“Training videos” were shown to recruits of a private military company even before the full-scale war against Ukraine.

Russian prisoners recruited into the ranks of the private military company “Wagner” are shown videos of brutal executions of deserters before being sent to the front in Ukraine. So they try to discourage mercenaries from wanting to run away from the battlefield.

According to the “Russian Service of the BBC News”, several sources close to the PMC, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed information about a similar practice of intimidation in the ranks of the “Wagners”.

One of the interlocutors of the publication noted that “training videos” were shown to recruits of a private military company even before the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. In addition, the sources also reported that they are aware of at least three massacres of “traitors” that have not yet leaked into the public space.

The publication’s interlocutor in one of the Russian prisons said that prisoners who agreed to join the ranks of the PMC and go to war in Ukraine were taken to a special room where the killings of those who allegedly escaped from the battlefield were shown on a tablet.

“He says there – I, so-and-so, a traitor and a bully, abandoned my comrades on the front line – and then they shoot him in the back of the head,” one of the mercenaries told the BBC about what he saw.

Another interlocutor of the journalists from the colony said that he was also shown the video. However, a person was executed by hanging on it.

PVK “Wagner” at war in Ukraine

The mercenaries of the “Wagner” PMC take an active part in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Due to huge losses among mercenaries, even prisoners began to be recruited into the ranks of the company.

In addition, PMK “Wagner” began recruiting prisoners in the occupied territories and agitating them to fight against Ukraine. “Wagnerivtsi” received permission to “recruit” prisoners of Ukrainian prisons in the temporarily occupied territories from the Gauleiter.

On December 6, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced that the Russian occupiers in Donbas had destroyed their deserters, most of whom were “convicts”.

It was previously reported that a group of US senators submitted to Congress a bipartisan bill to recognize the Russian private military company “Wagner” as a foreign terrorist organization. The co-author of the bill, Senator from the state of Maryland Ben Cardin noted that the mercenaries from this PMC “are reliably connected to countless atrocities in Ukraine, Syria and the entire African continent.”