Russia is recruiting prisoners for war, threatening new terms – foreign intelligence

Russia is running out of resources to replenish its army from among prisoners, so the occupiers are recruiting them, threatening them with new terms. This was reported by Foreign Intelligence Service.

As there are fewer and fewer people willing to fight in Ukraine, the authorities are launching new tactics. Convicts are charged with new crimes allegedly committed while serving their sentences.

The charges include "discrediting the army," "spreading fakes" about the war, and "calling for terrorism".

The alternative is to sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense and go to the front.

One such case is the sentence of 34-year-old Andrey Voronin. On July 17, he was sentenced to another six years for allegedly spreading "fake news" about the Russian Armed Forces while in a pre-trial detention center and colony in the Pskov region. There have been more than 100 such sentences in the first half of 2025 alone, and their number is growing, according to intelligence reports.

To recruit for war, the Russian authorities also continue to use classic methods of pressure against prisoners, such as restrictions on drinking water (up to three liters per week), torture and intimidation.

Against this background, the government of the aggressor state is preparing to close 19 prisons. The average number of convicts since the beginning of the full-scale war has decreased by 200,000 to a historic low of 313,000. At the same time, the number of new convicts in 2024 remained almost unchanged – only 0.34% less than a year earlier.

• On January 30, the GUR reported that in 2025, Russia plans to mobilize at least 126,000 soldiers from the "special contingent".
• On May 26, the head of the SVR stated that Russia's total mobilization resource is 25 million people. But the actual number of trained soldiers is 3 million.