These Russian convict soldiers earned their freedom in Ukraine. When they got home, some killed again

Nikita Semyanov was serving time in a Russian prison for murder before being freed to fight in Ukraine. (VK: Kit Semyanov)

When Ulyana saw the photo, anger consumed her.

“I barely slept for the first three days,” she says. “My main emotion was just rage, and the desire to do everything … to get as many consequences for him as possible.”

WARNING: Some readers might find details in this story distressing.

The snap was posted on VKontakte — Russia’s answer to Facebook — in February, and features a beaming soldier on a stage, surrounded by children.

A gushing caption details how Nikita Semyanov volunteered for the fatherland’s army and took part in a “memorable assault on Bakhmut”, Ukraine.

But there’s something it doesn’t mention: the veteran strangled his father-in-law to death in 2021 and was freed from a maximum-security prison to join the war effort.

Russia’s policy of encouraging convicts to bolster its invasion of Ukraine was simple — survive six months and get your freedom.

Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin first used it to bolster his Wagner private army, but the country’s military has also pursued it ardently, particularly after the oligarch was killed in a plane crash last August.

There is no official data on how many prisoners have volunteered to fight, but some experts estimate more than 150,000 have been recruited.

That’s despite more stringent guardrails being placed around the program as the war drags on, including a requirement for inmates to stay on the front lines longer.

The first waves of those who weren’t killed have returned to the communities they once terrorised, drawing the ire of people who remember their crimes.

Ulyana is a friend of Semyanov’s ex-wife, whose father was murdered.

Court documents detail how the 35-year-old first used his hands, then a wire to choke his victim.

It took months for authorities to find the victim’s body, which Semyanov had buried.

“The fact he was in prison made us happy,” Ulyana says. “Then we heard rumours that he was going to free himself through going to the war.

“We were just really hoping he would die there. That didn’t happen.”

There’s more than just feelings of injustice driving a growing number of Russians to criticise the policy.

Many people are frightened, and with good reason: in several cases, returning convicts have offended again.

The village of Derevyannoye, in the country’s north, was left traumatised last August when six people were killed.

Authorities found the charred corpses of four relatives in the ashes of a burnt home.

Down the street, two brothers who lived with disabilities perished when another house was torched.

Russian state media said it hadn’t taken long to identify two suspects: both career criminals who were well known in the area and had spent time in jail.

Again, detail was missing: one of the men arrested over the murders, Igor Sofonov, was a convict who earnt his freedom in Ukraine.

He’s in custody awaiting trial, but there’s nothing to stop him signing up to fight again immediately.

“And thus, he is released from punishment,” explains Olga Romanova, the founder of prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars.

“Even those who have not yet received a punishment, who have not yet received a verdict, can close their criminal cases [by going to war].”

Murderer ‘consumed victim as food’

Prigozhin and Russia’s top military brass haven’t discriminated when it comes to which criminals can sign up.

Last month, Russian media reported a court in the country’s Kirov region sentenced Ivan Rossomakhin, a former Wagner soldier, to 22 years behind bars for raping and killing an elderly woman.

He’d been serving a 14-year custodial sentence for a previous murder when he was freed to join Prigozhin’s mercenaries. He returned home and killed again.

Russian-language media has also been covering the release of Nikolay Ogolobyak, who was a member of a gang that murdered four teenagers in 2008 as part of a blood ritual.

His father was quoted as saying he served six months in the convict unit Storm Z, but was severely wounded on the front lines.

Near Moscow, reports last month emerged of Alexander Glazov — who in 2019 was convicted of giving children instructions online as part of a so-called suicide game — had been freed from prison after fighting for the Wagner group. The articles claimed he was now speaking about the war in schools.

Among the most degenerate returnees would have to be cannibal killer Denis Gorin, who was convicted of four murders and serving more than two decades in an ultra-restrictive “special regime” penal colony before joining the Wagner PMC.

In 2012, he was jailed for stabbing an acquaintance to death on the island of Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east, but — inconceivably — it’s what he later did to the corpse that really stands out.

According to the court judgement, Gorin “consumed as food” parts of the victim’s remains.

An analysis of judicial records by independent Russian news outlet Verstka found that last year alone, at least 190 fresh criminal cases were opened against freed Wagner convict soldiers who had reoffended after returning from Ukraine.

That number does not include anyone who joined the country’s regular army.

As more violent criminals come back from the battlefield, the Kremlin has been forced to defend its policy.

In November, Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reminded reporters that convicts had to adhere to “certain conditions that are related to being on the front line” and were “atoning with blood for their crime on the battlefield”.

While the accounts of conditions in Russian trenches are carefully controlled by Putin’s propaganda machine, videos posted to the encrypted messaging service Telegram by disgruntled soldiers offer a glimpse into the harsh reality of war.

One from June last year features what’s left of a convict unit recording a message announcing they’re going to stop following instructions from generals.

“The orders they gave us were so crazy,” a man says, adding later: “We think they are basically trying to get rid of us.”

They go on to warn that if anyone in the video subsequently dies, they were likely killed by other Russian soldiers for speaking out.

Still, the high-risk, high-reward offer of freedom was too good to refuse for many behind bars.

“These are people who may not have combat experience, but they are not afraid of blood,” says Ms Romanova.

“They have most often already committed some violent crimes. In fact, Prigozhin did not hide the fact he preferred murderers.”

Whether the scheme is voluntary or not has also been questioned.

Ivan Chuvilaev works for Go By The Forest, a not-for-profit that helps Russians worried about being mobilised leave the country. While the group doesn’t assist violent criminals to flee, he has had significant interactions with people behind bars since the war began.

“It was just over a year ago when prisoners wrote to us and said people are disappearing from here, some clerks from Prigozhin’s group are coming here and people are disappearing,” he says.

“It’s not clear where they are taken to. Their relatives have no idea. Then a few weeks later they get contact by some random who says: ‘I know your husband and he’s dead. He died right in front me at the front line two days ago’.

“It’s just an endless mess.”

Ms Romanova argues prisoners have plenty of motivation to sign up.

“I think Putin found a very good angle, I would even say, he found the G-spot,” she says.

“He’s telling these people something they’ve never heard before. This population has been deprived of social elevators of any kind. There is no future.

“Putin says: ‘Boy, your country needs you, the guys in the trenches need you. Here’s money, here’s medals, here’s a ban on defaming you, all your criminal records are being removed. You’re a hero.’

“People for the first time in so many generations see that someone needs them. And they’re going for it.”