Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, has asked the Investigative Committee to check a report by the newspaper Fontanka about the recruitment of inmates in penitentiaries to fight in the war launched against Ukraine.
Prigozhin's company Konkord said on August 26 that the businessman, who is believed to run Russia's private Vagner paramilitary group, asked investigators to look into the report's author, Ksenia Klochkova, and Fontanka's chief editor, Aleksandr Gorshkov, calling the report about recruitment by Vagner of inmates in Russian prisons "fake" and aimed at "creating a negative image" of Russia and its leadership.
Neither journalist nor the newspaper has commented on the request for a probe to be launched.
The report tells the story of a mother -- whose identity is not revealed for safety reasons -- who is trying to find her son, who disappeared from a prison where he was serving a two-year sentence for auto theft. The son eventually was located in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, which is controlled by Russia.
SEE ALSO: The Dead Of The 64th: A Notorious Russian Army Unit And Its High Casualty RateFacing heavy casualties in a war whose end may be months or years away, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and the military have taken numerous steps to bolster recruitment without, at least for now, ordering a general mobilization that could be politically risky. On August 25, Putin signed a decree to increase the size of the armed forces from 1,902,000 to 2,039,758.
Vagner has never admitted to recruiting fighters who are in prison, but human rights groups say they have heard hundreds of cases where inmates are being lured into fighting in Ukraine.
Last month, the Gulagu.net human rights group that monitors the treatment of inmates at Russian penitentiaries said hundreds of men at a prison in the North Caucasus region of Adygea had agreed to be sent to fight in Russia's war against Ukraine after a round of aggressive recruiting that included promises of cutting sentences and financial remuneration.
Earlier this month, the founder of the Russia Behind Bars right group, Olga Romanova, said that the program wasn't limited to convicts. She said suspects at pretrial detention centers are being recruited as well to the armed forces.
WATCH: Bodies Of Russian Mercenaries Litter Field After Donetsk Battle
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Bodies Of Russian Mercenaries Litter Field After Donetsk Battle With Ukrainian Army
On August 26, the Meduza online newspaper reported that a 44-year-old inmate Yevgeny Yeryomenko was buried in the northwestern region of Karelia. Yeryomenko's mother and girlfriend told Meduza he had eight years left in his a 10-year prison sentence for extortion and was recruited to the Russian Army in June and killed in Ukraine's Donetsk region in July.
Ukrainian authorities have claimed that Russia has lost more than 46,200 soldiers and officers since it launched the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, while Western intelligence agencies have said the number probably exceeds 20,000. The Russian Defense Ministry last released casualty figures in late March, saying that 1,351 of its personnel had died.
Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhniy said earlier this week that nearly 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion six months ago.