Kremlin confirms Putin is handing out pardons to convicts to fight in Ukraine amid the war

The Kremlin acknowledged on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is pardoning criminals of all sorts for serving in the war against Ukraine. Declining to reveal details of decrees on the pardon, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he “can’t say anything about [the president’s] decrees on pardons. You know that there are open decrees and there are decrees with various classifications of secrecy. Therefore, I can’t say anything about decrees,” TASS reported.

However, he admitted that the pardon of prisoners was taking place in a completely legal manner. “I can really confirm that the whole pardon procedure with regard to prisoners, it is carried out in strict accordance with Russian law," Peskov said. The spokesperson made the remarks in front of reporters who had asked him to share his thoughts on the comments of Russian mercenary group Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin about the pardon of prisoners serving under the contract.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported citing Russia’s Human Rights Council that Putin had secretly pardoned several convicts even before they had to serve in the ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine. According to Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Human Rights Council, Putin issued the decrees in a secretive manner, thus averting the need to publicly reveal the names of the prisoners, which would usually happen in the case of the issuance of a presidential pardon. 

Is Putin issuing pardons secretly?

“All these decrees are secret, and we can’t see them, but this explains why the Federal Penitentiary Service calmly released people,” Merkacheva told state agency news RIA Novosti. “The presidential decree on pardoning convicts who took part in the special operation constitutes a state secret as it allows identifying these people,” she said, adding that the pardons were issued in July last year when some men who agreed to sign mercenary contracts were being sent to Ukraine.

Some convicts were transported to the most violent frontline areas of the Russia-Ukraine war which resulted in many of them dying. According to prisoners’ rights group Russia Behind Bars, two dozen of the convicts who were hired by Wagner have returned home for now, but are speculated to be called again to the line of duty in a few weeks.