Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 4 – The Russian media is celebrating government reports that the number of convicts behind bars has fallen to “an historical minimum” (tass.ru/proisshestviya/26640335); but to the extent that has happened, it is the product not so much of a real decline in crime or a new more lenient approach by Russian courts.
Instead, it reflects the Kremlin’s release of many convicts to fight in Ukraine as well as the removal from the streets of so many other young Russians, an age group most likely to commit crimes, as a result of the expansion of the Russian army in the course of that war (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/04/chislo-zaklyuchennih-vrossii-upalo-doistoricheskogo-minimuma-a188762).
The number of convicts incarcerated in prisons and camps began to fall sharply after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On January 1 of that year, there were 466,000 people in the camps; two years later, that number had fallen to 313,000, a decline that reflects the recruitment of so many of them to fight in the Russian military in Ukraine.
Of those who have done so, the Moscow paper reports, a minimum of 21,400 have been killed. The problem, of course, is that many of these released prisoner-soldiers are now coming home as veterans; and all available evidence suggests that many of them are going to return to lives of crime and that the country will have to jail many more if it is to keep domestic peace.
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