Russia has started recruiting female convicts to participate in the war in Ukraine.
The New York Times writes about it.
According to the newspaper, military recruiters began visiting prisons for women throughout the European part of Russia last fall.
"The recruitment of female convicts comes as the Russian government has resorted to increasingly unorthodox schemes to attract volunteers from the margins of Russian society, trying to avoid another round of unpopular conscription," the newspaper notes.
It is not known what duties the former prisoners will perform at the front. Last year, military recruiters offered inmates contracts to serve as snipers, combat medics and frontline radio operators for one year. At the time, about 40 out of 400 prisoners in one of the colonies near St. Petersburg agreed. They were offered a pardon and a reward of about $2000 per month.
The publication reminds that at the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, about 30,000 women were serving sentences in Russian prisons.
Earlier, we wrote about the losses of the Russian army over the past day.