British intelligence explains why PMC Wagner halts mass recruitment of prisoners

The British Ministry of Defence reports this on Twitter.

British intelligence notes that on February 9, the owner of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, stated that the group had stopped recruiting prisoners. And data from the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service showed a drop in the rate of prisoner recruitment since December 2022.

“News of the harsh realities of Wagner service in Ukraine has probably filtered through to inmates and reduced the number of volunteers. However, a key factor in the termination of the scheme is likely increasingly direct rivalry between the Russian Ministry of Defence and Wagner,” intelligence service states.

They also added that regular Russian troops have probably now deployed the vast majority of the mobilized reservists called up under ‘partial mobilisation’.

"The Russian leadership faces the difficult choice of either continuing to deplete its forces, scale back objectives, or conduct a further form of mobilisation,” the British Defence Intelligence said in its latest update.

• On February 10, analysts at the ISW concluded that Wagner's PMC continues to recruit prisoners, but in smaller numbers.