Meduza’s daily newsletter: Friday, September 27, 2024 How Moscow sent inmates to war without contracts, Russian school shows students graphic abortion video, and a Telegram bot tries to recruit pro-Kremlin saboteurs in Europe

How Russia sent prisoners to war with no contracts, no injury compensation, and no military serviceman status

The Russian Defense Ministry recruited former inmates to fight in the invasion of Ukraine based only on “written agreements” that did not constitute legal contracts, according to a new investigation from BBC News Russian. The report cites more than 20 Russian court rulings issued in suits filed by former inmates and their families over the authorities’ refusal to issue compensation payments for the men’s injuries or deaths.

Among these court decisions, journalists found previously classified information referring to “special contingent volunteers” who fought in “Storm Z” units, Russia’s assault formations made up primarily of prisoners. According to the BBC, the terms of these former inmates’ service were set by special classified orders, rather than by the rules governing most other combatants’ employment. The military recruited prisoners to serve in these “special contingents” between February 24 and September 1, 2023, and they were sent to the war for six-month terms in exchange for presidential pardons.

What was the ‘legal’ basis for this program?

According to the documents reviewed by BBC, Putin issued a decree calling for the Defense Ministry to develop a new procedure for selecting inmates to carry out “particularly important combat missions and special tasks” in February 2023. According to one court ruling, the entire project, including the creation of “Storm Z” units, fell under a program called “For Freedom” (stylized as “Za сVободу” in Russian).

Were these former inmates classified as soldiers, mercenaries, or something else?

Members of the “special contingent” were not granted the formal status of military serviceman; multiple court rulings specify that they took part in the war “under special conditions.” Judges indicated in their decisions that the “legal nature” of the Storm Z squads “differs from that of an [ordinary] volunteer formation” and that the units don’t fall under the article on volunteer formations in Russia’s law “On Defense.”

How did the enlistment process work?

After being recruited, prisoners in the “special contingent” were transferred to a prison in Russia’s Rostov region, near the Ukrainian border, where they reportedly signed “written agreements” under the supervision of state officials.

In these documents, the former prisoners indicated that they “expressed their consent” to participate in the war “with the aim of atoning for their guilt before society for the crime they committed.” One of the court decisions reviewed by BBC notes that the “agreement in question does not constitute a contract laying out the rights and liabilities of each party.”

According to the investigation, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service attached one copy of the “agreement” to each convict’s personal file and sent a second copy to the Defense Ministry; the former prisoners themselves were not given copies of their own.

Why weren’t these former prisoners compensated for injuries?

In 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry released a decree establishing “separate [...] rules regulating salaries and additional payments” for ex-prisoners, according to court documents. These rules call for former inmates’ salaries to be two to four times smaller than the salaries of combatants in other categories, though it entitles their families to death compensation payments equivalent to those of other fighters.

Members of the “special contingent,” however, were not granted any of these benefits, including both disability and death payouts. One court document explains that this is because they were “not entitled to the compensation payments laid out by Putin in his 2022 decree.” The same document also indicates that the decision on whether to send injured fighters from the “contingent” back into combat after their hospitalization was made by assault unit commanders rather than medical workers.

Did any of these former inmates or relatives win their lawsuits?

The BBC was able to find only one case of a court siding with a former “special contingent” member seeking compensation for an injury. The case involved a man from the Rostov region who was serving a nine-year prison sentence before going to the front, where he was wounded by a landmine. The court awarded him 600,000 rubles ($6,451), though the Rostov regional authorities have appealed the decision.

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• 🗺️ How many Russian civilians are living in Ukrainian-held parts of the Kursk region?

The news in brief

• 🏫 High school students on Russia’s Far Eastern Sakhalin Island were sent to their school’s auditorium and shown an uncensored video of an abortion on Friday, according to multiple Russian media sources. Students reportedly told the Telegram channel Ostorozhno, Novosti that they weren’t warned about the footage in advance and were simply told that anyone who found the video unpleasant should avert their eyes. In a lecture accompanying the video, the students were reportedly told never to get an abortion because the procedure “can be lethal for women” and “make them infertile.” A representative from the region’s health ministry said the agency did not approve the assembly and is investigating the incident.
• 🌐 Google said on Friday that it’s working to resolve the issues some Russian users have encountered when trying to create new accounts, according to Forbes Russia. The company also assured journalists that it’s striving to ensure its free services remain accessible in Russia. On Thursday, Russia’s Digital Developments Ministry said Google had restricted the ability to create new accounts in Russia.
• 🔎 The Russian Red Cross has received more than 5,000 search requests from people who lost contact with their relatives in the Kursk region following the start of Ukraine’s cross-border offensive, an employee from the organization’s Kursk office told RBC on Friday. She said that approximately 800 “family connections” have been restored, though she noted that this isn’t necessarily the same number of people who have been found. (On September 23, Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov reported that Russian law enforcement had received “over 770” search requests for missing people in the region.)
• 🛩️ Russian troops carried out a drone attack in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Friday evening, according to Governor Oleh Kiper. The attack reportedly killed three people, all of whom were in their late 60s or older, and injured 11 people, including one child.
• 🤖 A new joint investigation from the OCCRP, Delfi, Paper Trail Media, ZDF, and Der Standard outlines the operations of a Telegram account called “Privet Bot” that works to recruit Europeans with “pro-Russian views” to carry out sabotage attacks, espionage, and even murders in their home countries. When journalists showed a transcript of a conversation between the recruiter and a fake account to German, Estonian, and Austrian security officials, four of them said the exchange was similar to cases they had seen in which Europeans were recruited by the Russian authorities.
• 🥸 A new report from the Latvian newspaper Diena alleges that Anatoly Blinov, the lawyer who Navalny allies say was hired by former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin to organize attacks on Russian opposition members, was assisted by a former Latvian State Police officer named Dmitrijs Čeļebijs who has ties to the Russian FSB.

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