The kremlin Is Putting Pressure on Prisoners: New Terms for “fakes” or a Contract for the War

russia is running out of resources to replenish the army with prisoners. As there are fewer and fewer people willing to fight in Ukraine, the authorities are launching a new tactic: convicts are charged with new crimes, allegedly committed while serving their sentences. Among the charges are “discrediting the army”, “spreading fakes” about the war and “calls for terrorism”. The alternative is to sign a contract with the ministry of defense and go to the front.

One of such cases – the verdict of 34-year-old Andrei Voronin. On July 17, he was sentenced to another six years for allegedly spreading “fakes” about the russian armed forces while in a pre-trial detention center and colony in Pskov region. There are already more than a hundred such sentences in the first half of 2025 alone, and their number is growing.

For recruitment for the war, russian authorities also continue to use against prisoners classic methods of pressure – restrictions on drinking water (to three liters per week), torture and intimidation.

Against this background, the government is preparing for closing 19 prisons. The average number of convicts since the beginning of the full-scale war has decreased by 200 thousand to a historic low of 313 thousand. At this, the number of new convicts in 2024 has hardly changed – only by 0.34 % fewer than a year earlier.