A Flailing Russia Sends Female Inmates to the Front Lines

Reports indicate that Russia, its supply of troops depleting, has resorted to sending incarcerated women into battle in its invasion of Ukraine (Wikimedia Commons). 

Russia’s desperation in Ukraine has come to a new extreme: the Kremlin is now recruiting female inmates to serve as soldiers. 

On March 13, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that, “last week, a train with sleeping cars for the transfer of prisoners was spotted moving towards the Donetsk region. One of the cars [had] female convicts [in it].” 

Prisoner rights activist Olga Romanova told iStories that as many as 100 inmates have been transferred since the end of last year. It’s unclear whether these recruitments occurred voluntarily or if they were coerced.

Russia’s military has faced insurmountable losses throughout the war, albeit with soldiers or supplies. Unexpected by the Kremlin, these blunders have forced the government to resort to extreme measures to staff its army.

In September 2022, President Vladamir Putin issued a partial mobilization of over 300,000 reservists.

However, many of those recruited are sent to the frontlines with little to no experience, and once they arrive in Ukraine, they’re often met with inadequate food and water.

Yana, a transport worker from St. Petersburg whose partner was mobilized, shared that soldiers “do not have any orders and they do not have any tasks.” Her husband told her that soldiers “have no clue what to do. They were just abandoned and they have lost all trust, all faith in the authorities.”

The recent reports of female prisoners are only an escalation of previous Kremlin measures. Russia has supplemented significant portions of its depleting military size with forces from the private military contractor known as The Wagner Group. The private military company has evoked human rights concerns for recruiting Russian prisoners. 

UN experts reported that The Wagner Group recruited Russian and foreign nationals alike, offering “pardons for criminal sentences to prisoners who join the group and take part in the war in Ukraine, as well as a monthly payment to their relatives.”

There have also been reports of The Wagner Group using threats and intimidation to recruit.

As Russia continues to suffer immense casualties throughout the war, there are significant concerns as to the safety of potentially unwilling soldiers.