This article is about Russian penal units during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For Soviet penal units during the second World War, see Shtrafbat.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (June 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Российские заключённые во вторжении на Украину]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Российские заключённые во вторжении на Украину}} to the talk page.
The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group widely recruited from prisons starting in 2022, growing their forces by an estimated 40,000.[2][3] According to the New York Times, Wagner's prison recruitment campaign began in early July 2022, when Prigozhin personally appeared in prisons around St. Petersburg and offered deals to the prisoners.[4] However, the Wagner Group lost access to the prisons in February 2023 amidst schisms with the regular Russian Ministry of Defense.[2][3] The Russian MoD itself reportedly began recruiting prisoners in October 2022.[3]
In April 2023, information emerged about the creation of the Storm-Z series of units by the MoD.[5] After receiving only ten to fifteen days of training,[6] these units are attached to regular Russian forces suffering from battle fatigue.[7] On June 24, 2023, Vladimir Putin signed a law on the recruitment of convicts to contract service with the Defense Ministry, disbanding Storm-Z and replacing it with the new Storm-V units.[8]