June 19 () –
The head of the Wagner Group mercenaries, Yevgeni Prigozhin, has stated that around 32,000 Russian ex-conscripts who were conscripted for military service in the invasion of Ukraine have terminated their contracts with the company, so they have returned to Russia.
“On June 18, 2023, 32,000 people from among those previously convicted who have participated in the special military operation (the name Moscow uses for the war in Ukraine) in the Lugansk and Donetsk Territory in the ranks of Wagner have gone to home at the end of the contract”, reports the press service of the head of Wagner.
Prigozhin considers that military service is a reintegration program, since he has remarked that those released who have participated in their ranks have committed 83 crimes, that is, 80 times less than those who were released but have not participated in their ranks.
Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago, Prigozhin has enjoyed, according to the UK, unlimited access to Russian prisons to recruit prisoners willing to go to war in exchange for their release if they survived at least six months. However, many of them did not have the necessary military preparation to undertake an undertaking of this magnitude.
