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Russia is recruiting female convicts to strengthen its armed forces, a Ukrainian intelligence spokesman said.
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Moscow wants to recruit the convicts for aid and combat roles, the Kyiv Post reported.
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It is reported that more than 100,000 convicts from Russian penal colonies have been drafted to fight in Ukraine.
Russia is recruiting female convicts to bolster its war efforts in Ukraine, the Kyiv Post reported, citing a spokesperson for Ukraine’s intelligence service.
The women are promised financial incentives and the prospect of freedom in exchange for their services, the report said.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence (HUR), told the Kyiv Post: “We are not only talking about auxiliary units, but also about combat units if necessary.”
The role of women in war has grown rapidly since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, the fate of many of the recruited Russian female prisoners is bleak; only a few return alive, Yusov claimed.
“Most of the female prisoners recruited by Russia have been killed or returned with serious injuries,” he said.
The practice of offering convicts freedom in exchange for military service in Ukraine began under Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late founder of the mercenary Wagner Group.
So far, more than 100,000 convicts from Russian penal colonies have been drafted to fight in Ukraine, Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who runs the prisoner rights group Gulagu.net, told Newsweek in December.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has defended Russia’s use of prisoners in the war, saying they “pay in blood for crimes on the battlefield, in assault brigades, under bullets and under grenades.”
In January, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia was on course to lose 500,000 troops by the end of 2024 after transforming its armed forces into a “mass army of low quality and large numbers.”
Business Insider has contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.
“The war doesn’t care if you are a man or a woman”
Since Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainian women have joined the military in large numbers.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported an increase of more than 40% in the number of female soldiers in its armed forces between 2021 and 2023, with approximately 43,000 women serving in military positions as of October 2023.
The BBC reported in August 2023 that 5,000 women were serving on the front line.
“In a war it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. “If a missile hits a house, it doesn’t matter whether there are women, men or children – everyone dies,” sniper Evgenya Emerald told the BBC.
‘And the same goes for the front line — If you can be effective and you are a woman, why wouldn’t you defend your country and your people?”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry opened more combat positions to women in 2016 and again in 2018, meaning they could serve in infantry or sniper roles, CNBC previously reported.
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