Vladimir Putin has a ‘squadron of liquidators’ to publicly execute deserters, former convicts who were drafted into the Ukraine war have claimed.
Inmates who were transferred from their prison cells to the war’s front lines with the Wagner Group of private mercenaries say they have witnessed disobedient comrades being killed by commanders.
Former convict Yevgeny Novikov said in a report by Polygon Media and the independent Mozhem Obyasnit outlet: ‘Those who disobey are eliminated — and it’s done publicly.’
He said the ‘squadrons of liquidators’ deal with troops considered to be problematic.
He recalled: ‘Shelling began, one of the prisoners laid down and didn’t cover his own [men].
‘The shelling stopped, he went back, and the higher-up shouted to him: “Why didn’t you go forward?” And they killed him. The higher-up is killed if his team deserts.’
Another ex-convict, Alexander Drozdov, a former inmate who was recruited by the Kremlin’s private army, said many in his ranks are ‘completely insane’, with killers, rapists and drug addicts fighting Putin’s war.
He said some prisoners disobey orders but others are ‘just f***ed up and bulldoze their way through’.
Last week, the first batch of Russian prisoners to be pardoned after fighting in Ukraine returned home, and Prigozhin offered them the bizarre advice ‘Don’t rape women, drink too much or get up to no good’.
Having survived six months of Putin’s meatgrinder war, the inmates have now been released with Prigozhin saying the ragtag group of convicts should be ‘treated with deepest respect by society’.
Prigozhin said of the ex-convicted who have survived six months at the front: ‘It is necessary to understand that they are fully capable members of society.’
Critics in Russia say many convicts were strong-armed to join Putin’s war in an abuse of human rights – then used as cannon fodder.
0Prigozhin told critics that if prisoners were not fighting, their own sons would be called to the war.
