Ukraine is legislating to join Russia in sending recruiters into the nation’s prisons to bolster its military, as Moscow’s invasion grinds on and the casualty list grows ever longer.
Ukraine’s Parliament has passed a draft law allowing certain classes of convicts to get out of jail early in return for military service. As noted, Ukraine’s ability to field enough soldiers to sustain the war against Russia is one of the nation’s greatest longer-term challenges of the war, its population considerably smaller than Russia’s and already disturbed and scattered by the conflict.
Releasing criminals from prison in return for military service is by no means unique to the Ukraine war, and has a history going back centuries, whether as a means of redemption in a time of national need or else simply as punishment battalions. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of soldiers have already died in the invasion.
If signed into law by President Zelensky — and he has been reticent about signing other laws extending the pool of potential military recruits before, apparently fearing backlash from the public — the recruitment law would allow an inmate to appeal to the governor of his prison to refer him to a court. That court would then decide whether the prisoner is suitable for service.
Reuters notes an addendum to the bill which states: “Some of these people are motivated and patriotic citizens who are ready to redeem themselves before society on the battlefield.”
The law would leave Ukraine doing what Russia has come in for so much criticism for over the past two years; unleashing criminals onto the battlefield. Yet while Russians behind the lines have borne the brunt of violent convicts brutalized by the indiscriminate killing of war returning to their homes after service — and killing again in some cases — Ukraine appears to be legislating in a bid to avoid that, at least.
Under the terms of the law, several classes of prisoner including mass murderers, rapists and pedophiles, drug dealers, and political prisoners are not eligible to be released early to fight. Only those in good physical and mental condition are eligible to apply, and nobody with more than three years left of their sentence to serve would be considered.
So those convicted of a single murder near the end of their sentence, and those guilty of involuntary manslaughter, could be released to fight for Ukraine. Even so, given how many restrictions there are the number taking up the offer may be slim, especially given the law stipulating that once released from prison, the only way out of military service is essentially death or victory, or returning to prison in the case of recidivists.
The volunteers won’t get leave periods either, except in case of battlefield injury.
Nevertheless, Politico claims backers of the law hope for 10,000 volunteers through the prison scheme.
This has been less of a problem for Russia, which evidently has not been so picky with which prisoners it trains, arms, and pushes into battle, and who are not requied to fight to the bitter end, being pardoned after six months of service. Indeed, reports state from 50,000 to over 100,000 Russian prisoners have been released in return for military service in the course of the country’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine.
As reported by the BBC earlier this year, that generous approach to giving prisoners pardons after just six months in combat — even if thousands died — has now been replaced with a tougher system, given convicts were essentially joining the military on even better terms than regular soldiers, who had no hope of going home.
The broadcaster said it had spoken to the families of Russian convict soldiers who reported their contracts of service had been lengthened, that pardons were no longer total, and that they had been put into ‘stormtrooper’ battalions facing dangerous missions with very little training and prospect of survival.
It reported:
“The conditions are sort of better. You get full pay, like in the military, and all the other benefits and allowances,” one convict writes.
“Your chances of survival are about 25%. I’ve been a stormtrooper for five months. Out of our platoon of about 100 men, only 38 are still alive,” another says.
Many of the Storm V troops are trained at a range for as little as 10 days before being despatched. There are several dozen known cases of convicts who have found themselves on the front line after only three to five days of training. In comparison, Soviet conscripts in Afghanistan got up to six months’ training before deployment.
While trusted official figures are not released by either side in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is nevertheless clear very high casualty rates of both soldiers killed and injured is a major feature of the war and, if other circumstances don’t intervene first, may dictate for how long the war can continue to be fought. Competing claims vary wildly, but one monitoring project emphatically claims to have proven 50,000 Russian war dead from newspaper obituaries, burial plot allocations, and social media posts.
Ukraine’s own reckoning on how many Russian soldiers it has “eliminated” is considerably higher, and is rapidly approaching half a million men. Kyiv, for its own casualties, gives the very low figure of 31,000 dead, which even its own allies contradict.