In a video that emerged Tuesday, the de facto leader of a Russian mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group is seen promising convicts release from prison in return for a six-month combat tour in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The man in the footage appears to be Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessperson and close associate of President Vladimir Putin who is rarely seen in public, much less touting his connections to the group so explicitly.
“I’m a representative of a private military company — you have probably heard of it, it is called Wagner,” the man tells a large group of prisoners standing before him in black uniforms. That admission is notable because Prigozhin has repeatedly denied any link to Wagner and even sued a Britain-based investigative journalist for suggesting otherwise.
United Nations investigators and rights groups say Wagner troops, who have been seen in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic, have targeted civilians, conducted mass executions and looted private property in conflict zones. The group’s shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters.
“We definitely see him making a much clearer connection between himself and Wagner than I think we’ve ever seen documented before in terms of his actual direct statement that he leads the Wagner group,” said Jack Margolin, who tracks Wagner’s activities as a program director at the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies, referring to Prigozhin.
While Wagner is known to recruit from within Russia’s penitentiary system, this appears to be the first time the enlistment process has been captured on camera. It is not known exactly when the speech was filmed, but a reference to a battle in early June suggests it was sometime in the last three months.
Russia has drastically increased its use of Wagner mercenaries since the start of the war in Ukraine to compensate for personnel shortages, particularly in the country’s east.
While it is unclear whether the footage was covertly or overtly filmed, and, if so, who ordered its creation, experts who study Wagner said the video might have been made to boost the group’s profile.
“The significance of the video is that it’s a clear attempt to market Prigozhin, and the Wagner Group idea, as the solution to Russia’s myriad military problems,” said Candace Rondeaux, a specialist on the future of warfare at New America, a Washington-based think tank, who has testified about Wagner to Congress.
Using visual clues in the video, such as a green-roofed church, a striped chimney and the layout of the buildings, The New York Times and others determined that the speech was delivered at a penal colony in Yoshkar-Ola, a city in the Mari El republic, about 400 miles east of Moscow.
The Times asked Hassan Ugail, a professor at the University of Bradford in England who specialises in facial recognition, to compare the face of the man in the video with known images of Prigozhin. Ugail concluded they were “highly likely to be the same individual.”
“Who do we need? We only need shock troops,” the man says in the video, referring to soldiers who lead an attack and are expected to take heavy casualties, even in successful operations. “Sixty percent of my guys are shock troops, and you will be one of them.”
The video was uploaded to “Kremlin Whispers,” an anonymous Telegram channel, on Wednesday. The user who shared it wrote that the video had been leaked a day earlier by an employee of the penal colony to a local group on VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network, where it was deleted within an hour. But by that time, the video had already made its way to Telegram and quickly spread.
While the exact origin of the video is unclear, Rondeaux said that the scene depicted reflects Russia’s struggles with mobilisation. Russia, she said, is concerned about insulating its population from the realities of the war.
“To turn somebody who is a convicted felon with, as far as we know, no real military — or at least combat — experience, to marshal hundreds of thousands of men to the front line of what is arguably one of the most important wars in Russia’s modern history, tells you something about the mentality in the Kremlin right now,” she said.
Rondeaux and Margolin believe the level of detail revealed in the footage about recruitment requirements has never been captured on video before.
Prisoners need to be 22 to 50 years old to join the fight, the man says during his speech, but exceptions can be made: a sign-off from relatives if a prisoner is younger or a basic fitness test if he is older. Anyone who joins and then flees will be considered a deserter and shot, he says.
Alcohol and drug use are not allowed while serving, nor is sexual contact with “local women, flora, fauna or men,” the man says, stating that inmates found guilty of drug crimes or sexual abuse may undergo extra screening.
After six months of service in Ukraine, the inmates can go home or continue their service with Wagner — but there is no risk of returning to prison, the man claims.
The video also contains new clues about how Russia has already used prisoners recruited by Wagner to fight in Ukraine. Specifically, the man says that 40 recruits from a St. Petersburg penal colony stormed the Vuhlehirsk power plant in eastern Ukraine on June 1, absorbing several casualties but eventually taking over the plant.
“Out of the three dead, one was 52 years old,” the man says. “He served 30 years in prison. He died a hero.”
His claim can be corroborated with reporting by iStories, an independent Russian investigative journalism website, which noted in July that at least three convicts from a penal colony in St Petersburg had been recruited by Wagner and were killed in Ukraine’s Donbas region. The Times also verified footage showing apparent Wagner fighters taking over the power plant in Vuhlehirsk in late July.
Only around 10% of the convicts who joined Russia’s war in Ukraine in mid-July were still alive by early September, according to Olga Romanova, the founder of Russia Behind Bars, a charity organisation that assists convicts and their families.
Convicts at other penal colonies across Russia have told Russia Behind Bars that a man resembling Prigozhin had visited them as well, mentioning plans of recruiting 20,000 to 50,000 inmates. Several of the inmates the advocacy group spoke to said the man was wearing a medal resembling the Hero of Russia award, the highest honorary title of the Russian Federation, which Prigozhin is thought to have received. The man in the video also wears a medal that resembles that award.
Concord, a company run by Prigozhin, responded to questions about the video from a Russian journalist by saying in a post on VKontakte that the man in the video looked and spoke like Prigozhin, but did not confirm or deny that it was him.
“Judging by his rhetoric, he is somehow involved with the implementation of the tasks of the Special Operation,” the post said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “and it seems that he is successful at it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
