2023-04-20 10:35:56
Since January, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FJAK) has stopped updating prison statistics. With this, it became impossible to determine the number of people involved in the war in Ukraine. However, “Mediazona” found the necessary information on the websites of the administrations of 35 regions – you can look at them and see from which region the convicts were taken the most.
Source: “Mediazone”
In November 2022, “Mediazona” investigated the statistics of FJAK and found that 23 thousand people disappeared from Russian colonies in two months. This was the first official information that allowed the “Wagner” Private Military Company (JAC) to determine how often prisoners were involved in the war.
After that, the FJAK stopped publishing statistics for a long time, and then in January reported that the number of people in prison had not decreased. Since then, no new information has been provided. But, of course, it cannot be said that the process of taking to the war has stopped, it will be limited to only 23 thousand people.
Not to mention the sharp fall in the fall, the number of prisoners in 2022 continued to decrease as in previous years, so the number of “leavers” during the year amounted to almost 33 thousand people.
“Mediazona” investigated the latest data of the regional offices of the FJAK (some regions are still publishing), compared with previous years, and found out where approximately 17 thousand of these 33 thousand prisoners are from.
Map of areas where prisoners disappeared
Statistical information about the number of prisoners is not published in all regions of Russia, only 58 departments of the FJAK have a small amount of it. But in order to determine the changes at the beginning of 2023, in addition to the current data, it is necessary to obtain archival information from the first months of 2022. The FJAK does not make it public, but copies are available on Internet Archive websites.
Only 35 regions had enough data to see how the number of incarcerations changed over the past year. By the beginning of 2023, the number of prisoners has decreased by 17,000 (this is more than half of the annual reduction in the entire country).
The majority of those who “disappeared” from the prison correspond to the Samara region: at the beginning of 2022, there were 10,200 people in the colonies of this region, and at the beginning of 2023, only 7,500 people remained. Such a decrease cannot be explained by the historical situation, because in 2021, the number of prisoners in the region, on the contrary, increased by more than 300 people.
More than a thousand people “disappeared” in the regions of Chelyabinsk (1574) and Kirov (1153), as well as in Tatarstan (1040).
The data we have collected is not complete – the situation in other regions may be different. In addition, the transfer of prisoners in the FJAK system may be added to these indicators. For example, Ukrainians release some colonies to accommodate prisoners.
We could not understand how the number of prisoners (deprived of freedom) increased in the Smolensk region and the Crimea: there was no news published about the newly built colonies. When the reporter of “Mediazona” called the regional offices of FJAK, no one answered.
What do the prisoners say?
“Mediazona” spoke to prisoners in several regions to find out how FJAK statistics relate to prison recruitment data.
Our interlocutor in one of the colonies in the Tula region told “Mediazona” that about a thousand people were taken to the war from the colonies here: they say that this number was told to us by an employee of the FJAK. Statistics confirm this: at the beginning of 2022, 6.4 thousand people were detained in the colonies of the Tula region, and at the beginning of 2023, 5.5 thousand people were detained (a decrease of 875).
In addition, in several regions, the numbers published by the FJAK do not correspond to those reported by the prisoners. For example, the prison institution in the Krasnoyarsk region reported that the number of prisoners did not change during the year (it decreased by only 54 people). However, multiple sources have reported that war recruiters are working hard in the region. For example, former political prisoner Ivan Astashin wrote that 270 people from the 15th Amendment Colony in Norilsk went to war.
According to the information of many FJAKs in the Yaroslavl region, no particular changes can be observed (–148), but the work of taking them to war was also carried out intensively. Thus, an information source informed “Mediazona” company that during the first meeting with “Wagner” JAC, 110 people from the 2nd Correctional Colony in Yaroslavl, and at the next (with the participation of the Ministry of Defense) about 80 more people agreed to participate in the war.
At the beginning of February this year, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of “Wagner” JSC, said that he would no longer hire prisoners. According to him, the Ministry of Defense is now dealing with this matter. According to the information of “Mediazona”, the work of war is really continuing – this is also confirmed by the information sources of “Rust in prison”. However, it is not yet possible to determine how many of the convicts were taken to war in the last two months.
“Mediazona” requested information from FJAK, but did not receive an answer.
Read the original article here.
#Wagners #cemetery #missing #persons #Russian #prisons