Vladimir Putin cannot keep up with restocking his troops for his deadly Ukraine war. That much is clear, given that he’s instituted multiple massive drafts within a year, and he’s even reportedly grown so frustrated with a lack of progress from private mercenary hired guns in the Wagner Group that he’s cut off their ammo supply, presumably to divert resources elsewhere. Where are those resources going, exactly? Well, Putin has been recruiting from prisons over the past year after running short on civilian troops in order to combat Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces, who refuse to yield their country.
Apparently, the prison supply is waning, too, because The Moscow Times reports that Putin is now drawing from women’s institutions. One can assume that this is probably not something that he’s doing for the sake of female empowerment, given that Putin hasn’t hasn’t made the most representative statements about women in the past. Following word from an independent watchdog and Ukrainian officials, The Moscow Times passed on word that a train full of Russian female convicts was headed towards Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Activist Olga Romanov (of the Russia Behind Bars organization) believes that this has been in the works for awhile, and here’s more:
“They were taken from penal colonies in southern Russia. I don’t know the exact ones, but they worked in Kushchevka [in the southern Krasnodar region],” Romanova told iStories.
As many as 100 female prisoners are believed to have been transferred to fight in Ukraine so far, according to the human rights defender, though it remains unclear if the recruitment was carried out on a voluntary basis or whether the inmates had been press-ganged into the Russian military.
This news arrives shortly after word that Russia recently suffered their deadliest day in the war with over 1,000 soldiers losing their lives in Ukraine in one swoop. And it’s not good news for these female convicts, obviously. Recruitment is tantamount to a death sentence at this point, and Putin apparently has no intention of stopping this war, to the point where he’s more worried about cabbage than the loss of life. At this point, he’ll likely die while trying to win what looks like an unwinnable war for anyone.
(Via The Moscow Times)