Putin Calls in ‘Organized Crime Syndicate’ to Shake Up Failing Army in Ukraine

Nearly six months into Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine, it appears Vladimir Putin has pinned his hopes for claiming victory on a self-described “organized crime syndicate” that is now trawling prisons for cold-blooded killers and deploying mercenaries to straighten out fed-up troops.

That’s according to several explosive new reports out Thursday by the independent Russian investigative news outlets iStories and The Insider, both of which uncovered disturbing new details about the notorious Wagner Group’s alleged role in the war.

After myriad reports in recent weeks that Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has been personally touring Russian prisons and promising inmates full amnesty if they fight for Wagner in Ukraine, a staffer at a high-security penal colony in the Tula region has revealed the real reason behind the desperate recruiting drive.

Identified only as Ivan, the staffer told The Insider that Prighozhin had visited personally on July 24 and told inmates the regular Russian military was “weakening” and “cannot cope” with the war.

Prighozin said he’d been given an order by President Putin “to use all possible resources” to win the war, Ivan was quoted saying.

“He called his organization an organized crime group and talked a lot about the advantage of participating in war through them. Honestly, I thought it was a surrealistic dream. A man who had a Hero of Russia star pinned to his T-shirt, was telling us loud and clear about what was going on in our country. That gangsters are really in power and they don’t give a fuck about any human rights organizations like Gulagu.net or the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers,” he said.

“I’m not afraid to say, we’re an organized crime group that helps the Russian army,” another inmate, Alexei, quoted Prighozin as saying.

Sergei, an inmate at a penal colony in Bryansk, was quoted telling the outlet he’d desperately tried to join Wagner but was ultimately rejected and had come to realize that was a good thing.