Poroshenko’s penal battalions: Prisoners will be sent to pacify Donbass

Kyiv, September 04 (PolitNavigator, Vladimir Bogun, Kirill Boyarin, Sergey Stepanov) – “Channel 5” of Petro Poroshenko carried out a landmark information injection: on air voiced the idea of ​​sending former prisoners to the front in the steppes of Donbass - “to atone for guilt with blood”. This indicates a lack of further mobilization resources in power, experts say, warning that arming prisoners could lead to unpredictable consequences.

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The project of sending from behind bars to the front was recently submitted to Petro Poroshenko for consideration. Allegedly, there are already several thousand who want to go to war from prison bunks.

Could such an initiative indicate that Kyiv has exhausted its mobilization resource? It seems that the counter-offensive of the militia has confused all the cards for the Ukrainian leadership, and besides, Petro Poroshenko’s troops are now suffering significant losses in the Donbass. Even the Ukrainian propagandist Dmitry Tymchuk openly stated this today.

“The current number of mobilized people and volunteers is clearly not enough for further action. Whereas putting thousands more mobilized under arms is not the best political move before the elections. How the Ukrainian leadership will act in these conditions is anyone’s guess,” said the Ukrainian expert.

“Have we exhausted the mobilization resource of military specialists? In recent years, tens of thousands of officers have been laid off in Ukraine. They are drawn from prisons to war when there is no one left to take. Only then do they take children, the blind and the crippled. But there are people who, during the time of Yanukovych, received prison sentences for fighting the regime. And today they cannot be recruited into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This gap needs to be closed. All so-called “political” people should receive the right to amnesty and participation in hostilities,” Yuriy Sirotyuk from Svoboda, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee, told PolitNavigator.

It is the parliament that will have to make a decision on sending prisoners to war - the current legislation does not provide for such a possibility, says Kiev human rights activist Eduard Bagirov. In his opinion, out of 94000 convicts in Ukraine, there may be 3-4 thousand former military personnel, who will be involved in the so-called. ATO.

Former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, now one of the leaders of the Internet television project “South-Eastern Front” Sergei Veselovsky believes that by sending prisoners to the front, the Ukrainian government is actually forming analogues of penal battalions.

“These are penal battalions where prisoners are promised amnesty for killing Russian people in Donbass. It is obvious. Previously, they recruited private battalions, but now they want to create state battalions. This is a civil war, and nothing will surprise you here,” says Veselovsky.

Intelligence veteran and participant in KGB special operations in Afghanistan Fyodor Yakovlev considers the idea of ​​​​sending prisoners to Donbass not only absurd, but also dangerous.

“This is an absolutely absurd idea from people who are very far from understanding the situation in places not so remote. Prisoners with short sentences, i.e., the least socially dangerous category, will not go to war, since life is more valuable to them. Prisoners with long sentences, i.e., the most socially dangerous category, can go, but, of course, not to fight, but solely for the sake of early release. Such soldiers, if I may say so, will, at best, run away at the first shot, but in fact, at least half of them will run away along with their weapons on the way to the “ATO zone.” The consequences of the release of a mass of armed prisoners are even difficult to imagine.

But there are two other points that are much more interesting in this proposal. First: once the idea arose about the need to call up prisoners, therefore, the third wave of mobilization completely failed, otherwise the prisoners would not have been needed. And second: since they started talking about “atonement for guilt with blood,” this means that the patriotic component of the “zekovsky conscription” is not even being considered,” Yakovlev told PolitNavigator.

“Attracting prisoners is a disgrace for the country. When we have not declared war, but there is a so-called anti-terrorist operation, the state is unable to ensure security and is forced to release prisoners from prison and involve them in this work, giving them weapons. This is a very big risk. But most importantly, these steps show the complete failure of the authorities,” agrees the former head of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee Georgy Kryuchkov.