Russian ex-soldiers convicted of 116 murders in Russia in 2023

According to the independent Russian news agency Mediazona, returning Russian soldiers will have committed 116 murders in 2023.

Business Insider reports.

According to the news agency, this is an increase of 900 percent from the previous year, when there were 13 convictions.

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Pointing to trauma

Mediazona is said to have obtained the data from the Russian Supreme Court’s published statistics.

It was reported already last week https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1784175981390946400. They write that “conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and desensitization to violence bred on the battlefield often persist long after a military conflict is over”. In addition, the Ministry of Defense points out that alcoholism and drug abuse exacerbate these problems.

“The high number of murders committed by serving soldiers and veterans is probably due in part to enduring war-related chronic bad mental health problems,” the British wrote in the post on X.

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15,000 pardoned prisoners have returned from the battlefield

In addition to soldiers returning from the battlefield with mental injuries, Russia is known to recruit prisoners from Russian prisons and send them to the front lines. In December, exiled Russian Vladimir Osetshkin — head of a prisoner’s rights group called Gulagu.net — told Newsweek that his research showed that Russia has recruited more than 100,000 convicts since the war began.

These are promised a pardon in return for up to one year as a soldier. According to an analysis carried out by the BBC, prisoners die faster on the front line, as they hardly have any training. On average, they only survive for two months.

But according to a New York Times article cited by both the British Ministry of Defense and Business Insider, Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, says as many as 15,000 pardoned prisoners had returned to Russian society after serving in paramilitary groups like Wagner – group and Storm Z.

According to the New York Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the risk of pardoned convicts reoffending upon release is “inevitable”.

– But the negative consequences are minimal, he is said to have said.