As we all know, since the end of Popasnaya's change of hands in May and the end of the Lisichangsk Battle in July, Russia and Ukraine have been tug-of-war in the Bachmut region for half a year. The Ukrainian army carried out several rotations in this direction to replenish their troops.
Bachimt urban area map, yellow is industrial area, blue high-density residential area, green ordinary residential area.
But strangely, the Wagner Legion, which participated in the attack in this direction, never seemed to have had a rotation rest or replenished its forces in the form of a volunteer battalion (almost all Russian troops in the other directions will do this, refer to the link: https://m.toutiao.com/is/hAaaqDY/ Russia and Ukraine: The first batch of volunteer soldiers recruited by the Russian army, organization, salary and some specific situations). Therefore, how to maintain sufficient offensive forces is obviously a question worth discussing.
voluntary battalion formed by the Russian army since June is mainly used to supplement the troops
In the spring of 2015, Russia conducted amnesty to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the victory of anti-fascism, and the number of prisoners decreased by about 15,000 within two months. The second similar reduction in the number of prisoners occurred in early 2020, when it dropped by 17,000. During the first wave of the new crown epidemic, Russian courts began to reduce verdicts and reduce the actual sentences of suspects.
Russia's article announcing amnesty
In 2022, the State Duma did not announce amnesty, nor did it pass a law to reduce the number of prisoners. But with the beginning of the Ukrainian war, Wagner's founder and boss, Yevgeny Prigozin, recruited prisoners in prison to participate in the war and promised to give prisoners freedom.
During September and October 2022 alone, the number of prisoners in Russian correctional centers decreased by 23,000. There has never been such a rapid change since 2010: Even the largest amnesty in recent years, the number of people released in such a short period of time seems to be too many.
Change in the number of prisoners in Russia
Wagner's first reports on recruiting prisoners appeared in July 2022 . to September, the process has almost been made public. , and videos of Prigozin personally giving a speech in prison recruiting prisoners began to appear on social media.
Prigozin recruits prisoners to join Wagner, the video was filmed in Mariel Sixth Prison and released on September 14, 2022
It is not clear how prisoners to join Wagner are legally formalized and legalized. It is speculated that those prisoners who agreed to participate in Wagner will be documented as being transferred to the Rostov area of prisons, and it is not clear how the Federal Prison Administration explains why these people are not in the prison where they serve their sentences. Relatives of those recruited prisoners were told that their whereabouts were confidential information. It is also not clear how prisoners who died in the war were registered.
Olga Romano said in October that the Russian army had recruited more than 20,000 prisoners to participate in the war
23,000 missing prisoners are consistent with the estimates of Olga Romanova, the founder of "Relax Russia". According to her calculations, by the end of October, Wagner recruited more than 20,000 prisoners, and to mid-November was 30,000 (from Russian media Mediazona)
Judging from the current situation, the Russian army does not have the problem of exhaustion of troops, but obviously, many Russians seem to be not interested in participating in Ukraine's war.
