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Vladimir Osechkin says he studied law because he wanted to join law enforcement. To be a good sheriff, he tells me him. But after some bad contacts with the Russian justice system – he says he was falsely accused of murder until the police found the right man and then years later he was rocked when the auto sales empire he built is outgrown his Russian sake – his plans changed.
Both experiences he describes as terrifying and violent. Since then Osechkin has dedicated his life to denouncing torture in Russian prisons. There are so many abuses, he says, that many inmates are finding the prospects of a bloody and uncertain future on the forefront in Ukraine enticing enough to bite the recruiters as Russian defense chiefs look to prisons to strengthen army ranks. .
“Within this 21st century gulag, you can be humiliated, beaten, raped. You may be subject to the most terrible bullying. Or you will be forced to work in the industrial zone. 7:00 to 23:00, or at least more twelve hours a day, with faulty and outdated equipment, and you run the risk of losing a hand or an eye, “Osechkin told Fox News from his home in France via Zoom. “They want to leave the torture dungeons by any means. Many don’t realize they risk being killed in a week or two.”
Osechkin heads the human rights group Gulagu.net. He himself is said to be one of Russia’s most wanted men for circulating dramatic torture videos from a Saratov prison and spreading reports of discontent within the ranks of the FSB, the Russian security services.
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File photo – A wake left by a passenger plane is seen behind a Russian state flag as it passes over the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, August 7, 2014. (REUTERS / Ilya Naymushin)
Russia, for its part, has claimed to have a fraud case against Osechkin. Allegations of fraud in Russia, according to many, are widely used for anyone who has the Kremlin in their sights, such as Alexei Navalny.
Osechkin calls the active recruitment of Russian prisoners for front-line work in the war a cynical act. According to his sources – he receives advice from a range of people, including the prisoners’ families – these efforts have recently been stepped up.
The army wants sappers as the Russian army has lost a lot of them and it takes many years to train the deminers. Russia, according to Osechkin, is also looking for men to send as a kind of bait for Ukrainian soldiers, to draw fire from them in order to help the Russians track down and then attack their positions. Finally, Osechkin says, they are exploiting convicted killers and others with a violent track record to form “assassin brigades” to shoot, cut and maim “the enemy.”
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FILE – In this photo taken from the video a view of a destroyed barracks in a prison in Olenivka, in an area controlled by separatist forces supported by Russia, eastern Ukraine, on July 29, 2022. Russia and Ukraine accused themselves on Friday of bombing a prison in a breakaway region of eastern Ukraine, an attack that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian military prisoners who were captured after the fall of a southern port city of Mariupol in May.
(Photo AP)
Osechkin says the number of those who accepted such offers decreased at some point as inmates began to realize they could be used as cannon fodder. He believes this prompted a notorious man sometimes called “Putin’s Chef” to start touring prisons. This has not been confirmed, but Osechkin is not the only one to have heard the news.
The independent release of Mediazona heard it from some inmates. The “chef” is himself a former prisoner. Became a billionaire from involvement in many businesses, from catering to running the Wagner mercenary group, which incidentally denies, Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to be close to the Russian president.
“Apparently, like an ace, like a trump card, Putin took Prigozhin out and personally sent him to meetings with prisoners,” Osechkin said, adding that Prigozhin could easily sell, saying something like, “Myself once I was in prison, and now I’m recruiting you. I have become a hero of Russia and you also have a chance in Putin’s current system, to climb the ladder, get rich. “
Mediazone interviewed the prisoners who allegedly heard Prigozhin offer them “amnesty and money”. And in meeting with the recruiters, one inmate recalled that he was told “we are interested in murderers and thieves”.
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Police officers detain a protester as people gather before the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday, December 28, 2021. The Russian Supreme Court has ruled that one of the oldest and most important human rights organizations in the country it should be off.
(Photo AP)
Meanwhile, Osechkin, worries aside that prisoners will be sent to death with promises of good money, fame and honor or dreams of escape. He also says that he thinks the idea of telling already violent killers and thieves to take back their weapons is completely irresponsible and even reprehensible.
“Instead of correcting these people,” Osechkin says, “the prison system is taking their most vile and evil sides and using them for their own purposes. I think most of them won’t come back. But those who survive and come back. Russia will pose a greater danger to society, “he says. I ask how all this information manages to get out of the cells and beyond the barbed wire of Russian prisons.
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“Vladimir Putin and his PR people are trying to construct a myth that he is omnipotent and they have a super-totalitarian system. In fact, this is a mafia system. And as with any mafia, people are primarily interested in money and corruption, “he says, adding, that’s not all. “Many people within the system are themselves anti-war. Hundreds of thousands of people work in the federal penitentiary system and not all of them love Putin. Not all of them respect Putin. And not all of them are ready to participate in crimes against humanity and crimes of war”.
