The coffin with Sergey Molodtsov’s physique was draped in a vermilion material and lined with a Russian flag. 4 stern servicemen in parade uniforms carried it to his grave, and struggle veterans delivered speeches thanking him for “braveness” and “heroism”.
That is how E1.ru, an internet publication within the Ural Mountains area of Sverdlovsk, described in mid-January the funeral of the 46-year-old man who had been killed in Ukraine.
It didn’t specify the date of Molodtsov’s loss of life – however quoted an unnamed official speaking fondly about him.
“He was inventive, dabbled in bone carving, labored at a jewelery workshop. Family members bear in mind Sergey as a splendidly extraordinary one that beloved life. He was an sincere individual,” the official reportedly mentioned.
What he didn’t point out was that in 2017, Molodtsov was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in jail for beating his mom to loss of life – in a drunken stupor, together with his palms and ft.
She broke her jaw and cranium, however claimed throughout the trial that she “fell,” in keeping with the courtroom papers quoted by E1.ru.
‘Homes of the useless’
Virtually half one million inmates are serving time in Russian prisons, that are infamous for his or her cruelty relationship again to Stalinist gulags and the Tsarist-era “homes of the useless” described by novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.
And tens of hundreds of prisoners have been recruited to combat in Ukraine by the Wagner Groupa personal navy firm, in keeping with human rights teams, and Ukrainian and Western officers.
They have been promised hefty pay checks and lavish compensation for his or her households in the event that they died in fight.
If they do not – after six months of service – they have been promised a presidential pardon and freedom.
On January 20, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned the pardons have been “categorised”.
For among the inmates-turned-mercenaries, honors appear to be a part of the deal. On December 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to the southwestern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don at hand awards to dozens of servicemen who had fought in Ukraine.
One among them was Aik Gasparyan, a full-bearded, khaki-clad 31-year-old who smiled awkwardly as Putin was handing him the For Braveness medal.
“I serve Russia and the Wagner personal firm,” Gasparyan mentioned.
He hardly anticipated this 4 years in the past, when a Moscow courtroom sentenced him to seven years and three months in jail for attempting to rob a person in a restaurant.
Wagner made Garsparian a poster boy whose rise to fame and freedom might persuade extra inmates to hitch the corporate.
A day earlier, Gasparyan appeared in a video posted on Wagner’s Telegram channel.
“There isn’t any f—g dishonest, issues are like they mentioned – we’re preventing subsequent to different [servicemen], Now, we’re heading to Rostov to obtain the awards,” he mentioned.
He additionally thanked Wagner’s head Yevgeny Prigozhin for “doing completely every little thing for us”.
From a troll farm to ‘transnational’ crime
Prigozhin is called Putin’s “chef” as a result of his catering firms serve the Kremlin and have received contracts to provide meals to the navy, colleges and kindergartens.
He additionally based the Web Analysis Manufacturing facility, higher often known as a “troll farm”, that used social media networks to stifle criticism on-line and meddle within the 2016 presidential election in the US, in keeping with Washington.
Prigozhin began Wagner in 2014 to again pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine, although personal navy firms are nonetheless banned in Russia.
Wagner began recruiting skilled fighters – and branched out to war-ravaged Syria to avoid wasting President Bashar al-Assad’s authorities.
Nonetheless, until late 2022Prigozhin most popular to remain within the shadows and sued Russian media shops that reported about Wagner’s operations in Ukraine, Syria and Africa.
Three Russian journalists who went to the Central African Republic in 2018 to movie a documentary about Wagner’s function within the civil struggle and gold mining, have been killed contract-style. Their family and colleagues claimed Prigozhin was behind their deaths, however Russian investigators mentioned the reporters have been killed throughout a theft.
The FAN, a Russian information company related to Prigozhin, claimed that French intelligence and former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky allegedly “commissioned” the killings.
In January, Washington designated the Wagner Group as a “transnational legal group” that has 50,000 fighters in Ukraine. Eighty p.c of them are inmates, White Home nationwide safety spokesman John Kirby mentioned.
‘Ethical degradation’
Wagner began recruiting them solely final yr, and Prigozhin personally visited dozens of prisons.
“The motherland is in peril,” was the mantra he repeated, in keeping with movies and inmates.
Prigozhin was additionally fluent in jail slang – within the Soviet period, he served 9 years for theft.
However a few of its former officers have shunned recruitment.
“If I have been [inmate Gasparyan’s] commander, I would say, ‘Take him away from me,” Marat Gabidullin, who served in Wagner for 4 years and led a reconnaissance unit in Syria, instructed Al Jazeera.
“I do not want a soldier like him,” mentioned Gabidullin, who wrote a ebook about his expertise and is searching for asylum in France.
Analysts mentioned recruiting convicts is ineffective from a navy standpoint – and solely manifests the Kremlin’s ethical degradation.
“It speaks volumes in regards to the [Kremlin’s] ethical outlook generally,” Pavel Luzin, a protection analyst with the Jamestown Basis, a suppose tank in Washington, DC, instructed Al Jazeera.
The apply can’t be applied with out an order from the Kremlin, he mentioned.
“There isn’t any benefit in utilizing the inmates – by losing individuals, the Kremlin is just attempting to win time. No person cares about reporting” their deaths, he mentioned. “We’re coping with deep ethical degradation of Russia’s total management”.
The lionisation of inmates is “psychological heritage” of the Russian empire and the USSR, once they have been used to settle Siberia and fought on World Warfare II entrance strains, mentioned Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch.
And the celebration of criminals-turned-war heroes serves as a litmus take a look at of the unhealthy relationship between the Kremlin and common Russians.
“It is a mutation of their psychological code in direction of a relentless feeling of guilt earlier than the state,” Kushch instructed Al Jazeera.
The bogeymen
Wagner’s mercenaries are also known as “the orchestra” and “musicians”.
“The orchestra awaits you,” learn the billboards within the Ural Mountains metropolis of Yekaterinburg in July that additionally listed a contact telephone quantity and the group’s nascent web site.
The group has develop into a bogeyman for Kremlin critics.
Liya Akhedzhakova, 84, a Russian actress whose movie and theater performances have develop into iconic, repeatedly mentioned she was “ashamed” of Moscow’s warmongering and “uninterested in Russia’s pseudo-greatness”.
In response, Andrey Medvedev, vice speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s decrease home of parliament, threatened her with Wagner.
“If Akhedzhakova performs with ‘musicians’, the efficiency will not be dangerous. Liya Medzhidovna, do you want Wagner?” he wrote on Telegram in late December. By early February, all of Akhedzhakova’s theater performances have been banned.
A convicted assassin named Yevgeny Nuzhin joined Wagner in July.
Two months later, he was captured close to the southeastern metropolis of Luhansk and instructed Ukrainian media that he had joined the corporate solely to give up. He described how Wagner’s officers used inmates as cannon fodder and “nullified,” or executed them for disobeying orders.
The time period gained reputation in Russia after Putin ordered a nationwide referendum to “nullify” his earlier presidential phrases.
Though Nuzhin mentioned he wished to combat in opposition to Russia, Kyiv swapped him for Ukrainian prisoners of struggle.
On November 12, a video of his execution with an enormous sledgehammer was launched by the Grey Zone, a Telegram channel linked to Wagner.
Two months later, Sergey Mironov, head of the pro-Kremlin “A Simply Russia – For Fact” political celebration, obtained an analogous sledgehammer from Prigozhin.
Mironov tweeted he was “proud” of receiving the reward – and that his total celebration supported the struggle.
And he could not miss an opportunity to threaten the struggle’s critics.
“Children, carry on tweeting, however bear in mind – I received the hammer in my workplace,” he wrote.
On Thursday, Prigozhin mentioned Wagner stopped recruiting inmates. He didn’t specify the rationale.
