STORY: Russia’s lower house of parliament says it has voted to give its initial approval to legislation that, if enacted, would allow its military to recruit criminals or suspected criminals to fight in Ukraine, with the promise of exempting them from their criminal liabilities later.
Russia has suffered heavy losses now 15 months into the war, and is trying to recruit more troops.
This is the road through several villages in Ukraine’s Donetsk region which were recently retaken by Ukrainian forces. Reuters journalists following the path of Ukraine’s counteroffensive has found it littered with destroyed Russian hardware, and bodies.
Previously, the Wagner mercenary group was allowed to recruit its fighters from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine, but it says it stopped the practice in February.
On Wednesday its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said Wagner had 20,000 of its mercenaries killed in action.
And in a rare display of defiance, rejected a demand from President Putin that his own Wagner fighters sign contracts with the defense ministry. Prigozhin is in a very public feud with Russia’s military brass and calls such contracts, quote, “the path of shame.”
Putin’s says the contracts are necessary to allow all Russian fighters in Ukraine to receive social support, such as payments to families if one is killed. But it’s also widely seen as a way to assert control over the mercenary outfit.
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