Nine Prisoners Recruited by Russian MoD Escape from Polygon, Including an Armenian

Nine prisoners recruited by the Russian Ministry of Defense have escaped from a polygon in the Korochansky district of the Belgorod region, according to local Telegram channel 'Ashes', citing police departments in Shebekino.

Among the escapees, two—Denis Mustyakov and Alexey Gryazyutin—were imprisoned for murder (Article 105 of the Criminal Code); three—Roman Sery, Alexander Ivanov, and Alexander Kasatkin—were convicted for causing serious bodily harm (Article 111 of the Criminal Code); another, Nikolay Bagrov, was imprisoned for illegal deprivation of liberty (Article 127 of the Criminal Code). The others—Eduard Harutyunyan, Igor Bolonin, and Pavel Migunov—were sentenced for theft, fraud, and drug use, respectively.

On July 26, six of them escaped from the polygon, followed by three more the next day. A reward of 100,000 rubles has been promised for information leading to their whereabouts and capture. The police believe the prisoners may be hiding in Belgorod or Shebekino.

Representatives of the Ministry of Defense have started visiting prisons to find those willing to fight in Ukraine in exchange for a pardon from the president in spring 2023. Similar activities were previously conducted by the 'Wagner' group, which sent nearly 50,000 people to the front, according to Wagner's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin. He noted that 32,000 of them had returned home.

Recently, prisoners who agreed to fight stopped receiving pardons from Vladimir Putin. Instead, they are given 'conditional release', and their contracts with the Ministry of Defense are automatically extended, preventing them from leaving the combat zone until the end of the war.

Prisoners themselves are warning those wishing to head to Ukraine that it will likely be a one-way ticket. 'If you sign a contract now, be prepared to die, old man. You might last around six months, but you won't make it until the end of the war,' a member of the 'Storm' brigade, whose fighters are mainly sent to the most challenging parts of the front for 'meat assaults', wrote in a specialized chat.

According to estimates from the Gulagu.net project, based on internal data from the Federal Penitentiary Service, over 100,000 prisoners are expected to be sent to the front by the end of 2023. Olga Romanova, director of the 'Sitting Russia' movement, provided a similar figure of 120,000 people.

By July 26, 2024, the BBC's Russian service and Mediazona had confirmed the names of more than 61,000 Russian soldiers who died in the war in Ukraine since February 2022. More than 12,200 of them (20%) were former prisoners.