In April, Russian MoD recruited up to 10,000 convicts to fight in Ukraine - British intelligence

Since the start of 2023, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has ramped up a scheme to recruit Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine. It is likely that up to 10,000 convicts signed up in April 2023 alone.

The UK Defense Ministry said this in a new intelligence update on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

As noted, from summer 2022, prisoners were the key pool of recruits for the Wagner Group private military company’s operations in Ukraine. However, the group highly likely lost access to the Russian penal system in February 2023 when its public feud with the Russian MoD was escalating.

The Russian MoD’s prisoner recruitment campaign is part of a broader, intense effort by the Russian military to bolster its numbers, while attempting to avoid implementing new mandatory mobilisation, which would be very unpopular with the Russian public.

As reported by Ukrinform, the British intelligence in its previous update wrote that water scarcity has been a growing problem for the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk.