Russia ‘sends WOMEN prisoners to Ukraine war zone for the first time’ as Putin looks to make up for recent heavy losses that have seen more than 1,000 invading troops killed daily.
Due to ‘heavy losses’ in the war that has seen more than 1,000 Russian troops killed per day in recent weeks, Vladimir Putin has sought ‘alternative sources of replenishment of manpower’, the Ukrainian army has claimed.
It added: ‘Last week there was a movement towards the Donetsk region of a train with reserved seats for transporting prisoners. One of the carriages [was for] convicted women.’
The reported push towards recruiting female prisoners for Putin’s struggling war effort comes as 1,009 Russian soldiers were killed on Saturday in the deadliest day on the battlefield since the war began.Earlier this week, there were reports that Russia had moved women convicts to Kuschevka in Krasnodar region, close to the war zone.
Olga Romanova, of Russian Behind Bars foundation, believes around 100 women were sent to Ukraine.
Male prisoners have been recruited in Russia in their tens of thousands and offered a deal which cancels their sentences if they serve – and stay alive – for six months on the frontline.
This has seen murderers, rapists and other violent criminals released and ultimately freed by Putin, with most convicts serving with the Wagner private army.
But Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed last month that his group will no longer recruit prisoners to fight in Ukraine – without providing an explanation as to why.
However, there is now evidence that the Russian defence ministry is directly signing up convicts.
Last month the Ukrainian general staff said that Russia was actively ‘trying to recruit convicted women to participate in the hostilities’. This was to ‘compensate for losses in personnel’.
Some had been recruited from a women’s penal colony in Snezhnoye, a city in the occupied Donetsk region.
‘It is also known that they are sent to the territory of the Russian Federation for training,’ the Ukrainian general staff said.
