More than 400 Russian ‘immortalized heroes’ are major criminals

Independent Russian news site Verstka has published the results of a study it conducted into the practice of honoring convicted criminals as “war heroes.” After reviewing local and national news, including figures published by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service, it identified 58 regions that have commemorated 408 former prisoners released to fight in President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operation.”

Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, armed robbers and other persons convicted of violent crimes are commemorated by individual memorial plaques placed on schools and residential buildings, school information stands, memory corners and offices dedicated to individual “heroes”, city alleys and streets have been renamed and decorated with their portraits, museum exhibitions and sports competitions are held in their honor, trees are planted and their names are added to memorials erected to the dead of past conflicts, including those of the “Great Patriotic War”.

Verstka also analyzed the crimes committed by those released for the war. There were 128 convictions for murder, attempted murder, and serious bodily harm resulting in death. Next came drug-related crimes, with 110 cases. The rest were “banditry,” armed robbery or robbery with violence, sexual assault, rape, and serious assault. In addition, the future “heroes” committed 88 robberies, 24 burglaries, and 46 burglaries. In addition, the authorities immortalized those convicted of bodily harm, death threats, banditry, and, in two cases, rape and sexual assault.

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In some cases, the “heroes” had been convicted of several different serious crimes and more than half were “repeat offenders,” several of them having been convicted of multiple murders and manslaughters.

The analysis of the places and methods of immortalization of the dead criminals shows that the Saratov, Volgograd, Rostov regions, the Republic of Bashkortostan and the Krasnodar Territory are the most commemorated. Nearly 100 Russian schools have installed plaques and signs with the names and photographs of the dead criminals on their “heroes’ desks”, on information stands and on plaques in special “alleys of memory” in schoolyards. In nearly 200 cases, their names were added to existing collective war memorials, and in 65 cases, museum expositions were created in their honor with streets and districts named after them.

The practice of releasing prisoners to fight began in the summer of 2022 under the auspices of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s PMC Wagner, and before the end of that year, the first reports appeared in Russian media about memorials being erected for those killed.

An investigation in June by Russian news site Mediazona, in collaboration with BBC Russia, found that of the nearly 50,000 Wagner fighters sent to fight in Ukraine, about 20,000 died, of whom nearly 18,000, or nearly 90 percent, were released detainees.

In early 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry took over the recruitment of prisoners for the front. An investigation by the BBC Russian Service concluded that criminals recruited by the ministry died on average within eight weeks of arriving in Ukraine, compared to “volunteers” sentenced to Wagner who survived only four weeks longer.

According to Verstka, in 2023, more than 190 serious criminal cases were opened against former Wagner fighters who had returned from the war in Ukraine and received a presidential pardon. More than a third of them were people convicted of murder, sexual crimes or violence, and then killed or raped again upon their return, some within days or even hours of their return.

While it may be considered natural for communities to honor their citizens who died in service to their country, no matter how dishonorable the war they fought in may seem, it is incomprehensible to many that violent criminals are held up as paragons, as is currently the case in some regions of Russia.