Anna Snezhina
But it is reported that only those who have been convicted of minor and moderate crimes are accepted for public service. The relatives of the Wagnerians do not confirm the information about the admission of former prisoners to senior positions in the law enforcement agency. According to them, they are NOT even offered an average officer.
Last summer, the private military company Wagner and its founder, Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, personally traveled to the colonies and recruited prisoners to send them to the contact zone.
The proposal was as follows: those who agreed to take part in the fighting had to stay on the front line for six months, and those who would remain alive were promised full release — repayment of the remaining prison term. Technically, this should have been carried out through the pardon procedure.
At the same time, the recruited convicts were forbidden to retreat and surrender under threat of execution. In violation of such an agreement, the commanders of a private military company themselves, as it was called, «grounded» their mercenaries from the zones.
Thus, according to various sources, from 50 to 70 thousand fighters were recruited into the PMCs. 32 thousand of them, according to Prigozhin, returned and received pardons for participation in hostilities.
In February of this year, the Wagner PMC stopped recruiting prisoners — according to one version, this function was transferred to the Russian Defense Ministry. In September, the agency announced plans to put all those held in Russian prisons «on special military registration.»
Several relatives of Wagnerians in closed chats, where journalists managed to join, told that not everyone manages to get a job in the Regardie. They check for a long time. One of the interviewees of the journalists said that her relative was «interviewed» by the security service, he provided documents on the termination of the contract and a document on pardon. The Rosgvardiya also asked him for a certificate of criminal record and sent a request to the IC, where the man was serving his sentence. After that, he was checked by the FSB for about a week.
A source from the 2nd battalion of the Moscow Regardie (its fighters serve in the center of the capital) confirmed that militants from among former prisoners have a chance to get into service in this unit even without experience in the regular army, but everything depends on the nature of the crime committed. Convicted under «narcotic» articles, for example, are unconditionally refused.
But those who stole have a chance. So, an employee of the personnel department of the Rosgvardiya in Rostov-on-Don (during a journalistic experiment) said on the phone that those who have extinguished a criminal record under Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Theft) you can sign a contract as a serviceman of the National Guard troops and go to guard strategic facilities in the Donbas. Service in law and order in Rostov-on-Don itself will be unavailable to them, unless the leadership orders an exception.
The admission to the civil service, including law enforcement agencies, of former prisoners, and even those who have been in the hot zone, raises questions from lawyers, psychologists and human rights defenders.
— Some media reported the other day that Rosgvardiya intends or is already recruiting former convicts who have received a pardon for participating in its. And just the other day, another news about how a former prisoner who returned from his prison gets 11 years for the murder of a 52-year-old woman. Why did he kill you? For the fact that she refused to give him a discount on the rent of an apartment.
It doesn't even seem necessary to say that the level of violence in the country will have catastrophic proportions even without the convicts going to serve in the Regardie. This is clear to everyone and has been said more than once. I often fly and I myself witness various incidents of people returning home in camouflage uniforms with ordinary people. They have an absolute sense of superiority over everyone and appropriate behavior. And, according to my observations, only women can object to them. Men keep silent, even if it hurts them.
And now imagine that these people will also receive at least the power that is provided to Rosgvardiya? They will receive weapons, uniforms, access to residential premises, the ability to detain people, etc. I'm even afraid to imagine…
People returning from hot zones are people in an existential crisis. They were on the verge of life and death, watching the death and mutilation of their colleagues. One of the difficulties that combatants face is difficulties with socialization: finding a use for themselves, a new meaning of life. Moreover, this meaning for them should be comparable to the one they found there, in the combat zone, and in this sense, work in the organs is really «by weight» close to the previous conditions. The problem is that all those who have returned from the hot zone need psychological help to overcome the consequences of staying there. These consequences are always there. And some will need to work with post-traumatic stress disorder, and this is a serious and LONG job.
And now let's remember that these are not just combatants, but also people who have served a term. Therefore, we are talking, in addition, about people potentially with antisocial personality disorder. What does this mean in practice? They can SUDDENLY turn against colleagues, abuse power, build relationships outside the collective with the criminal community (especially if strong ties remain).
There is another important point. At a meeting with military officers, Vladimir Putin said: »… we need to move the guys, especially those who have proven themselves well during the fighting, they need to be moved up the hierarchical ladder within the Armed Forces. But not only: they can be moved to law enforcement agencies, special services. It is necessary to look for such people — with their consciousness and with their understanding of justice — and to entrust them with investigations against those scoundrels about whom you said (approx. it was about people with a pacifist position).»
But from such messages we already get the following: the deepening of the gap between the strata of society and the increase in social tension in the same society. In social psychology there is such a concept: «ingroup» and «outgroup». That division into «own» and «others». The conflict may intensify if one side gains more strength, ingroup favoritism is strengthened — assistance to members of its group as opposed to members of the other group.
It is very important that in such an explosive situation there are mechanisms that deter aggression. Ideology is a powerful driving construct. There are a lot of nuances in the inclusion of people who served in law enforcement agencies, and it may be more expensive to deal with the consequences later.