Last year, when Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, there were no successful escapes from pre-trial detention centers and penal colonies in Russia, Meduza notes.

This happened for the first time in the modern history of the country, said the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Arkady Gostev.

“For the first time in the modern history of the criminal correctional system, thanks to the coordinated actions of the staff, convicts and persons in custody were prevented from escaping,” Gostev said at the meeting of the board of directors of the Federal Penitentiary Service last year, TASS quotes.

RBC notes that in August 2022, two convicts escaped from correctional colony-38 in the city of Berezniki, Perm Region, but were caught two days later.

In 2019, the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service reported that the number of escapes from Russian pre-trial detention centers and colonies decreased 140 times over 25 years: in 1994 there were 140, in 2000 – 25, in 2010 – 11, in 2015 – eight. and one in 2018.

The “Wagner” group of mercenaries massively recruited personnel from Russian colonies to replenish the troops on the Ukrainian front.

After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s political influence in the Kremlin waned, the Russian Ministry of Defense took over the role of Wagner’s founder in recruiting prisoners, depriving the paramilitary group of its main source of manpower.

Now “Wagner” has started to open recruiting centers in sports halls of several Russian cities.

Follow the latest events of the 384th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.