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Russian inmates who were yanked out of prison to fight in Ukraine have begun receiving their promised “‘pardons” for taking part in the war—but legal experts say the supposed pardons are actually bogus.
The news comes as Russia’s war effort grew increasingly deranged this week as the prison-recruiting tactic apparently became the official new modus operandi. The Wagner Group, a private military force linked to the Kremlin and run by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, had for weeks been visiting prisons across Russia to lure convicted murders, robbers, and even a cannibal to join the war against Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry, after taking heat for a series of battlefield defeats in recent weeks, then decided to throw their hat in the ring and create their own “special forces unit” made up of inmates from some of the same prisons Wagner had targeted, according to the investigative outlet iStories.