- The Wagner Group has stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine, its founder said Thursday.
- Reports say prisoners are refusing to go because they know about Wagner's high rate of casualties.
The Wagner Group has stopped recruiting prisoners as growing numbers refuse to be enlisted on suicide missions in Ukraine, according to multiple reports.
A prisoner in Russia's Tula region told the independent Russian media outlet Meduza in a report published Wednesday that inmates no longer want "even to discuss the possibility" of joining the war in Ukraine.
"One of the prisoners who left [with Wagner Group] told me that after he asked [Wagner] representatives how much training there would be, [they told him], 'The battlefield will be your training.' It's quite possible that they're already directly participating [in combat]," the prisoner told Meduza.
Another prisoner in the Urals told Meduza that more than 1,000 convicts accepted Wagner Group's offer in October, while only 340 enlisted in December.
Earlier this month, MediaZona tracked the journey of another recruited prisoner, who tried to escape the front and return to prison.
"We thought we'd be equal with the hired fighters, that we wouldn't be any different, but in reality they just make assault teams out of the inmates, and that's the meat [in the meat grinder]," the prisoner told MediaZona.
Russian prisoners for Wagner also said they've witnessed public executions of deserters and those who failed to obey orders.
The mercenary organization has now "completely" stopped recruiting prisoners, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a Telegram statement on Thursday.
The group has been a major player as a Russian proxy in President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Prigozhin did not give a reason behind the decision nor did he indicate how long the process has been stopped for. The statement was published by Concord Management, the catering company founded by Prigozhin.
Prigozhin first started recruiting convicts to fight in Ukraine last summer. He was seen traveling to multiple prisons around the country to try to persuade convicts to fight in exchange for freedom and money.
Tens of thousands of prisoners took the deal, but most of them died on the battlefield, according to investigations by The New York Times and Reuters.
A Ukrainian military intelligence report, published in December and first obtained by CNN, said that Wagner Group fighters, which include prisoners, "have become the disposable infantry" in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier who recently had a run-in with a group of Wagner mercenaries told CNN that the first group of attackers was mainly made up of recruits from Russian prisons, comparing the battle to something out of a "zombie movie."