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1/ Widespread reports are emerging of a programme of forced military recruitment in Russian penal colonies, with prisoners being evaluated for their fitness to be drafted into 'Storm Z' assault units. Desperate convicts are said to be trying to contract HIV to avoid the draft. ⬇️ 
2/ The Russian prisoners' rights group has been reporting for several weeks on indications that a mass mobilisation of convicts is planned, or already underway. Unlike Wagner's voluntary prisoner recruitment, this appears to be intended to be forcible.Gulagu.net
3/ According to Gulagu head Vladimir Osechkin, the Federal Penitentiary Service has ordered prisons to compile lists of prisoners who are fit for military service and have previously served in the Russian armed forces, as well as those qualified for driving.
4/ The move follows amendments in June to laws on "Conscription and military service" and "Mobilisation training" which, for the first time, identify currently serving convicts as being eligible for mobilisation. Their sentences are to be annulled on finishing their service.
5/ Reports indicate that a widespread forcible mobilisation is imminent. "There was a rumor in the colonies in different regions that they would be taken away, but not on a voluntary basis," according to one relative. As many as 100,000 men are said to have been listed.
6/ Relatives say that preparations are being made to forcibly mobilise prisoners from penal colonies in the Novosibirsk, Saratov, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov, Tomsk, and Nizhny Novgorod regions. Some are reported to have been taken to the front already.
7/ One relative writes in a chat: “Can they now forcibly take them from the colonies to the Special Military Operation? After all, we are not in a state of war. It’s just that IK-13 in the Novosibirsk Region received lists of [170] prisoners who they want to take forcibly."
8/ A mobilisation on this scale is likely to raise some serious issues, however. Gulagu reports that the Federal Penitentiary Service's leadership is concerned about "wide publicity, possible riots and loss of control over the situation in the colonies ...
9/ ... (and what do [the prisoners] have to lose if in two weeks they are thrown out to the front line under artillery and mines?)."
10/ It reports that "the Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service was instructed to intensify operational work to force convicts to write handwritten statements about their alleged desire to go to the front." In practice, this seems to have meant using torture and beatings.
11/ Some men have been exempted, including HIV-infected people and those with a "low social status", likely the ostracised and sexually abused convicts known as 'cocks' in Russian prison slang (see the explainer below).
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1638083844011171841
12/ This potentially offers a way out for the desperate. According to one interlocutor speaking of the colonies in the Novosibirsk region, "People are looking for some options, up to obtaining an HIV status, so as not to go to the Special Military Operation zone."
13/ However, according to , even on a more limited mobilisation schedule, more than a thousand convicts are being sent to the front daily. It notes that prison bosses appear to be reducing food procurement in anticipation of more convicts being sent.Gulagu.net
14/ Gulagu reports that in addition to Storm Z, which has become notorious for sending men into hugely costly 'meat assaults' (see thread below), the Russian MOD has established a new 'North Z' penal unit, designated as an assault and reconnaissance unit.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1678367921989353472
15/ According to Gulagu, North Z was established in April 2023 with convicts from penal colonies in the Saratov region and Bashkortostan. They were sent straight to the front line without training and were put under the command of an ex-Wagner fighter.
16/ Some North Z fighters were captured by the Ukrainians. Gulagu says that "more than 100 ex-prisoners from "North Z" were killed, some of them shot by their own commanders." They are said to be used as "cannon and mine meat".
17/ Gulagu notes that, in a revival of Stalin-era practices, prisoners are shot if they try to escape and are often abandoned to die on the battlefield if they are wounded.
18/ "But even if they are lucky and evacuated to the nearest military hospital, they will be discharged from there without any full-fledged treatment, with bullets and shrapnel inside, with fractures, and again sent to the front line." /end
Sources:
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🔹 https://t.co/k57b40HyW8
🔹 https://t.co/OlTzy1Btxm
🔹 https://t.co/IfAD75epo1
🔹 https://t.co/vqIHFS89xl
🔹 https://t.co/7l6lhKTDBbt.me/NetGulagu/5549
t.me/NetGulagu/5552
t.me/NetGulagu/5563
t.me/NetGulagu/5564
t.me/NetGulagu/5578
pointmedia.io/story/64d15d41…
🔹
🔹 https://t.co/k57b40HyW8
🔹 https://t.co/OlTzy1Btxm
🔹 https://t.co/IfAD75epo1
🔹 https://t.co/vqIHFS89xl
🔹 https://t.co/7l6lhKTDBbt.me/NetGulagu/5549
t.me/NetGulagu/5552
t.me/NetGulagu/5563
t.me/NetGulagu/5564
t.me/NetGulagu/5578
pointmedia.io/story/64d15d41…
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