Convicts who refused to go to war in Ukraine beaten in Russian penal colony
According to information from Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist, servicemen from a special unit of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and prison officers beat convicts in Penal Colony No.4 in Kaluga Oblast who have refused to go to the war against Ukraine and who did not approve of sending other convicts to the war.
Source: Latvia-based Russian media outlet Meduza, citing Osechkin and the Pod'em (Rise) outlet
Details: Vladimir Osechkin, a founder of the Gulagu.net human rights project, has posted photos and videos from, as he states, "an official archive of Penal Colony No.4 in Kaluga Oblast".
According to Osechkin, servicemen from a special unit of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and prison officers "have decided to conduct educational work with convicts who refused to take part in the war against Ukraine because of their beliefs and who did not approve of sending other convicts to the war".
Vladislav Shapsha, Governor of Kaluga Oblast, stated to the Pod’em outlet that Yurii Zelnikov, a regional ombudsman, was going to check the prison that the Gulagu.net reported about.
"He will definitely go there and check. We will not disregard any sort of request," Shapsha said.
Background:
- On 4 July, the Vazhnye Istorii (Important Stories) news outlet reported that the Wagner Group had started recruiting convicts from prisons in Saint Petersburg to go to the war in Ukraine as "volunteer soldiers". Later, they started recruiting convicts all over Russia.
- Then it was revealed that almost all convicts from two Russian prisons who had been recruited by the Wagner Group for the Ukrainian war had been killed.
- On 14 September, the video of an oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Vladimir Putin and established the so-called Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), personally encouraging Russian convicts to go to war in Ukraine, was published online.
- On 15 September, Prigozhin suggested that those who disagreed with such recruitment should send their children to war, while commenting on a message regarding the recruitment of convicts for the war in Ukraine. "Either the PMC and convicts or your children," he stated.
- According to information from The Insider news outlet, more than 500 Russian convicts had been killed at the war in Ukraine as of the beginning of November.
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