Vladimir Putin Resorts To Recruiting Criminals, Russia Poorest, Including Ruthless Gang Leader To Replenish Army in Ukraine

According to several reports, the Russian military has started enlisting prisoners and so-called volunteer battalions to replenish the number of casualties sustained on the Ukrainian battlefield.

A directive that will add 137,000 more soldiers to the armed services was recently issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia Recruits Poorest People, Criminals To Fight in Ukraine

It appears that the Kremlin is having difficulty locating citizens who are prepared to fight and possibly perish in Ukraine. The richest regions of Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg, have produced relatively few casualties, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

It appears that a lot more volunteers are instead chosen from Russia's most underdeveloped areas, including Buryatia in Siberia or Dagestan in the North Caucasus. The tabloid asserts that Moscow is luring soldiers to volunteer battalions with the promise of great pay and social security.

There are allegations that Moscow has started recruiting soldiers from within Russian jails to boost up troop numbers, suggesting that this has not been sufficient. The idea's creator is credited as Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Russian prisoner and the mind behind the brutal Russian mercenary company Wagner.

The close Putin ally and oligarch businessman, who was sometimes referred to as Putin's chef, spent nine years in a Russian prison in the 1980s. The FBI is presently looking for him in connection with alleged meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election.

Olga Romanova, the head of the charity Rus Sidyashchaia (Russia behind bars), who lives in exile in Berlin, claims that Prigozhin personally visits prisons in search of fresh recruits. She bases this assertion on the testimony of several reliable inmates. Frankfurter Allgemeine quoted Romanova as saying that Prigozhin favors murderers-not ordinary ones, but intentional ones, as per Express.

Additionally, Putin declared a vile five-time killer a military hero after his death. Ivan Neparatov, a brutal gang leader and murderer, was one of the hundreds of prisoners who were enlisted to fight in Russia's brutal conflict in Ukraine. Neparatov, 34, was the boss of a deadly gang.

When he joined the pro-Putin Wagner private army and was assigned to the battlefield in Ukraine, he had already completed nearly half of a 25-year term for several killings. He was immediately liquidated, according to a report.

They were referred to be cannon fodder by critics, and there were signs of a high death rate. Putin bestowed the Order of Courage posthumously upon the chess-playing murderer Neparatov.

The so-called Donetsk People's Republic gave him another order for blood and courage after his death. He was incarcerated at the depressing, strict-regime penal colony No. 6 in the Pskov region for the murders that he and his gang, who were disguised as police officers, committed.

He had been jailed together with eight of his gang members for murder and terrorizing campaign. In a heist, a woman was strangled, and a man was stabbed 88 times. He was also found guilty of robbery and kidnapping.

His death certificate stated that he was killed by a gunshot explosive shrapnel penetrating wound to the head in Artemovsk, Donetsk area, in early August. Up to 20% of the prison populations, as per Olga Romanova of Russia Behind Bars, have been recruited, according to Mirror.

Zelensky: Putin Should Face Court Trial

"Vladimir Putin should go to hell, but not before being held accountable for alleged war crimes committed during the barbaric invasion of Ukraine," according to Volodymyr Zelensky. The President said that the Russian premier should stand trial for the atrocities his forces committed while advancing across the nation.

Zelensky acknowledged that assassination attempts continue to be made against him in an interview with ABC's David Muir following a trip to Bucha. Gunfights and shelling have become commonplace in Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe, as violence has continued to rage there.

After its final transmission line was cut off by Russian shelling early on Monday, Europe's largest nuclear facility was unplugged from Ukraine's electrical grid. Zelensky responded to Muir's inquiry concerning the intelligence he had received regarding Russia's desire to assassinate him by saying that not much has changed since then.

The incident increased worries about a possible nuclear accident at Zaporizhzhia, one of the ten largest nuclear power reactors in the world. Experts claim that its reactors are built to withstand accidents like aircraft crashes and natural calamities, but leaders from all over the world have pleaded for it to be spared from the conflict due to the extremely high chance of a catastrophe, Daily Mail reported.