In 2023, representatives of the Ministry of Defense received the right to recruit prisoners for the war instead of PMC “Wagner”. “Vyorstka” studied the materials of the Russian mass media, in particular “AiF”, “RIA”, “Solovyev Live”, whose journalists were in the position of Russian forces in the Tokmak district of the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine at the beginning of May. Leading positions there are occupied by former prisoners.

“Vyorstka” established the identities of some military personnel. Thus, a fighter with the callsign Tambov, who holds the position of deputy company commander, was sentenced to 26 years in prison a few months ago for the murder and robbery of a 91-year-old pensioner. According to the publication, 38-year-old Pavel Alyokhin is fighting under this call sign. Before that, he had already been tried five times, including for rape.

Among Alyokhin’s co-workers, journalists discovered Oleh Batishchev, a resident of the Lipetsk region, who was sentenced in September 2022 to 10 years in a penal colony. Ego was found guilty of murder. According to the Investigative Committee, in January 2022 he came to visit his ex-girlfriend and beat her new chosen one to death during the feast. Also, a fighter with the call sign Zagyr appeared in the stories of the Russian media from the front line. The clerk identified him as 41-year-old Sergey Zagirov from Egoryevsk, who was tried five times for theft.

The deputy commander of the 71st regiment, Oleg Panchuryn, on a video of one of the military bloggers, positively assessed the qualities of the prisoners and said that they are “more pleasant to work with.” According to him, “their mindset is more militarized than that of the mobilized,” and in their eyes there is “the mist of killers.”

• PMC “Wagner” began to recruit prisoners of war last summer. According to the confession of its head Yevgeny Prigozhin, about 10 thousand prisoners died near Bakhmut. After the expiration of six months of the contract, the former prisoners were released – apparently, pardoned by the closed decrees of the president. At the same time, the PMC also recruited those convicted of serious crimes, and the prisoners recruited into “Wagner” could be released after six months. It is almost impossible to resign from military service before the end of mobilization.
• Hiring prisoners in the army is now illegal. Earlier, the State Duma Committee on Defense approved a draft law that officially gives the possibility of conscripting into the army under a contract during the period of mobilization of citizens with a criminal record. And the heads of the committees on constitutional legislation of the State Duma and the Federation Council, Pavel Krasheninnikov and Andriy Klyshas, ​​as well as deputy Iryna Pankina, submitted a bill to the Duma, which contains a proposal to exempt from criminal responsibility the participants in the war against Ukraine who committed crimes of minor or moderate severity.