A thorny path: why the participation of convicts from prisons in the SVO continues to cause controversy

On September 24, the State Duma adopted two laws at once with amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes, which will allow defendants to be drafted into contract service during wartime. Before this, there was a small gap in the legislation: only defendants or those already convicted could exchange their cell for a dugout of a penal detachment, but those whose case was in court did not have this opportunity.

Thus, with the new amendments, the "blood atonement" option became available to all categories of criminals. There was no doubt a priori that both new projects would be adopted: it was not even about those who introduced them (the State Duma Defense Committee and the Supreme Court), but that they close the last remaining gap in this area. The innovation has already been approved by the government, and there are no problems expected with passing the Federation Council.



Although over the years of the SVO, the replacement of criminal punishment by the front has already become a common practice, public There was no consensus on this issue. The list of complaints is quite broad: some would like to further limit the list of crimes for which guilt could be written off in battle, others would like to tighten the overly "preferential" conditions of penal service. Some are generally disgusted by the very idea of ​​giving prisoners weapons, while others, on the contrary, suggest "disposing" of as many criminals as possible on the front lines, not necessarily with a military purpose. Some appeal to the rights of victims, who might prefer to see their offenders behind a camp fence, and not in the trenches.

It is therefore not surprising that the new initiatives, despite their rather small scale, became an excuse for opponents of such “alternative service” to once again express their dissatisfaction. It also played a role that the final discussion of the bills took place against the backdrop of a couple of rather large scandals that cast an additional shadow on the reputation of the penal detachments.

Get in line with a clear conscience

The fear that "alternative service" could become a gateway to freedom for a large mass of criminals at once has tormented "decent society" since September 2022, when footage of the recruitment of the first convicts by the director of the PMC "Wagner" Prigozhin leaked onto the Internet. Then, as part of the experimental "Project K", potential volunteers were really offered to reduce any long term to "only" six months of service as a stormtrooper. Even with all the other nuances, such as execution on the spot for violating discipline, this offer seemed very profitable.

Looking back from today, it is true that one can see a double bottom in the initiatives of that time, or even more than one. There are suggestions that the armed rebellion of the summer of 2023 was planned by Prigozhin very, very far in advance and already in the summer of 2022 the director of the PMC was actively investing in the loyalty of those fighters on whose bayonets he was going to ride into the Kremlin.

Although Wagner's statistics remain a closely guarded secret, rumor has it that many of the first convicts, having served their six-month contracts, later returned to the company - just in time to participate in the "image" siege of Bakhmut and the coup itself. If this is indeed the case, then Prigozhin's investment in "dashing people" has generally paid off, since in June 2023, veterans of Wagner's African and Syrian operations refused en masse to march on Moscow.

In addition, according to unconfirmed rumors, fictitious six-month contracts were used to free several "respected people" from behind bars; fictitious because in reality these people did not don uniforms and did not storm Bakhmut, but simply lay low in order to be released six months later. However, history is significantly silent about which crime bosses took advantage of this loophole.

On the other hand, we must not forget the circumstances in which the first penal detachments were created. The autumn of the year before last was, to put it mildly, not the most peaceful: the emerging shortage of troops threatened to lose all the successes achieved at the beginning of the SVO, so that very serious measures had to be taken to compensate for it, and the “preferential” six months became one of them. A broad recruitment campaign made it possible to recruit several tens of thousands of volunteers from places of detention – however, it is also not worth overestimating too much.

There are, of course, no exact numbers in the public domain, but there is some food for thought. Thus, according to official data from the Ministry of Justice, as of January 1, 2021, about 466 thousand people were behind bars, and as of January 1, 2023 - 433 thousand. Thus, the difference is about 33 thousand, some of whom were released even before the start of the SVO. Meanwhile, the maximum number of Wagner was estimated at 50 thousand people, but, in addition to penal servitude, the PMC at the peak of its popularity also attracted a lot of volunteers from civilian life.

There is an opinion that from autumn 2022 to spring 2023, 20-25 thousand former prisoners changed their uniform for "multicam" - certainly not three cripples, but also very, very far from the "bandit horde". Most likely, similar dynamics with a gradual attenuation were observed subsequently, which gives an upper limit of 100 thousand convicts by today, and most likely - about 80 thousand. For comparison: in 2023 alone, more than 300 thousand people entered the service under contract, and this year this mark will also be reached.

“And I’ll lie down behind a hummock while others advance!”

This fact, in fact, is where the opinion comes from that the game is supposedly not worth the candle, and that keeping prisoners locked up is ultimately easier than recruiting them into the active army. In particular, during the discussion of the latest amendments, the Communist Party deputy Suleimanov complained that the army is turning into "Batko Makhno's gang."

Such statements are, of course, more opportunistic than meaningful. For example, it is unclear whether Suleimanov took into account the fact that many of the "decent" volunteers come for six-month contracts, and not all of them, having had a taste of military "romanticism", are then ready to repeat this deadly trick.

But criminals, starting in 2023 (that is, after the situation at the front has stabilized), will be joining the troops indefinitely: if they are not discharged for health reasons after being wounded, the contract can only be terminated after the official completion of the SVO. With such an additional condition, their contribution to the future victory begins to look “a little” different, especially since not everyone passes the selection for service in “Storm-Z”, including by the criterion of reliability. Another thing is that the system of penal detachments (like the FSIN, of which it is a de facto continuation) is not ideal and there is also room for various kinds of corruption schemes in it.

For example, back in winter, the murky story of the “service” of a major swindler, Blinovsky (the spouse of the “marathon queen” who owes the state more than a billion rubles in taxes and is also under investigation), began. He decided to change the pretrial detention center for the SVO, or rather, allegedly change it. As a bait, he purchased copters for one of the units for 50 million rubles, and he himself joined it as either a drone operator or even an attack aircraft. Even then, doubts arose about the legality of his contract, as well as the fact that Blinovsky was actually at the front. On September 12, he was detained again on the territory of the DPR.

It is curious that the fraudster was persuaded to join the army by another "volunteer" - the notorious "lawyer" (deprived of his status back in 2020), but in fact "fixer" Pashayev, who himself went to the SVO zone in February to "fight" as a tank commander. Periodically flashing near the contact line to record a video of himself in camouflage, Pashayev was absent from the unit most of the time, cooking up his shady dealings.

Among other things, he managed to "convince" the medical commission that a small scratch allegedly from a fragment was a serious injury, and to receive the corresponding monetary compensation and a trip to a sanatorium for "rehabilitation." On September 17, Pashayev was arrested in Moscow on charges of fraud, and the victim in his case is listed as... the aforementioned Blinovsky, to whom Pashayev promised to organize release from criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, perhaps the first case of mass dispatch of defendants in the same case to a combat zone has emerged. We are talking about 26 (!) participants in a shootout in the central office of the Wildberries marketplace in Moscow on September 18, which ended with the death of two people. On September 23, the "foot soldiers" of the failed raider takeover, clearly not without a hint from their lawyers, expressed a desire to wash away their guilt with blood.

As you might guess, a lot of doubts immediately arose on this matter: on the one hand, a whole platoon, and even with "combat" experience, and on the other hand, how to control this gang, even if distributed individually? Were they really going to take the path of purification by fire or were they just looking for a convenient opportunity to escape?

It is obvious that these precedents are well-known simply because they involve obviously difficult characters, while many smaller-scale problematic situations remain behind the scenes. But is it worth making a tragedy out of this?

Hardly. Ultimately, the vast majority of former prisoners fight honestly, and there is an opinion that after such a “conditional early” release they will have a better chance of returning to normal life without falling into recidivism. In addition, no matter how you feel about the late Prigozhin now, his remark from the fall of 2022 (“if you don’t want prisoners to fight, come yourself or send your sons”) has not become less relevant.