Russian prisons allegedly cut heat to coerce inmates into fighting in Ukraine
In sub-zero temperatures across many Russian penal colonies, administrators are reportedly shutting off heating, creating "unbearable" conditions to pressure inmates to go to war in Ukraine, reports Bild, citing Olga Romanova, founder of the human rights project "Russia Behind Bars".
"In Russia, there are three groups of people whose deaths at the front do not draw much sympathy from the majority: prisoners, national minorities living in impoverished regions far from Moscow, and new citizens. As long as these three groups are fighting and dying in Ukraine, Putin can maintain an illusion of normality for the rest," Romanova told journalists.
She assessed that "prisoners are being sent en masse to the front line in Ukraine and sacrificed there." Furthermore, Russian penal institutions are also increasingly recruiting female inmates, the human rights defender claimed. According to Bild, about 1,000 Russian women are currently fighting in Ukraine.
Olga Romanova has been speaking about the widespread recruitment of female prisoners for the war against Ukraine since August 2023. She specifically pointed to active recruitment of women in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia and in colonies in southern Russia, particularly in the Lipetsk region.
In December 2023, Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the human rights project Gulagu.net, told Newsweek, referencing a source within the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, that since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, 100,000 prisoners have been sent to the front.