17,000 inmates "disappear" from Russian prisons during war in Ukraine

Correctional facilities in 35 regions of Russia have lost 17,000 inmates during the war in Ukraine.

Source: Russian online media outlet Mediazona

Quote: "Neither the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FPS), nor Prigozhin (Evgeny Prigozhin, the Russian financier and founder of the infamous Wagner Group) or the Ministry of Defence of Russia published any official information about the number of inmates recruited to fight in the war. The scale of recruiting may have been assessed based on the prison population statistics, but the Federal Penitentiary Service ceased publishing it for some time, and in January, it reported that it does not decrease anymore."

Details: Mediazona analysed the information published on the websites of 35 regional departments of the penitentiary service and concluded that by the beginning of 2023, the number of inmates in these regions decreased by 17,000 persons in total.

The biggest numbers of inmates that "went missing" are in Samara (2,723 people), Chelyabinsk (1,574) and Kirov (1,153) Oblasts of Russia, as well as in Tatarstan (1,040).

A few regions shared the information about recruitment in its correctional facilities; they confirm the statistics of prison population of the FPS for Tula Oblast, while the numbers turned out to be smaller in Krasnoyarsk Krai and in Yaroslavl Oblast.

The total number of missing inmates in these 35 regions as of the beginning of 2023 is 17,000 (which is more than half of the rate of annual countrywide decrease of prison population).

Mediazone remarks that the collected data is incomplete.

It also states that the reason for the significant increase of the number of inmates in Smolensk Oblast in Russia and in the occupied peninsula of Crimea is unknown: there is no information about newly built correctional facilities there.

The journalists contacted inmates in several regions in order to find out how the FPS statistics correspond to the data about recruitment in correctional facilities.

The source of Mediazona from a correctional facility in Tula Oblast reported that nearly a thousand persons were recruited to the front: this was the number given to the members of the FPS. The statistics also confirms this: as of the beginning of 2022, 6,400 people were held in the correctional facilities in Tula Oblast, and as of the beginning of 2023, the number was 5,500 (i.e. 875 inmates less).

At the same time, in some regions the numbers published by the FPS do not correspond to the testimonies of the inmates. For instance, a correctional facility in Krasnoyarsk Krai reports that the annual number of inmates remained relatively the same (54 inmates less). Herewith, several sources reported about the activity of recruiters in this region. Former political prisoner Ivan Astashin wrote that 270 inmates from the Norilsk Correctional Facility-15 alone went to war.

Background:

• On 4 July, it was revealed that the inmates of the correctional facilities in St. Petersburg were being recruited to fight in the war against Ukraine in the Wagner Group PMC.
• On 20 July, it was reported that the Wagner PMC recruited Russian inmates in more than ten correctional facilities in Russia.
• On 25 July, the Journalist Investigations Center MediaHub pointed at the messages about the recruitment by the Wagner PMC on social media in Kyrgyzstan. The Wagner PMC passed the recruitment to the war against Ukraine for the recruitment of the employees to private security companies throughout Russia.

Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!