Vladimir Osechkin says he studied law because he wanted to go into law enforcement. Be a good sheriff, he tells me. But after a few bad brushes with Russia’s justice system – he says he was falsely accused of murder until the police found the right man, then years later he was shaken when the car sales empire he built became too big for his own Russian good – the his plans changed.
Both experiences he describes as terrifying and violent. Osechkin has since dedicated his life to exposing torture in Russian prisons. There is so much abuse, he says, that many inmates find the prospect of a bloody and uncertain future on the front lines in Ukraine attractive enough to take the bait of recruiters, as Russia’s defense chiefs look to prisons to bolster the army’s ranks. .
“Inside this 21st century gulag, you can be humiliated, beaten, raped. You can be subjected to the most terrible intimidation. Or you will be forced to work in the industrial zone. From 7 in the morning to 11 at night , or at least more than twelve hours a day, with faulty, outdated equipment and you risk losing an arm or an eye,” Osechkin tells Fox News from his home in France via Zoom. “They want to get out of the dungeons of torture in any way. Many don’t realize they are likely to be killed in a week or two.”
Osechkin runs the human rights group Gulagu.net. He is said to be one of Russia’s most wanted men for releasing dramatic torture videos from a prison in Saratov and spreading reports of discontent within the ranks of the FSB, Russia’s security service.
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Russia, for its part, has declared that it has a fraud case against Osechkin. Fraud charges in Russia are widely said to be used freely against anyone in the Kremlin’s sights, such as Alexei Navalny.
Osechkin calls the active recruitment of Russian prisoners to work on the front lines of the war a cynical act. According to his sources – he receives advice from a number of people, including the families of prisoners – these efforts have recently intensified.
The army needs swordsmen as the Russian army has lost quite a few and it takes years to train deminers. Russia, according to Osechkin, is also looking for men to send as decoys for Ukrainian soldiers – to draw fire from them to help the Russians locate and then attack their positions. Finally, Osechkin says, they round up convicted murderers and others with violent records to form “killer brigades” to shoot, cut and maim “the enemy.”
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FILE – In this photo taken from video, a view of a damaged barracks at a prison in Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces, in eastern Ukraine, July 29, 2022. Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday for bombing a prison in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine, an attack that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian military prisoners captured after the fall of the southern port city of Mariupol in May. (AP Photo)
Osechkin says the number of takers for such offers dwindled at some point when inmates began to think up to the fact that they could be used as cannon fodder. He believes this prompted a notorious man sometimes called “Putin’s Chef” to start making the rounds of prisons. This has not been confirmed, but Osechkin is not the only one who has heard the reports.
The independent Mediazona heard it from a few prisoners. The “chef” is an ex-convict himself. He became a billionaire from involvement in many businesses, from catering to the management of the mercenary group Wagner, which he incidentally denies, Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to be close to the Russian president.
“Obviously, as an ace, as a trump card, Putin took out Prigozhin and personally sent him to meetings with prisoners,” Osetskin said, adding that Prigozhin could make an easy sell by saying something like, “I used to be in prison. and now I’m recruiting you. I have become a hero of Russia, and you also have a chance in today’s Putin system, to climb the ladder, to become rich.”
Mediazona interviewed prisoners who allegedly heard Prigozhin offer them “amnesty and money”. And in meeting with recruiters, one inmate recalled being told “we’re interested in murderers and burglars.”
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Police arrest a protester as people gather in front of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that one of the country’s oldest and most prominent human rights organizations must close. (AP Photo)
Meanwhile, Osechkin, beyond concerns that prisoners will be sent to their deaths with promises of good money, fame and honor or dreams of escape. He also says he thinks the whole idea of telling the already violent—the murderers and the burglars—to go pick up guns again is completely irresponsible and even reprehensible.
“Instead of correcting these people,” Osechkin says, “the prison system takes their worst, worst side and uses them for its own purposes. I think most of them won’t come back. But those who survive and come back to Russia will pose an increased danger to society,” he says. I ask how all this information manages to get out of the cells and over the barbed wire of Russia’s prisons.
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“Vladimir Putin and his public relations are trying to build a myth that he is all-powerful and that they have a super-totalitarian system. In reality, this is a mafia system. And as in any mafia, people are primarily interested in money and corruption.” he says, adding that it’s not just that. “Many people within the system are themselves against the war. Hundreds of thousands of people work in the federal prison system, and not all of them love Putin. Not everyone respects Putin. And not everyone is ready to participate in crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
Amy Kellogg currently serves as a correspondent based in Milan. She joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 1999 as a correspondent based in Moscow. Follow her on Twitter: @amykelloggfox
