The organization’s leader, Yevgeny Prigogine, said on Wednesday that the Wagner paramilitary organization intends to recruit female prisoners from Russian prisons and send them to fight in Ukraine, after it did the same with the men.
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“Not only as nurses or workers, but also in sabotage groups or in sniper teams. We all know that this has already been done on a large scale,” said Mr. Prigojine.
It was clear that the Wagner leader was referring to the women snipers and those in partisan groups who fought in World War II and who were promoted by Soviet propaganda.
“We are working in this direction. There is resistance, but I think we will overcome it,” Yevgeny Prigovin said in his Telegram press service.
He was responding to a letter from an elected Russian official from the Urals who claimed women being held in a prison in the city of Nizhny Tagil asked him to be sent to the Ukrainian front to help the Russian army.
In recent months, Wagner is suspected of enlisting men held in Russian prisons en masse and then sending them to fight on the front lines in Ukraine against the promise of reduced sentences and attractive compensation.
Since 2014, this group has been accused of serving the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime in the shadows and of committing abuses in many conflict zones, particularly in Syria and African countries.
In September, Yevgeny Prigozhin, 61, admitted to founding this organization after years of denial and it is now operating in Russia with an open face, referring to a certain rise in power.
