Mercenary company founder Wagner asked the Russian parliament to ban the media from publishing negative reports about its fighters, amending the Criminal Code to punish “defamation” of its fighters with up to five years in prison.

With such a request, Yevgeny Prigozhin addressed in a letter to the chairman of the State Duma (lower house) Vyacheslav Volodin. This was announced today by the press service of Prigozhin.

Volodin, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has already advocated amending the criminal code to allow authorities to seize the assets of Russians living abroad who publicly insult Russia and its military.

Prigozhin, in his letter, accuses “certain media outlets, bloggers and Telegram channels” of slandering his people, including ex-prisoners whom he recruited from prisons, portraying them as “evil and criminals.”

This is a reference to the fact that in some cases the criminal or dark past of some of them is revealed. The convicts accepted his offer to fight in Ukraine for six months and, if they survive, will be pardoned, even if they were initially sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prigozhin is asking parliament to criminalize slandering his people and to ban the disclosure of their criminal past. “Basically, people who are in the most dangerous places on the front line and risk their lives and die for the country every day are presented as second-class people, deprived of the right to atone for their crimes and deliberately downplay their achievements,” he said. writes in this text.

So far there has been no response from Volodin.

Earlier, the head of the pro-government Just Russia party, Sergei Mironov, criticized two Russian regions for refusing to bury the Wagnerites who died in Ukraine with military honors. “These decisions are unethical, one cannot judge what a person has done in the past. Especially if this person died with a weapon in his hands, defending our Motherland, ”he commented.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}