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Expendable troops are essential to Russia’s costly advance in Ukraine.
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Criminals allow Russia to expand its army without resorting to a larger mobilization.
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Convict troops may be more useful in urban warfare than in open terrain or mechanized warfare.
To Westerners, the solution was inhuman. To compensate for the dismal performance of its troops in the early months of the Ukraine war, Russia formed assault units of convicts and other “expendables” in 2023.
But for Vladimir Putin’s government — to whom only victory mattered — sending waves of suicide troops who can absorb real bullets has enabled more valued Russian regulars to seize more ground from Ukraine.
The laboratory for this ruthless approach came at the Battle of Bakhmut in late 2022 and early 2023, when the Wagner Group — a mercenary outfit — employed assault units mostly composed of convicts pardoned in return for fighting in Ukraine. This approach combined with area-battering of glide-bombing has outlasted Wagner Group’s involvement, allowing Russian forces to seize more land without triggering the unrest back home that could threaten Putin’s rule.
“Wagner — and the battle for Bakhmut, to some extent — became a test bed for Russian forces to determine how best to exploit convicts as an expendable force,” researcher Michael Kofman wrote in a study of Russian military adaptation for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington, D.C. “Wagner’s methods were brutal and coercive, but effective. The Russian military was interested in the latter and less concerned with the former.”
Turning criminals into soldiers isn’t a new idea. Judges in America routinely offered defendants a choice between going to jail or going into the service (today’s US military frowns on applicants with criminal records, though waivers are possible). But Russia has taken this to a new level out of deep need. After suffering an estimated 700,000 troops to death, injury or desertion in the nearly three years of its war in Ukraine, Russia should be resorting to mass conscription to replace its losses.
Criminals provide an easy pool of expendable manpower without sparking popular discontent among the Russian public over the draft. As for the criminals, the fact that many volunteer for suicide squads says much about conditions in Russian prisons.
Not that Russia has ever been particularly solicitous about the lives of its soldiers. In World War II, the Red Army frequently used penal battalions for tasks such as clearing minefields under fire. But even by those standards, Wagner was ruthless. Its tactics “depended on simplicity and severe punishment to enforce compliance,” Kofman wrote. Soldiers who refused to advance, or retreated without orders, were simply executed.
Wagner warfare was waged on the cheap. “Convict units were given cheap commercial cell phones without SIM cards,” wrote Kofman. “The phones had offline maps installed with numerically indicated waypoints and GPS. Wagner commanders would order assault groups to move forward with these preset waypoints over cheap, unencrypted radios, and the convict assault groups would pass back their locations with code words.”
One of the tragedies of the Ukraine war is that these tactics have some efficacy for nations willing to treat their citizens as disposable. After nearly a year of bitter combat, Bakhmut was captured in May 2023. Russia may have suffered as many as 100,000 dead and wounded, according to the US government.
“The attrition ratio was favorable to Ukraine, at an average rate of one to four in terms of those killed or seriously wounded, with the bulk of Russian casualties coming from convict-staffed formations employed by Wagner,” Kofman wrote. “Publicly available sources suggest that 88 percent of Wagner’s losses over the course of the battle for Bakhmut were among convicts.”
Ukrainian losses were smaller but more keenly felt. “The fight drained experienced personnel on the Ukrainian side, while the Russian military could concentrate artillery, and expendable infantry formations around Bakhmut in a grinding attritional battle,” Kofman noted.
Ironically, while the Russian military has been criticized for rigid tactics, the Wagner convict units proved adaptable under desperate circumstances. For example, the selection of its leaders was impromptu. “Wagner regulars determined who the best convicts were during training, and they would be appointed as the commanders of assault groups,” wrote Kofman.
In some cases, the convict units infiltrated and enveloped Ukrainian positions. In others, they attempted to overwhelm the Ukrainians with multiple waves coming from different directions. Ukrainians returning fire disclosed their positions and repeated Wagner attacks aimed to expend their ammunition. Once the convicts had worn down the Ukrainians, Wagner regular (non-convict) troops would go to finish the job.
“Execution was tactically flexible, with units changing course of action depending on the conditions,” the report said. “If a position was too strong, they could switch to another.”
“The main factors enabling Wagner’s operations were availability of expendable convicts from Russia’s prison system, artillery support from the Russian army which provided a fires advantage, and the presence of supporting Russian units holding Wagner’s flanks to secure their campaign.”
Wagner’s power in Russia ebbed after its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a mysterious plane crash in 2023 after mutinying against the Putin regime. Its mercenaries have found profitable employment overseas, especially in mineral-rich and human rights-challenged countries in Africa whose governments need military support against Islamist groups and other insurgents.
But Wagner’s legacy lives on in what Kofman calls the “Wagnerization” of the Russian military. The Russian army now relies on Storm-Z (now Storm-V) assault units manned by ill-trained and ill-equipped convicts. Soldiers complain their chance of surviving the war is no more than 25%, according to the BBC.
The question is whether the convict-soldier concept is effective. The Carnegie study suggests they are in some cases, especially in urban warfare, where structures provide more cover for small units of lightly armed infantry to get within striking distance of enemy strongpoints and armor. But convict units haven’t fared well in open terrain and in mechanized warfare where tanks and other heavy weapons are needed. As such, they are best used as auxiliaries for regular troops. Wave assaults over open ground fed to the soaring toll as Russia advanced in November.
Either way, the Russian people pay the price. Those convicts who survive the war come home to their communities as free citizens, where some commit the same crimes — such as murder — that got them jailed in the first place.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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