Presidential pardon decrees issued for convicts recruited to fight in the Ukraine War are classified information, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, has told BBC Russia.
“I cannot speak about the decrees. You know, there are disclosed decrees, and there are classified ones, so I cannot say anything about the decrees,” Peskov said. “But I can confirm that the entire pardon procedure strictly follows Russian laws.”
Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council, reported that convicts were formally being acquitted of all charges before they departed their prisons to head for the battlezones. She also said that the pardon procedure was an official secret of state.
In September, a video, in which a man resembling the alleged head of PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, recruits prisoners of a Russian penal colony for the war in Ukraine, appeared online. At the beginning of August, Mediazona reported, citing the convicts the outlet talked to, that Yevgeny Prigozhin had personally visited several penal colonies to recruit prisoners for the war. In August, the Verstka outlet reported that PMC Wagner had recruited over 1,000 convicts from 17 Russian colonies for the war in Ukraine.
