\n<\/p>\n
Aleksandr Mokin had lost the will to live.<\/p>\n
Convicted of selling drugs and ostracized by his family, he endured abuse from guards and frequent spells in solitary confinement at a high-security Russian prison. He told a friend he felt alone and racked with guilt.<\/p>\n
Then, in the summer of 2022, Mr. Mokin and other inmates in Penal Colony No. 6 in the Chelyabinsk region started hearing rumors. One of Russia\u2019s most powerful men was reportedly touring jails and offering pardons for prisoners who survived six months of fighting in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
And by October of last year, there he was, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, standing before them in his military fatigues, himself an ex-con who now ran a private military company, Wagner. He offered freedom and money<\/a>, even as he warned that the price for many would be death. Mr. Mokin and 196 other inmates enlisted the same day.<\/p>\n \u201cI really wish to be there, knowing that this is likely to be a journey without return,\u201d Mr. Mokin, then 35 and serving an 11-year sentence, told a friend in a text message that was viewed by The New York Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two months later, Mr. Mokin was dead. A social media post showing his grave is the only known public tribute to his short life.<\/p>\n As the war in Ukraine grinds to a stalemate, Mr. Mokin\u2019s ultimate legacy may be his small role in a much bigger, globally significant enterprise: He was one of tens of thousands of convicts powering the Kremlin\u2019s war machine. Even now, with Mr. Prigozhin dead<\/a> and Wagner disbanded, Russian inmates are still enlisting in what has become the largest military prison recruitment program since World War II.<\/p>\n In Ukraine, these former inmates have been used mostly as cannon fodder<\/a>. But they have bolstered the ranks of Russia\u2019s forces, helping President Vladimir V. Putin postpone a new round of mobilization, which would be an unpopular measure domestically. And since many of the inmates come from poor families and rural areas, it has helped Mr. Putin to maintain the veneer of normalcy among well-off Russians in major cities.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen civilians are mobilized, they are ripped from their families, their jobs,\u201d Aleksandr, one of the surviving recruits from the prison, known as IK6, said in an interview. \u201cAs for us, we\u2019ve got nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some of the inmates\u2019 reasons for choosing the war were obvious. Many said they were driven by patriotism, a desire to escape prison or a craving for action after years of confinement. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yet interviews with the fighters and their relatives also revealed a deeper longing for redemption, a powerful emotional force in a country that has long wrestled with the meaning of guilt and sacrifice. For men stuck in the savage, dehumanizing conditions of Russian prisons, the war offered a chance to regain their sense of self-worth, even if it meant potentially taking other lives.<\/p>\n Enlisting has allowed inmates to provide income for families they had burdened for years \u2014 and to regain respect in a society that stigmatizes criminal records and honors military service.<\/p>\n The Times obtained the names and details of the 197 initial IK6 recruits, and was able to confirm the fates of 172 of them through 2023. Times reporters interviewed 16 of them, spoke with the families and friends of others, and reviewed social media, court records and a database of war casualties compiled by an independent news outlet, Mediazona<\/a>.<\/p>\n Together, they form the most comprehensive portrait yet of the convicts who played an outsize role in Russia\u2019s invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The harshest finding was the one Mr. Prigozhin warned of: death. At least one in four recruits who left jail with Mr. Mokin in October 2022 was killed. Most who lived appear to have suffered serious injuries, according to interviews with survivors and relatives.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s prison service and defense ministry did not respond to questions for this article.<\/p>\n The data shows that the recruits averaged 33 years of age and came mostly from small towns and villages. Their most common crime was selling drugs. They had, on average, five more years left on their sentences in abusive prison conditions, providing an incentive to enlist.<\/p>\n Some men, however, signed up with as little as three months left behind bars, suggesting other motivations than freedom.<\/p>\n Nikolai, a construction worker who was convicted along with his wife for selling drugs, said he joined Wagner out of patriotism. Money also helped. Even if he died, he said, the compensation Wagner promised his family \u2014 about $50,000 \u2014 would solve their housing problems. \u201cThis is wonderful, I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Even death would have meaning, if he were killed in battle. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be such a bad person in the eyes of the children in our village,\u201d he said. \u201cI would be remembered not as a convict, but as a man who died in a war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In some ways, Mr. Putin\u2019s war has turned the country\u2019s entire criminal justice system into a military recruitment tool, experts say. Russia\u2019s extremely high conviction rates \u2014 99.6 percent<\/a> \u2014 its long prison terms, and inhumane conditions inside jails create strong incentives to risk death to obtain freedom.<\/p>\n Wagner said that about 50,000 inmates served in their ranks in Ukraine, and that one in five of them died<\/a>. Mr. Prigozhin himself died in a plane crash in August, in what Western intelligence agencies have called an assassination, after a failed mutiny against Russia\u2019s military command<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Russian Army took over Wagner\u2019s prison recruitment program in February, not only maintaining operations but expanding them.<\/p>\n This year, for example, the armed forces began recruiting from pretrial detention centers and immigration detention facilities, according to three Russian prison rights groups. The military has also stepped up efforts to entice Wagner\u2019s inmate veterans back into the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yana Gelmel, an exiled Russian prison rights activist who provided documents, called the system a \u201chuman conveyor\u201d for the war effort.<\/p>\n \u201cIt suits the state to continue taking these men, because they don\u2019t exist in the eyes of society,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Located outside the industrial city of Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, IK6 is a sprawling walled complex of barracks and workshops. It primarily holds inmates who have been convicted on first-time offenses considered \u201cgrave\u201d under Russian law. The range of crimes is wide: from violent murders to drug sales and robberies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMostly, it was people who have slipped for the first time, but have slipped pretty hard,\u201d said Yevgeny, an inmate who lost the use of his arm in Ukraine. \u201cThose who have killed while drunk, young drug dealers.\u201d Like other former prisoners, he asked to be identified by only his first name to avoid retribution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some recruits had sold illegal substances to bolster meager wages, a review of prison sentences and interviews show. One recruit got six years for growing marijuana and trying to sell 40 grams.<\/p>\n But one of three recruits was serving time for murder. This rate is more than 30 times higher<\/a> than the overall percentage of murder convicts in the Russian prison system, underscoring the attraction of military service to men with long sentences.<\/p>\n One recruit beat his drinking companion to death with a bat, then set fire to the apartment with the victim in it. Another murdered two men with an ax following a drinking session.<\/p>\n Among the convicted murderers who enlisted is a veteran who asked to be identified by his military call sign, Volk, meaning Wolf.<\/p>\n He said his mother died when he was 6 and that he grew up in foster homes and orphanages. He was imprisoned at 20, after he and another man beat two people to death while drinking, court records show. He was eager to seize Mr. Prigozhin\u2019s offer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI got tired of imprisonment, realized that this is not my place,\u201d Volk said after returning from Ukraine. \u201cI understood, took responsibility for what I have done.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he now works as a welder and studies management.<\/p>\n Mr. Mokin, the convicted drug seller, had struggled to adjust to life in a prison system that has long been plagued by corruption and abuse.<\/p>\n He told a friend he was constantly bullied by the guards, who punished him with solitary confinement for the smallest infractions. He lacked money to buy basic necessities like toothpaste and underwear, or enjoy small luxuries like cigarettes.<\/p>\n Above all, he said, he was haunted by the shame of relapsing into addiction and the guilt he felt over the death by suicide of a young woman he felt close to.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t wait till they finally get to us,\u201d he wrote his friend, referring to Wagner recruiters. <\/p>\n His experience appears typical of inmates who struggle to fit into the brutal caste system of many Russian jails. Enforced by underworld leaders known as bratva<\/em>, the system ostracizes and humiliates inmates deemed to have violated complex social rules that govern Russian criminal life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Inmates in the bottom rungs are forced to act as servants, carry out demeaning tasks such as cleaning toilets, and can be subjected to sexual abuse. Drug dealers like Mr. Mokin are traditionally assigned low social status.<\/p>\n \u201cAll you need to make sure that people keep enlisting is to create bad conditions\u201d in prison, said Anna Karetnikova, a former senior prison official in the Moscow region, who left Russia in protest of the war. \u201cThis is not patriotism. It\u2019s survival.\u201d<\/p>\n Reducing the abuse requires paying guards and their surrogates among the inmates, in a system where the authorities relentlessly pursue financial gain, said Nikolai Shchur, a former prison ombudsman for the Chelyabinsk region who has studied the facility extensively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Virtually any good or service at the prison is available for a price: a family visit, a positive parole letter, drugs, the use of a washing machine. The money is usually transferred by families directly into the accounts of guards or their middlemen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n During the day, about half of the inmates produce goods in a textile or scrap metal shop for about $4 worth of monthly wages. At night, inmates are enticed to participate in marathon card games and incur debts, with the payoffs eventually trickling to overseers.<\/p>\n Until a decade ago, IK6 authorities collected money through violence, according to Mr. Shchur and four former inmates who served sentences there at the time.<\/p>\n They said guards subjected an inmate on arrival to systematic torture called a \u201cbreak-in\u201d period. Methods included brutal beatings and tying a car alarm to each of the inmate\u2019s ears, according to an official report compiled by Mr. Shchur and confirmed by the former inmates.<\/p>\n The violence eventually backfired. In 2012, the inmates staged one of the largest prison mutinies in modern Russian history, a peaceful rooftop sit-in that was violently repressed by the police days later.<\/p>\n An ensuing scandal led to the appointment of new prison officials, who outsourced the jail\u2019s management to the underworld leaders in return for a share of the money being extorted, according to Mr. Shchur and the former inmates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Today, the bratva<\/em> enforce obedience primarily by controlling inmates\u2019 social status. Yet, under their rule, inmates remain dependent on the financial support of family, a burden that appears to have motivated some to enlist.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said that he was to blame for winding up in prison, for abandoning his family,\u201d said the former wife of a deceased recruit, Andrei Vorobei. \u201cHe didn\u2019t care where he died, in Ukraine or in IK6.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In late April, a chartered Russian transport plane carrying about 140 former IK6 inmates landed at a military airfield outside Chelyabinsk, according to interviews and social media posts. It was the last day of their six-month contract, and they had survived.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first, it was difficult to comprehend that I got so lucky that I had returned,\u201d said Nikolai, the former construction worker. \u201cIt is a feeling of madness bordering on joy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Most of the interviewed survivors claimed they have found respect after years of shame. One fighter, Sergei, said that on returning to his village, he changed into new fatigues, pinned on the six medals he had received, and knocked on his family\u2019s door, where his crying mother and flabbergasted father greeted him.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir view of me has changed, because now everyone in the village respects them,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir son brought back medals from the war.\u201d<\/p>\n Another recruit, Aleksandr, spoke with pride about reconnecting with his estranged daughter. \u201cShe was telling everyone at school, \u2018papa is at war, papa is at war,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A few of the survivors have found factory work, and are trying to move on from prison and war. They said they are grateful to Wagner for honoring the contract terms, and to Mr. Putin for issuing pardons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cUncle Vova has pardoned me, forgave me and my brothers,\u201d said a veteran, Andrei, who now works at a textile plant, using an informal version of Mr. Putin\u2019s first name. \u201cHe gave us a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n None of those interviewed questioned the Kremlin\u2019s decision to invade, or its rationale for war. Nor did they reflect on the atrocities and devastation Russian forces have inflicted across Ukraine in almost two years of fighting, including the deaths of thousands of civilians. <\/p>\n Since returning home last spring, some of the former inmates have slipped back into crime, reflecting the difficulties faced by Russians with criminal records. Of the 120 confirmed surviving IK6 recruits, nine have been charged with driving drunk, drug offenses or fraud, court records show.<\/p>\n Other survivors have struggled to find meaning in the decision they made, or to deal with the trauma of war.<\/p>\n Most of those interviewed declined to discuss details of their military service, but they have described the general brutality of the fighting<\/a>. None explicitly denied Wagner\u2019s draconian disciplinary measures<\/a>, which reportedly involved the execution of fighters accused of cowardice or insubordination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nikolai, the former construction worker, said his initial patriotism soon clashed with what he described as incompetence and corruption among senior military officials, which increased casualties. \u201cOur guys are out there fighting,\u201d he said, \u201cand these political figures are waving their little flags and moving figurines on the maps.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether they survived or not, soldiers said, depended on what unit they were in, who the commanders were, and whether they respected human life.<\/p>\n For Sergei, the medals that reconnected him to his parents have come at a psychological price.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no sleep. Only alcohol helps,\u201d he said. \u201cYou must understand: We walked on intestines,\u201d he added, referring to the shredded bodies on the battlefield.<\/p>\n Those with severe injuries described a bleak experience. An inmate named Dmitri, who lost the use of his legs, recounted how, during a commercial flight home from a military hospital, passengers who purchased priority seating refused to make space for his wheelchair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy mother told them that I\u2019m coming back from the special military operation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t care less.\u201d<\/p>\n He has rarely left home since returning, because his mother is unable to lower his wheelchair to the street.<\/p>\n Yevgeny, a veteran with an injured arm, recounted his typical day in a text message: \u201cI got up. I took my pills, put on my prothesis, put on the compression sock. I prepared breakfast, ate. Took more pills,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s it. Two hours had passed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were told that the Motherland is in danger, we went to defend it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut afterward, no one cares what happens to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Christiaan Triebert contributed research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Human Conveyor\u2019<\/h2>\n
The Prison<\/h2>\n
A Costly Second Chance<\/h2>\n