Former Russian prisoners hired by President Vladimir Putin to fight in Ukraine have been stormed by fellow troops after they held several drunk commanders hostage, according to a new video.
The 29-second clip was posted on January 14 by Telegram channel Poisk_in_ua, which said that the servicemen were recruited from a prison in the city of Tyumen in Russia's Siberia region. They left to join their unit on December 25 "and presumably were in training without weapons," the channel said.
In 2022 Putin revived the Stalin-era practice of throwing convicted murderers onto the battlefield to support his war in Ukraine. These prisoners included at least two convicted cannibals.
The Kremlin has recruited tens of thousands of prisoners since the war began to create its "Storm-Z" squads, which are deployed to carry out highly attritional, infantry-led frontal assaults on the most dangerous parts of the battlefield.
Newsweek learned in December that the total number of convicts who have been offered presidential pardons in exchange for six months of fighting in Ukraine exceeds 100,000.
The former convicts in the video said that at night, three drunk commanders came and began beating them up. In response, the servicemen tied up the commanders and beat them.
"They started beating our boys," one former convict says in the video, adding that fellow Russian troops were attempting to storm the area.
"They fired in bursts from a combat machine gun. They want to get through to us," he said.
Russian commanders beat up some recruited inmates so in response the convicts tied up the commanders and beat them. This is the last video of the criminals holding a meeting as Russian soldiers are trying to break through with machine guns. All contact has been lost with them. pic.twitter.com/kMAIXFtFf3
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) January 16, 2024
Automatic rifles can be heard in the background of the video.
"After they sent this video to their friends and relatives, contact with them disappeared; what happened to them next is unknown," the Telegram channel added.
Newsweek couldn't independently verify when or where the footage was filmed, and has contacted Russia's defense ministry for comment by email.
There have been multiple reports of infighting within Russian units in Ukraine.
In November, Russian soldiers were allegedly stripped naked and held in a pit for refusing to fight without sufficient equipment. WarTranslated, an independent media project that translates materials about the Russia-Ukraine war into English, shared a video of the ordeal to X, formerly Twitter.
Weeks later, the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO) group, a human rights activists group, said a Russian military officer had soldiers under his command tied to a tree overnight as punishment for refusing to fight on the front lines.
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel ... Read more
