Pardoned Prison Inmates Being Invited To Join Russian National Guard

Wagner fighters in Rostov-on-Don in June

Russian prison inmates who were pardoned in order to fight with the Wagner mercenary group in Ukraine are now reportedly being recruited into Russia's National Guard. The investigative news site Important Stories said in a September 11 report that convicts began joining the National Guard last month. The site quoted internal chats and text messages from relatives. Inmates who were recruited by Wagner’s late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin last year and sent into battle in eastern Ukraine suffered high rates of death or injury. After Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash last month, the Kremlin moved to take over his operations. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.