Former Russian convicts, recruited by the mercenary Wagner Group to fight in Ukraine, are going home to Russia and are re-offending with some committing serious crimes, including rape and murder, the BBC reported.
More than two dozen of the between 20,000-32,000 returning Russian Wagner soldiers, recruited by the mercenary organization while they were serving prison sentences in 2022, are tied to serious crimes despite getting pardoned for their previous offenses by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the report said.
According to the report, around 50,000 convicts were signed up for service by Wagner in 2022 and sent to the front-lines in Ukraine.
With Wagner's head Yevgeny Prigozhin telling them they are now "war heroes," some of the soldiers who returned were arrested again and tied to several heinous crimes, according to the report.
One such soldier, Demyan Kervorkyan, 31, stands accused of the double murder of a young man and woman going home from work.
The report said that Kervorkyan was serving an 18-year sentence from 2016 when Wagner recruited him and 149 other convicts in his prison in August 2022.
The news outlet reported that Kervorkyan and two others are now accused of the robbery and stabbing death of children’s entertainer Tatyana Mostyko, 19, and her boss, Kirill Chubko, near the town of Berezanskaya, when the pair stopped along the side of the road for a flat tire.
Kirill’s wife said her husband called her to say he would be late coming home because of the flat, but a "group of young people" stopped to help.
That was the last she heard from him.
Kervorkyan, Anatoly Dvoynikov, and Aram Tatosyan were eventually charged after the pair’s bodies were found in shallow graves near the burned-out car, the report said.
Dvoynikov and Tatosyan led detectives to the graves and confessed to the robbery and murders, but Kervorkyan denies involvement.
In February, The New York Times reported that the Wagner Group had stopped the prison recruitment practice.
According to the report, prisoners would sign up for a six-month tour of duty in Ukraine for a pardon and a bonus of about $1,000.
CBS News reported on June 27 that now the concern is what these former inmates will do after being released from prison and participating in the violence and horror of war at the front, then coming home to Russian communities.
Olga Romanova, director of the prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars, told CBS News she is concerned about the message the program is sending.
"People form a complete absence of a link between crime and punishment, an act and its consequences," Romanova said. "And not just convicts see it. Free people see it, too — that you can do something terrible, sign up for the war, and come out as a hero."
Charles Kim ✉
Charles Kim, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in reporting on news and politics.
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