How Putin turned Russia into a failed state

Photo: Radowitz / Shutterstock

As a result, the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights sent a written request to Igor Krasnov, the prosecutor general of Russia, asking to provide this news story with a legal assessment. They informed him that thousands of prisoners had been released and sent to Ukraine to fight, even though they had not entirely served their sentences, including for grave crimes.

In mid-September 2022, a video confirming this information went viral. It shows a person offering prisoners the chance to join the war in Ukraine as part of Wagner Group, a private military company. The event took place in Correctional Facility Number Six in the republic of Mari El. The person who introduced himself to the prisoners as a representative of the group bore a clear resemblance to Yevgeny Prigozhin. In this video, this person claims that prisoners who had not yet served their sentences entirely were taking part in hostilities in Ukraine and killing Ukrainians. According to him, some of the inmates had died but those who survived six months of combat received presidential pardons “for their heroism”.

Outside the law

This video and the written request of the Presidential Human Rights Council contain information about large-scale crimes and gross violations of Russian law. According to the Russian Criminal Code, such violations should be immediately registered and passed on to the authorities for investigation. However, on September 29th 2022, the prosecutor general informed the council that their request had been redirected to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service. It is important to note that Krasnov redirected the request to the body, which is supposedly a subject of the investigation. This means a direct sabotage by the prosecutor general. The prosecutor did not file any charges and as a result, the mercenaries of Wagner Group continued to commit crimes on both Russian and Ukrainian territory.

On February 22nd 2022, “Decree no. 35-SF of the Federation Council of the Federation of the Armed Forces” allowed Putin to use the Russian army outside Russia on the basis of the universally recognised principles and norms of international law. The legislature gave its consent to the president to use only the armed forces, which are a state military organisation. As of February 24th 2022, in accordance with the same law, non-state military structures were not supposed to be involved in carrying out tasks for the armed forces outside Russia. Consequently, Putin exceeded his authority as commander-in-chief. He could not legally use non-state structures in combat abroad. Despite that, since February 24th the mercenaries of several commercial structures identified as private military companies, with Wagner Group being the largest, have participated in hostilities as combatants. Nevertheless, in his response to Moscow’s Deputy Mayor Yevgeny Stupin, the head of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov stated the following: “The organisation, which you call the Wagner Group, is not a part of the structure of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

Further activities by Putin and his circle aimed at avoiding criminal responsibility not only confirm that their decisions have been intentional, but also that they have been aware of the illegal nature of using non-state military structures in direct combat in Ukraine. They took conscious actions to conceal these crimes once information about the Russian prisoners in Ukraine were broadcast and the videos of the prisoners being recruited by Wagner Group went viral.

Thus, on September 21st 2022, Putin instructed the government and defence ministry to “define in full and as soon as possible the legal status of volunteers [fighting in Ukraine]”. On November 4th he finally signed a federal law which permitted volunteers of non-state military units to participate in combat with the armed forces. This law specifies that its provisions extend to situations that emerged after February 24th 2022.

Nevertheless, the Federation Council gave Putin permission to use the armed forces on the basis of universally recognised principles and norms of international law. Yet, neither the commander-in-chief nor the leadership of the Russian armed forces have complied with the norms and principles of international law. In fact, the use of mercenaries on Ukrainian territory contradicts these rules. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that contractors from private companies are not combatants but mercenaries. It is an international crime to send irregular or mercenary forces to carry out acts for the armed forces against another state.

Complicit actors

There are numerous pieces of evidence online that confirm that the representatives of Wagner Group have been using mercenaries recruited from among Russian citizens and non-citizens who are serving criminal sentences in prisons. On November 14th 2022, for example, the Zambian foreign ministry stated that one of its citizens who was serving a criminal sentence in a Russian prison was killed in Ukraine. This person was named as Lemekani Nathan Nyirenda. He was a 23-year-old student. He was killed in Ukraine on September 22nd 2022.

Russian law declares that a mercenary is someone who participates in combat for the purpose of receiving a material reward. They are neither a citizen nor a permanent resident of the state participating in hostilities, nor a person sent there to perform official duties. Thus, according to Russian law, Nyirenda was a mercenary and his actions contained elements of a crime. Moreover, according to Russian military doctrine, a “military conflict” is a means of resolving interstate or intrastate contradictions through the use of military force (the term covers all types of armed confrontation, including large-scale, regional and local wars and armed conflicts). Thus, the so-called “special military operation” is a military conflict. The use of mercenaries, such as Nyirenda, qualifies then as a crime.

On November 29th Prigozhin confirmed that Nyirenda was a member of Wagner Group and took part in combat operations in Ukraine. There is no open-source documentation related to his release or terms of leaving prison. There was also no information about the thousands of other prisoners recruited by Wagner Group. This means that staff in correctional facilities helped these inmates leave prison in violation of the law. This, in turn, makes the officials of the Federal Penitentiary Service accomplices in committing the crime. In addition to this crime, there have been at least 50,000 similar cases over a period of more than nine months. There is an abundance of information about these cases, which is available in open sources.

On November 12th last year, another video went viral. It showed the execution of Yevgeny Nuzhin by members of Wagner Group. Nuzhin, who was convicted for murder and sentenced to a 24-year sentence in 1999, had been taken as a prisoner of war by the Ukrainian side. He confessed that he had been recruited in a correctional facility. He was then swapped and sent back to Wagner Group, which publicly executed him without any trial. On November 15th, Prigozhin allegedly appealed to Krasnov to investigate the case. According to Russian criminal law, such appeals must be considered within 30 days. However, to this date, the results of the preliminary investigation have not been published, and no criminal proceedings have been initiated.

Prisons and detention centres have intentionally provided Wagner Group with the possibility to recruit prisoners and illegally transfer them to a war zone in Ukraine, where they commit hideous crimes. The Russian authorities are certainly responsible for monitoring the correctional facilities and are not only aware of these crimes, but also involved in them by means of inaction, making them accomplices. Their complicity is possible thanks to Putin. Among those who are directly responsible for these crimes are Prigozhin, other Wagner Group members, the Redut private military company, and the military command of the Russian armed forces, which directs combat operations in Ukraine. The consistency of their criminal actions is evident because out of at least seven private military companies fighting in Ukraine, only Wagner Group was allowed to openly recruit prisoners. Redut and Military Unit 08807 use prisoners in the Luhansk region covertly, but, of course, they follow the instructions of the Russian military leadership, headed by Putin.

Presidential pardons

Only on January 13th this year, the Russian Ministry of Defence reported that “volunteers from the Wagner Group assault troops” took part in the storming of Soledar in Ukraine. This was the first time the Russian authorities explicitly admitted to the involvement of mercenaries in combat missions. The illegal use of prisoners in combat, particularly on the territory of another state, undermines the foundations of Russia’s constitutional order. It destroys the protection of the rights of Russian citizens from criminal infringements, as established by the criminal legal system, and creates a threat to their lives, health and fundamental values.

In January 2023, a BBC correspondent asked Dmitry Peskov – the spokesperson for Putin – on which grounds prisoners are being sent to the war zone. He did not get a direct answer, but was told that this was arranged by secret presidential decrees. As mentioned above, there are videos from Russian prisons which confirm Putin’s involvement in making these mercenary activities possible. In one video, a man who is acting on behalf of Wagner Group, tells prisoners that while death is the only legal way for them to get out of prison ahead of schedule, he is offering them a chance to get out alive. Those are not empty words. Due to Putin’s unsubstantiated secret clemency decrees, tens of thousands of prisoners have been fighting in Ukraine, contrary to court-imposed sentences. When survivors return to Russia six months later, they are no longer prisoners but pardoned people.

In February 2023 a photo of a certificate of release from prison which belongs to one Wagner Group contractor was published in the media. The certificate was issued on August 29th 2022, in accordance with a presidential decree. The prisoner (or already a released person) was sent to war in August. But he received the document only in February 2023, after being wounded during combat operations. This certificate can serve as evidence that the pardon promised by Prigozhin was used by the private military companies as a means of forcing prisoners into committing crimes and assignments that unreasonably threaten their life.

If prisoners who agreed to a contract with a private military company were pardoned by Putin before they were sent to war, then the concept of clemency has been discredited in an unprecedented manner. Over the past two terms, Putin granted pardons to an average of five convicts per year. They were granted upon the request of state bodies, such as clemency committees in the regions, and issued by presidential decree. In 2021, six convicts were pardoned. In 2022, according to the lists of the criminal Wagner Group, about 50,000 of the “pardoned” prisoners were sent to war. Their certificates of release were based on a “presidential decree on pardon”.

According to the ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on July 11th 2006, the right to clemency is a direct expression of the constitutional principles of respect for the dignity of a human being, humanism and justice. Every convicted person has a right to seek mitigation of their fate, regardless of the nature of the crime committed, the penalty imposed, and the conditions of its execution. However, many mercenary prisoners did not have a chance to mitigate their fate. At least 4,000 dead and 10,000 wounded are the result of 50,000 presidential decrees. Each of them had a constitutional right to life.

Dysfunctional system

The BesogonTV YouTube channel describes one case of a prisoner-turned-mercenary. Konstantin Tulinov was convicted seven times, including for attempted murder. Tulinov was sentenced to death for none of these convictions. In 2021, a court sentenced him to five years and eight months in a strict regime correctional facility. On July 14th 2022 he was killed in Ukraine, after having been used in hostilities by Wagner Group. Despite Tulinov’s persistent anti-social behaviour, he had a constitutional right to live, which was something he was illegally deprived of. The employers at the penitentiary, who were obliged to protect Tulinov, were involved in his case too.

Instead of preventing convicts from committing new crimes, a group of officials and persons in charge of private military companies, ignoring court sentences, enabled prisoners to commit new offences, i.e. they enabled people with a criminal record to commit intentional crimes again. Viktor Belkin, sentenced to 21 years in prison for the murder of four people, left his prison colony just one year after his trial. He was sent to Ukraine as a mercenary of Wagner Group where he certainly committed more murders.

Instead of correcting the behaviour of convicts, private military companies turn them into professional criminals and killers. At training bases, criminal skills are upgraded. Inmates are trained to kill with modern firearms and explosive devices, work in large groups and commit mass murder in organised groups. They are trained to become professional killers who lack a sense of accountability for their actions. In addition, they are financially rewarded for committing crimes: according to Idel.Real, convicts fighting in Ukraine receive 100,000 roubles (around 1,200 euros) per month plus an allowance for their participation in the hostilities. In this way, a person’s dangerous criminal predisposition is stimulated and reinforced.

This shows that in Russia the system of criminal law does not function. Instead of providing security guarantees to citizens, it has been transformed into a system for training participants of organised criminal groups to fight in Ukraine. These individuals, including public officials, illegally form dangerous private armies of convicts without a high level of military training. Despite this, such groups are of value to the criminal community due to their persistent anti-social behaviour and willingness to commit crimes.

On December 20th 2022, the Russian Duma passed amendments to the law on “Countering Corruption”. This law was adopted to conceal corruption crimes by Putin and his associates. Under this law, the president is solely granted the right to determine if restrictions, prohibitions, requirements and professional performances comply with counter-corruption efforts. By means of this decree, he annulled legal anti-corruption mechanisms in relation to persons who participated in the war in Ukraine and their spouses. According to the decree, participants in the “special military operation” and their spouses are exempted from submitting obligatory income statements. They are also allowed to receive “remuneration and gifts of a humanitarian (charitable) nature from individuals and legal entities for participation in the special military operation”.

This confirms that there is no rule of law in Russia. Its legislative “authorities” adopt laws and introduce bills aimed at concealing the criminal activities of the president and other authorities. Moreover, these actions have elements of complicity in the form of enabling grave crimes.

Mafia rule

According to Russia’s criminal code, a criminal organisation is a structured and organised group or an association of organised groups which operate under a single leadership, whose members are united in the pursuit of grave crimes in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.

During a meeting with human rights activists on December 7th 2022, Putin publicly acknowledged the invasive, self-serving purpose of the “special military operation”, stating: “It may be a long process, but the emergence of new territories is a significant result for Russia. It is very serious. It must be confessed – the Azov Sea has become an internal sea of the Russian Federation.”

Thus, what are formally considered in Russia state authorities are in fact a criminal organisation – an association of organised groups of officials acting under the single leadership of Putin for the purpose of committing crimes for material gain. These actions are undertaken with the president and commander-in-chief of the Russian armed forces at the top, together with the prosecutor general, the defence minister, the commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, officials of the Russian armed forces, officials of the Federal Penitentiary Service, and the management of private mercenary companies involved in the recruitment and use of prisoners in combat operations in Ukraine. At the same time, the actions of members of the Russian Federal Assembly in drafting “laws” facilitate crimes and contain elements of criminality under the criminal code.

In Russia we are now witnessing a process in which state power, including the judicial branch, the armed forces and the bodies responsible for internal security, have merged with private economic interests, including criminal interests. As mentioned at the beginning, the Russian constitution states that the sole source of power in the Russian Federation is its people. There was no mechanism for taking such powers away from Russian citizens. The attempts by certain social institutions to clarify the situation were blocked. In this text, we have argued that the case of Wagner Group demonstrates that the Russian constitution has been violated in the most fundamental way possible.

All the members of the Presidential Council of Human Rights who signed the statement to the prosecutor general were expelled a month and a half later by Putin’s decision. This not only indicates his desire to cover up the traces of his crime. It also demonstrates that he is going to further usurp power in the country and destroy any possibility of control over his actions. State and public institutions serve as a cover up for the fact that all the power is held by him and his criminal network. In fact, Putin has passed the state monopoly on violence over to private hands. State authorities no longer control the use of violence in the Russian Federation, nor are they in charge of the fighting in the war in Ukraine. The monopoly on violence is one of the key powers of any government. If this power is lost, the state becomes a failed state, and this has now occurred in the Russian Federation.

Andrei Nikolaev holds a PhD in law. He worked for the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation. He held positions as an investigator at the district prosecutor’s office, subject prosecutor’s office and prosecutor general’s office. Due to his refusal to assist in the usurpation of power by Putin’s regime, he was prosecuted in a trumped-up criminal case. He is currently on an international wanted list in Russia. This is the reason for using a pseudonym instead of his real name.

Anastasia Sergeeva is a political scientist and the former chairwoman of the board of the VOT Foundation. She is one of the co-founders of the Association for a Free Russia (Poland), and a leader of Russian civil society. Currently she is the international secretary of the Civic Council – an independent initiative of the leaders and activists from Russian regions, who sustain a creation and development of the Russian military units in the range of the International Legion of Ukrainian Armed Forces.

rule of law, Russia, Russia's war against Ukraine, Wagner Group