DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — At a rural penal colony in southeast Ukraine, several convicts stand assembled under barbed wire to hear an army recruiter offer them a shot at parole. In return, they must join the grueling fight against Russia.
“You can put an end to this and start a new life,” said the recruiter, a member of a volunteer assault battalion. “The main thing is your will, because you are going to defend the motherland. You won’t succeed at 50%, you have to give 100% of yourself, even 150%.”
Ukraine is expanding the draft to cope with acute battlefield shortages more than two years into fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion. And its recruiting efforts have turned, for the first time, to the country’s prison population.
Forcing convicts to fight and giving them an option is not the same thing. It also matters very much which convicts you are sending to fight.
I don’t think it’s necessarily under duress the way that Ukraine is doing it. Those who are on death row or their equivalent thereof are not getting this offer. From what I read, this is excluding the most dangerous and violent offenders.
So you don’t have people with exceedingly long sentences who qualify.
That doesn’t seem like too much duress to me. A few years of my life staying where I am in a prison versus taking my chances on the battlefield to get out of prison faster (and protect my country, for whomever that matters to).
There’s no death penalty in Ukraine. Russia still has it, but only under military law. To legally apply that Russia would have to admit that they’re at war, though, at least presuming they want to pretend to give a shit about the treaties they signed.
