Journalist Eva Merkacheva: Putin’s secret decree pardoned convicts prior to their joining Wagner Group

Russian journalist and member of the Presidential Human Rights Council Eva Merkacheva has told RIA Novosti that convicts recruited by the Wagner Group for the war in Ukraine had been pardoned prior to leaving the penal colony — not six months later, as stated by the military company’s founder Evgeny Prigozhin. Citing Merkacheva, RIA Novosti reports that their pardon was legalized by a classified decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.

Merkacheva concluded this based on her own conversations with the Wagner recruits’ family members, who told her they had official documents confirming their relatives’ discharge from the penal system.

“I don’t have access to the decrees themselves,” Merkacheva said, “but I spoke with the people who are close to those who had been freed. They all assure me they have documents signed July 5.” The convicts, Merkacheva points out, had been removed from penitentiaries on the same day or the day after. “Accordingly, these people had been freed on the fifth.” “I’m talking,” she explained, “about the first group of people who’d been pardoned.”

When recruiting convicts for the Wagner PMC, Prigozhin was on record promising them pardon after a six-month tour of duty in Ukraine. Mediazona pointed out that neither the Attorney General, nor the Kremlin, nor the federal penitentiary system (“FSIN”) had ever explained how they would legalize the pardons for convicts going to war as part of the Wagner Group.

On January 5, Prigozhin announced that the first group of Wagner recruits had been granted amnesty, having completed a six-month tour of duty. Journalists identified several of the ex-inmates who had been pardoned. The group, it turned out, included people convicted of murder, armed robbery, organized crime, and manufacturing drugs.