Russia Deploys Female Prisoners to Ukraine War Zone for First Time to Compensate for Heavy Losses

Reports have emerged that the Russian government has sent female prisoners to the front line in Ukraine to make up for heavy losses. The Ukrainian army has stated that President Vladimir Putin has looked for ‘alternative sources of replenishment of manpower’ due to ‘heavy losses’ in the war. It is believed that around 100 women were sent to Ukraine. In addition, male prisoners have been recruited in Russia in their tens of thousands and offered a deal that cancels their sentences if they serve and stay alive for six months on the frontline. This has seen violent criminals released and ultimately freed by Putin, with most convicts serving with the Wagner private army. Last month, the Ukrainian general staff said that Russia was actively ‘trying to recruit convicted women to participate in the hostilities’ in order to ‘compensate for losses in personnel’. Moreover, some had been recruited from a women’s penal colony in Snezhnoye, a city in the occupied Donetsk region. Reports have also emerged that several hundred women in prisons in the Sverdlovsk region in the Ural District asked local MP Vyacheslav Wegner to send them to Ukraine. Prigozhin, head of Wagner, stated that there had been ‘resistance’ among the Russian authorities to deploy women in the war zone.