- According to the New York Times, female prisoners are taking part in Russia's war against Ukraine.
- When they were hired, inmates were promised amnesty and a monthly salary of $2,000.
- However, this will be their first time deployed to the battlefield since they enlisted last year.
The Russian military is beginning to tap into a new source of talent: female prisoners.
The New York Times reported on Monday, citing two former inmates it spoke to, that a group of female inmates were released last month from a prison near St. Petersburg to fight in Ukraine.
About 10 percent of the prison's 400 inmates joined the military last year, according to the Times.
According to the Times, military recruiters were offering the prisoners one-year contracts as combat medics, front-line radio operators and snipers.
In addition to the amnesty, the new recruits will also receive a monthly salary of $2,000, the Times reported.
This is the first time that female inmates have been reported as having been sent to fight in Ukraine after enlisting, and according to interviews with former and current inmates by The Times, the women remained in the prison after enlisting last year.
It's unclear whether the release of the women is the start of a larger nationwide program. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside of regular business hours.
The Russian military relies on a war of attrition and employs unconventional and controversial recruitment methods to wage the war.
Prison inmates have long been a mainstay of the Russian military: in December 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense estimated that the Russian mercenary group Wagner Group had around 40,000 inmates serving on the front lines.
Russia's massive recruitment of prisoners has led to a significant drop in its prison population. According to The Washington Post, Russian Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukorov said in October that the country's prison population had plummeted to 266,000, down from 420,000 before the war, a historic low.
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, local officials told lawmakers in early March that some prisons had had to be closed due to a “temporary significant decrease in the number of inmates.”
And it's not just prisoners.
Russian authorities have begun targeting African migrants in the country, with African migrant workers and students being threatened with deportation if they don't agree to fight in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported Sunday.
But sending citizens into the military risks further exacerbating Russia's already precarious labor market.
In December, the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences said the Russian economy was short of around 5 million workers.
“The unemployment rate is 3 percent, and in some regions even lower. This means that there are effectively no workers left in the economy,” Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Bank of Russia, said in November.
