Vladimir Putin Orders Recruitment Of Thieves And Killers From Prisons To Fight Russia's War In Ukraine: Report

Russia-Ukraine war: Recruitments were made from a prison where the inmates were promised a presidential pardon and a salary of 1,400 pounds a month.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to recruit at least 50,000 convicts to join the war in Ukraine, according to a report in The Guardian. The recruitments are being done by Yevgeny Prigozhin the head of mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group, the outlet further said. The report comes on a day when Mr Putin, in a televised address, announced partial mobilisation of its two-million-strong military reserves to defend Russia and its territories, claiming that the West wants to destroy Russia and did not want peace in Ukraine. In this video from #Russia, oligarch Prigozhin, who is close to Putin and runs the Wagner private military company, is pitching to prison inmates, trying to recruit them for his PMC to deploy in the #war against #Ukraine:pic.twitter.com/RPyUjEsmnW

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One of the inmates of a penal colony in the Tanbov region, 482 kilometres from capital Moscow, told The Guardian that Prigozhin arrived in a chopper. "We couldn't believe our eyes that he would really come all the way to visit us. But there he was standing in front of us: Prigozhin, in the flesh, urging us to join the Wagner private military group and fight in Ukraine," he added.

Last week, a video of a man resembling Prigozhin went viral on social media. The New York Times carried a report on it, saying that the Wagner Group leader explained to Russian convicts how they could earn their freedom by fighting in Ukraine.