NEW: together with @reuters colleagues, I spent the last month reconstructing the lives of dozens of convicts who joined the Wagner mercenary army and who were killed in Ukraine. A window onto the grim reality of Russian prison life.
reuters.com/investigates/s…
reuters.com/investigates/s…
Many, if not most, of the dead evoke little sympathy: a hitman who killed his victim for $5k; a career criminal who cut a woman’s throat in a drunken row; a baby-faced 25 y-o who killed a man by beating him unconscious and setting him on fire.
reuters.com/investigates/s…
reuters.com/investigates/s…
But others were tragic figures: a 60 year old, jailed for stealing $80 of DIY equipment. He joined Wagner despite having only months left in jail, and without telling his wife. She told us he probably did it because of his credit cards debts.
reuters.com/investigates/s…
reuters.com/investigates/s…
Or Yury Danilyuk, 28, a car lover from Luhansk, Ukraine. He was too ashamed to tell his sister he was serving 10 years in Russian prison for drugs charges. Now living in missile-ravaged Dnipro, she only found out her brother was a convict & died a Wagner fighter from us.
They are all dead now. Unwanted, unknown, or otherwise inaccessible to their families, they are buried on the edge of a village graveyard in southern Russia. Are they victims of this war? I am not sure.
reuters.com/investigates/s…
reuters.com/investigates/s…
With my excellent colleagues Filipp Lebedev and @readelev
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