Throughout the history of conflict, various nations have resorted to creating penal military units in times of strategic difficulty to try and alleviate manpower shortages. The first recorded instance of the employment of this technique goes all the way back to 104 BC when penal battalions were used during the Han–Dayuan War. More recently, the infamous Wagner Group, a private army of mercenaries that respond directly to Vladimir Putin, has looked to replenish its ranks with individuals that have not been able to pass Russia’s lax conscription process. These measures enacted by the Wagner Group come in response to the heavy casualties withstood by the mercenary organisation during its involvement in Ukraine. What has been unsettling about all of this is that these new recruits include criminals and thugs from across Russia. Due to this, an examination of Russia’s creation of penal battalions is necessary, as it can give an insight into the shady inner workings of the Wagner Group and the future risks that these units pose to Ukrainian civilians.

Yevgeny Prigozhin also known as “Putin’s Chef” due to his past involvement in providing catering services to the Kremlin has been at the forefront of the Wagner Group’s recruitment campaign. Over the past months, it has been documented that Prigozhin has travelled to various Russian penal colonies to personally address prisoners and convince them to fight for his mercenary group. To entice Russian convicts Prigozhin has promised a presidential pardon and a monthly salary of 100,000 rubles after the completion of one week of training and six months of military service. Despite warning the prisoners that many would not make it back and that any lack of discipline on the front would be punished by summary execution, numerous convicts have volunteered to join. Data on the precise number of individuals that have taken this deal varies significantly, as different experts have estimated the number of convicts that have joined the Wagner Group to be anywhere in between 1,500 to 11,000.

Prigozhin’s success in recruiting from Russia’s prison system has directly influenced the Kremlin’s policy on this issue since last week Putin signed a law that allowed the drafting of ex-convicts in the mainstream army. In reaction to this, many have openly criticised Putin’s decision to recruit from prisons, as prominent opposition figure Alexi Navalny stated in a tweet that: “Russian prisons are full of people with big problems with discipline … what could such an army even accomplish in combat?”. The events outlined above illustrate the   stark reality of the current state of the Russian military, given that the manpower shortages that impact Putin’s army seem to be more serious than expected. Russia’s struggles even cast doubt over the Kremlin’s claims that over 300,000 conscripts have answered Putin's call to arms in the last months. With numerous citizens also expressing their dissent by dodging the draft, it is clear that there is a general lack of appetite in Russia for the war in Ukraine.

The main risks that come with the recruitment of convicts revolve around problems related to discipline on the battlefield and the possibility that convicts will carry out of war crimes. Penal battalions are known to be insubordinate and inexperienced units that are prone to commit acts of violence, thus deploying them is normally a recipe for disaster. From a Russian perspective, possessing rogue units that can disobey direct orders can damage the military cohesion of the Russian army and its ability to successfully operate on the battlefield. On the flipside, the Ukrainian military must be wary of the likely targeting of civilians by the penal battalions. To prevent another Bucha massacre from happening, Kyiv must continue to collaborate with foreign allied intelligence agencies to try and establish the whereabouts of these units. Intelligence sharing in this case may be beneficial as it facilitates both the prevention of war crimes and the military targeting of these units, which in most cases prove to be the weak links in the Russian lines.

The Wagner Group’s involvement in Ukraine has also given the global community a great insight into how this obscure organisation operates. The public recruitment of personnel has forced the Wagner Group into the limelight, which has enabled the identification ofPrigozhin as one of its main figureheads. Increased scrutiny around Prigozhin’s character should be regarded as a positive development if Putin were to be ousted sincehe has been frequently linked to the Russian presidency. Therefore, a close study of Prigozhin is necessary to understand where Russia could possibly be headed in the near future. The Wagner Group’s emergence from the shadows also highlights how western analysts in the past haveoften struggled to gauge the military capabilities of this organisation. Recent comments from an ex-commander of the mercenary group: Marat Gabidullin support this notion as he unveiled that:“Even before the conflict in Ukraine, less than 30% of the soldiers in Wagner were actual professionals”. This statement calls for the recalibration of the West’s evaluation of the Wagner Group’s capabilities, given their disastrous military performance in Ukraine. If we compound this with the Wagner Group’s increasinglydirect collaboration with the Russian state it is possible to expect that this organisation will cease to exist in the long term, as it will slowly but surely integrate itself with the struggling Russian army.