The former mayor of the Russian city of Vladivostok went to fight in Ukraine and went to the front after being sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption, Kommersant newspaper reported on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Last year, the former mayor of Vladivostok Oleg Humenyuk was sentenced to 12 years in prison for taking a bribe of 38 million rubles ($432,000).
He served as mayor from 2018 to 2021, stepping down amid a wave of criticism from local and central officials.
“According to the order issued to Humenyuk, he was supposed to report to his military unit on December 22,” Kommersant quoted Humenyuk’s lawyer Andriy Kitaev as saying.
Tens of thousands of Russian prisoners voluntarily went to serve in Ukraine, taking advantage of the amnesty offer for those who survived the front.
In December, Kommersant reported that St. Petersburg businessman Oleksandr Tyutin, who is serving a 23-year prison term for ordering murders before going to fight in Ukraine, was arrested again for planned other crimes.
Recruiting prisoners was originally a hallmark of Wagner’s mercenary group, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August 2023 after a failed uprising in June.
Since then, the Russian Ministry of Defense has adopted this method, forming “Storm-Z” units from volunteers recruited directly from prisons.
Source: Hot News
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