In the summer of 2022, Wagner mercenary group head Yevgeny Prigozhin -- who was killed in a suspicious plane crash in August, exactly two months after leading a brief mutiny against Russian military authorities -- began recruiting convicts in Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine. Within weeks, he had sent tens of thousands of them into some of the bloodiest fighting of Moscow's invasion, particularly in the area around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Prisoners who survived six months on the front line were promised an amnesty from President Vladimir Putin and the opportunity to return to Russia.
Olga Romanova, a journalist and activist who has headed the prisoner rights organization Russia Behind Bars (Rus Sidyashchaya) since 2008, tells RFE/RL that this exploitation of prisoners is a continuation of the "Stalinist mentality" that has continued to dominate the unreformed prison system under Putin.
Olga Romanova
The role of prisons in enabling Moscow's aggression against Ukraine is one of the ways, Romanova argued, that the antiquated system suits Putin's political needs as it is, despite numerous revelations of horrific torture and prisoner abuse in recent years.
Russia Behind Bars was designated a "foreign agent" organization by the Russian government in May 2020. Romanova spoke to RFE/RL's North.Realities from exile in Germany.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RFE/RL: Over the last five years or so, there have been numerous scandals involving allegations of abuse and torture in Russian prisons. Guards and prison officials have even been convicted of abuse of authority. Why hasn't there been any systemic prison reform?
Olga Romanova: In 2018 the first big scandal regarding torture broke in the Yaroslavl region. One of our collaborators published videos of torture. There was a scandal. Around that time, Federation Council [Russia's upper parliament chamber] head Valentina Matviyenko took the podium and made a very humane speech. She gave a brief summary of the concept of prison reform we had been advocating. We couldn't believe our ears: It was really starting!
But then Putin gave a very, very harsh speech to the effect that our prison system is the best in the world, so don't dare touch it. Hands off!
Looking through the peep hole at NKVD Pre-Trial Jail, a memorial museum of political repression
I was really surprised. Why? Wasn't it the right time for reform? It would be cheap and easy. Plus, he would be a hero.
Then there were several more scandals. Putin's most recent comments on prisons came around the time that [Federal Penitentiary Service head Aleksandr] Kalashnikov was fired. But once again Putin said that nothing needed to be changed and that everything was perfectly fine.
RFE/RL: Why would he oppose reform despite these horrific revelations?
Romanova: That was November 2021, just three months before the invasion [of Ukraine]. I couldn't understand why he was clinging to this completely unbearable prison burden that was pulling down the whole country…. I just couldn't understand.
And then Prigozhin appeared, and I thought: Damn, that is brilliant -- in the bad sense of the word. He was an evil genius who tapped into a bottomless reservoir of mercenaries. Bottomless because Russian prisons are some of the most horrible places on Earth. People are so desperate to get out of there. they are ready to go to war simply to get out of prison. And that is what happened.
In this snapshot from a video on the Popular Politics channel, a man resembling Prigozhin is seen recruiting prisoners to take part in the fighting in Ukraine in September 2022.
It also had an enormous psychological effect. As long as Prigozhin was collecting prisoners to fight, they didn't need to touch our "civilian boys." Prigozhin began recruiting prisoners in June [2022] and they didn't implement mobilization until September after they were fully integrated with the Defense Ministry.
Putin proceeded precisely along a Stalinist path by utilizing a surplus, unneeded population. [Prison reformers talk about] how to reform prisoners, how to teach them useful professions like painter or plasterer. But why? They can just be destroyed, and we're done with it. No rise in crime rates, just into the meat-grinder. No one cares about them.
The 22,000 or 25,000 prisoners who were released by Prigozhin and sent back to Russia were never supposed to come back. They only returned because Wagner withdrew prematurely from Bakhmut. If Prigozhin hadn't quarreled with [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu, he would have continued fighting until he'd buried them all. No one anticipated that any of them would return.
But the way in which Prigozhin took them from the prisons without any legal justification and the way Putin signed secret decrees on amnesty tells me that they came up with this plan long before they enacted it. Putin knew there was this reservoir that no one cared about; that's why he saw no need for prison reform. They would just be killed. And they would be glad to jump into the fight and get themselves killed rather than being raped by guards with a mop in prison. They don't do that at the front.
In a video released in early April, Yevgeny Prigozhin stands at a cemetery for fallen PMC Wagner fighters in the settlement of Goryachiy Klyuch in the southern Russian Krasnodar region.
RFE/RL: Does that mean that Putin was preparing for war from the beginning? After all, no one was preventing him from reforming the prisons during his first term as president.
Romanova: That's true. Or during his second term. Or even in 2018. Matviyenko is not some schoolgirl, but an experienced politician and schemer. And she was proposing reforms.
RFE/RL: If recruiting from the prisons was such a clear manifestation of disregard for human lives, why did the prisoners themselves accept it?
Romanova: I have never once heard anything from a prisoner about wanting money. This is something that interests their families or normal mercenaries. At first, the main motivation for the prisoners was gaining their freedom and the opportunity to start over with a clean slate, amnesty, to take back 10 or 20 years of their lives. In short, to get their lives back. It is a game of Russian roulette with the highest stakes.
These guys have never in their lives heard that someone needs them. And they are ready to give their lives to hear it once.Olga Romanova, prisoner rights advocate
But maybe the main motivation -- and I have heard this hundreds of times and there is no response to it -- is: "They need me there." They say something like: "I sit here for two more years and then what? I have no home and won't be able to get one. I have no family. I have no job and won't be able to get one. Within a year, I'll either drink myself to death or overdose on heroin. Or else I'll be back in prison, and I don't want to start that circle over again. No one on the outside needs me."
There is no probation. No reintegration program. Russia has never had them. Former prisoners simply have no place. Period. And the recruiters know this. They create a false sense of family, of military fraternity, camaraderie. These guys have never in their lives heard that someone needs them. And they are ready to give their lives to hear it once.
RFE/RL: Is the influx of people convicted on politically based charges affecting the situation inside the prisons?
Romanova: That is unclear. Very few of them have reached the remote prisons so far, since investigations and trials usually take more than a year. But, in general, the attitude toward political prisoners is changing, I would say, for the better.
Before 2014, criminal prisoners viewed political prisoners quite positively and didn't touch them. But in 2014, the so-called Russian Spring stuff started and it reached the prisoners and, more importantly, the guards. As a result, the treatment of Ukrainians and political prisoners got really bad. It was accepted that they were blocking the advent of this cherished "Russian world."
In this snapshot from a video on the Popular Politics channel, a man who looks like Yevgeny Prigozhin is seen recruiting prisoners to take part in the fighting in Ukraine in September 2022.
When the invasion came, it became clear that this was all nonsense. Prison bosses lost their sources of income as prisoners were taken off to the war. Some bald-headed guy [Prigozhin] would come and take the prisoners without even needing any paperwork signed. Of course, Prigozhin himself was a former prisoner, so he hated prison authorities and was happy to humiliate them. He would take over their offices and insult them in front of the prisoners. So you can see that prison authorities began paying more attention to political prisoners who opposed all that. They had a sudden confluence of interests. There are, of course, special cases, but I would say they are the exceptions.
RFE/RL: What do you think the prospects for prison reform in Russia are now?
Romanova: Absolutely zero. It is clear prison reform requires political will, and that is not going to happen.
The Russian prison system is decrepit. It was last reformed in 1953, when Lavrenty Beria transferred control of the prisons from the NKVD [secret police] to the Justice Ministry. Now, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) is formally part of the Justice Ministry, but over the last 15 years all the FSIN directors have either been police or Federal Security Service veterans. There hasn't been a professional FSIN director since 2009.
The old, Stalinist mentality has been preserved, so the main focus of the prison system is not correctional services -- psychiatrists, doctors, teachers, etc. -- but rather operational tasks like working prisoners over or recruiting them for things like giving false statements or committing perjury in court. Hence, the torture. The system that was created in the 1930s…has survived to this day.