It is inevitable that there will be casualties. We are used to it. The death of one person is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic. This is what he told the "Guardian" magazine. the Ukrainian military instructor Denis Kravchenko, who is currently training prisoners.
He knows that some of them will never return from the front. He said the military needs better PR and higher salaries if it wants to solve its recruitment problem. Ukraine currently has a problem with mobilization.
In order to attract more soldiers for the ZSU, Kiev decided to mobilize prisoners. So far, 3,800 have been released early under a new scheme designed to fill gaps in Ukraine's armed forces. Rapists and mass murderers are not allowed in the army.
One of the prisoners is called Volodymyr Prysiazhniuk, who told his story to the British newspaper. Last year he quarreled with his father-in-law and while he was drunk he hit him twice in the head. The other man dies. The young man admitted his guilt in court and received 8 years. He says that the army gives him a new chance in life.
„People immediately started treating me with respect. The heat was incredible. When you're in prison, you're nothing. Now I'm human again," says the prisoner, who is now a soldier. However, his wife stopped talking to him after she found out that he was joining the army voluntarily.
Many of the prisoners will be killed at the front. Russia, for example, has been mobilizing criminals since 2022. A huge number of them were killed in the Battle of Bakhmut, fighting in Prigogine's (then) private army “Wagner“.
Under the new Ukrainian prisoner scheme, their sentences are expunged after one year in the army, but they must continue to fight indefinitely (until the end of the war). If prisoners defect, they receive an additional five to 10 years in prison on top of their original sentences. They are not entitled to a 15-day leave like regular soldiers, but they are entitled to visits from their wives.