Russian Wagner mercenaries released from prisons to fight in Ukraine, wreak havoc on their return: Report

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group turned to prisons, offering inmates a shot at freedom in return for serving in Ukraine. Now, on their return, chaos runs amok

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, said last month that over 5,000 former criminals had been pardoned by the state after abiding by their contracts to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which the country calls a “special military operation”.

Now, these pardoned former prisoners are returning to terrorise their hometowns, reported The Observer, The Guardian’s sister paper. One example, the paper noted, is that of Georgiy Siukayev, a convicted murderer, who was recruited by the Wagner Group, and who recently returned to his home town of Tskhinvali, the capital of the Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.

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Soon after returning, Siukayev murdered a Tskhinvali native with a developmental disability. The victim, Soslan Valiyev, 38, also known as Tsugri, was stabbed to death by Siukayev. A video purportedly showing Siukayev chasing and kicking Tsugri moments before the murder has gone viral on Russian Telegram channels.

Prigozhin’s Wagner Group turned to prisons, offering inmates a shot at freedom in return for serving in some of Ukraine’s deadliest battles after being originally staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces. As the Russian army suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in Ukraine last year - ones widely publicized in the Western media, and on whom there was an uncomfortable silence and eventually open frustration in the Kremlin’s state-run newsrooms, - the Wagner group entered the battle foray. Prigozhin, also known in the Kremlin as "Putin's Chef" for his sprawling catering businesses, set out to reverse some of those setbacks by building on his experience in running the private mercenary group in countries like Syria and the Central African Republic.

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Responding to Siukayev’s arrest in a statement, Prigozhin claimed that Siukayev was “defending bystanders who were being harassed”. His claims were, however, disputed by Anatoly Bibilov, the former president of South Ossetia, who called the victim a “kind and harmless guy whom everyone, with rare exceptions, loved as their own,” The Observer reported.

Siukayev is not the only prisoner-turned-Wagner fighter who is wreaking havoc. 28-year-old Ivan Rossomakhin, sentenced to 10 years in prison for murder in 2020, was recruited by the Wagner group to fight in Ukraine and returned to his home town of Novyj Burets in Kirov Oblast, 600 miles east of Moscow, early this year.

Last month, he murdered an 85-year-old woman, Yulia Buiskich, allegedly with an axe. The Observer noted that just days before the murder, concerned Novyj Burets locals had held a town hall meeting, in which police chief Vadim Varankin promised that Rossomakhin would be taken away from the town on 28 March. However, on March 29, Rossomakhin, still in town, killed Buiskich.

“The state and personally, Putin and Prigozhin, are to blame for Yulia’s death and should answer for it,” a close relative of Buiskich, told the publication under the condition of anonymity.

“They released a sick bastard into society.”