Russia intends to recruit more than a hundred thousand professional recruits and prisoners to “avoid further unpopular mobilisations”, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has reported.
Andriy Yermak, a top Ukrainian official, described the latter group as “zombies” used to “fuel the madness” of Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence began using prisoners and labour camp detainees after observing the Wagner Group’s successful use of this tactic.
The ex-convicts, some of them murderers and rapists, join Storm Z units and are often used as expendable cannon fodder, fighting ahead of the first line of defence and in other extremely dangerous areas.
But in its latest update, the MoD spoke at odds to the Ukrainian military, who claimed that Russia was planning a mass mobilisation of up to 700,000 conscripts.
The British MoD said the “Russian authorities will likely seek to avoid further unpopular mobilisations” given worker shortages on the mainland, hence the use of contracted men and prisoners.
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