Wagner's PMC recruited 50,000 convicts, only 10,000 of them are at war front - Russian human rights activist

Head of Russia Behind Bars Charitable Foundation (Rus Sidyashchaya) Olga Romanova stated this, Meduza informs.

"According to our data, 42-43 thousand [prisoners] were recruited by the end of December. Now, most likely, there are more than 50 thousand of them. 10 thousand of them, are fighting at the front, because all the others have either been killed, or wounded, or disappeared, or deserted, or surrendered," Romanova told My Russian Rights project.

According to her, prisoners began actively to desert from PMC back in the fall. Many of them, the head of the project notes, fled back to Russia, taking weapons with them. For example, she cited a case that happened at the beginning of December 2022 in the Rostov region. Then former prisoner, who deserted from PMC, opened fire on the policemen, injuring one of them.

Romanova also suggested that the founder of Wagner's PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, who "promised Putin to win the war", does not keep statistics on the missing, escaped, or deserted, simply writing them all on the list of the dead. This, in particular, can be evidenced by reports that PMC returns empty coffins to relatives of prisoners.