The Russian army is looking for recruits in women's prisons to send to Ukraine

In Russia there have been new recruitments of female prisoners, released from a prison near St. Petersburg to be sent to the front.

“I had never held a machine gun in my hand.They took me as a sniper.And I was lucky, because other women from the same penal colony as me are now dead.”Talking is Alena (fictitious name), one of the ex-prisoners who last summer was enrolled in a prison in the oblast of Lipetsk, where he was serving a drug conviction, and sent to the front in Ukraine. 

There are more and more cases of women who are taken from Russian prisons and sent to war.The most recent dates back to a few weeks ago, as reported by the New York Times who cites as sources two ex-prisoners who are still in contact with their cellmates.This latest case of enlistment would have taken place at the end of May 2024 in a prison not far from St. Petersburg and could herald the start of a new wave of recruitments of women to be sent to war.

At war for money and freedom

The search for new recruits in Russian women's prisons is nothing new.The first case recorded by activists for i human rights dates back to autumn 2022.Another would happen in September 2023:on that occasion, in exchange for a pardon and a salary equivalent to two thousand dollars a month, approximately ten times the national minimum wage, to detained they were offered one-year contracts to serve as front-line snipers, medical personnel and radio operators.According to what we learn, in one of the penitentiary centers of St. Petersburg, forty out of four hundred inmates accepted the proposal:they were supposed to leave for the front within six months, but then everything went up in smoke.Those women stayed in prison without receiving an official explanation.

Second Olga Romanova, head of the foundation “Rus’ sidyaschaya” (Russia Behind Bars), there would have been changes at the legislative level that would have interrupted the process for those prisoners who had accepted contracts for the front.

Now, it seems, military recruiters are back on the attack.And the renewed interest in prison women curiously coincides with a period in which the Russian government try to attract new recruits especially from the margins of society, hiring immigrants, debtors and criminals, often with very unorthodox methods.The employment of these people and the recruitments in prisons would in all likelihood be attempts to flesh out thearmy, in great pain, avoiding a new one forced mobilization which would cause a lot of discontent in society.

In recent weeks the independent Russian press has also spoken of “raids” to pick up men who were stopped on the street and at the subway exit, and from there taken to the enlistment offices.As he writes Novaya Gazeta (the newspaper of Anna Politkovskaya), in many cases surveillance cameras are used to hunt down men of military age, who are sometimes hired despite suffering from chronic pathologies and mental disorders.

The ideal victims of propaganda

If the mass enlistment of prisoners men began at the beginning of 2023, since then tens of thousands of prisoners have left for the front and hundreds of them have lost their life in the fighting, within a few months the interest also extended to female prisoners.In the summer of 2023 at least a hundred women would have been taken from penal colonies of southern Russia, and according to human rights activists there were also recruitments in occupied Ukrainian regions.For example, approximately fifty women locked up in the prison of the city of Snezhnoye, in the occupied region of Donetsk.

Mass recruitment among female prisoners began in September 2023.These are women convicted of the most varied crimes, some suffer from hepatitis, many of them have children.

Olga Romanova

According to what they say activists, no distinction is made based on age, type of crime committed and health conditions.A few months ago the independent newspaper Sota he spoke of at least thirty inmates taken from the penal colony IK-7, in the Russian oblast of Lipetsk, where many cases of HIV.

“I had no experience,” said Alena, ex detained released after fighting in Ukraine.“At the time of recruitment they didn't ask me anything, they just looked at my age and my health.I have no particular education, I worked as a sales assistant for a few years, that's all.I accepted because I still had five years in prison to serve."

But what exactly drives the prisoners to want to leave for the war?First of all the money, the terrible conditions of detention and the hope of a life outside the cell.“They think that at the end of the war they will be released,” explains Olga Romanova.“Who knows why the prisoners, as well as a large part of the Russian population, believe that this war will end soon, and that it is not something so terrible.But from what we understand, i detained at forehead they slaughter each other, drink and use drugs, and it becomes difficult to control them.And as if that wasn't enough, they want to send the women in there too...".

According to official data, it would be around 35 thousand le detained women in Russian prisons, equal to nine percent of the prison population.“Prisoners are the ideal victims of propaganda, says Olga Romanova.Unlike men who often somehow manage to reach agreements to have access to cell phones and the internet, women do not receive any information other than propaganda.And so, many of them really believe they have to die for their country."

An open invitation to all prisoners in Russia

But it's not just them detained to end up in the sights of army recruiters.In fact, the women appeared on several advertising posters inviting anyone among civilians to enlist.One of these posters, dated March 2024, portrays a girl in camouflage and col rifle in hand.And the words “Join the army of victory”.THE'announcement promises a bonus of around four thousand dollars for signing up, and no previous experience or military training is required.“We have only one goal:victory,” reads the announcement.

The presence of Russian soldiers at the front is not new:some of them joined a Russian paramilitary unit, called Spanish, which released a recruiting video in September 2022.

Even thearmy of Kiev began recruiting women.According to the New York Times, the number of women serving in the Ukrainian armed forces increased by forty percent after the invasion, reaching 43,000 female soldiers at the end of last year.Before the war, the much larger Russian army had around forty thousand women in service, mostly employed in administrative roles.

Now the question is whether these new recruitments are just isolated cases, whether they are part of a larger pilot project or whether they should be interpreted as the start of mass recruitment among female prisoners.A policy that in any case contradicts the rhetoric of Kremlin which aims to strengthen the idea of ​​the female figure as a mother and wife, who must primarily take care of the growth and care of her children.