We’ve been hearing for many months now that Russian prison recruits were often sent to the front with little or no training and borderline equipment. Today Reuters reports Russia has organized them into special squads known as “Storm Z” who are sent to the worst parts of the front where they are often killed at much higher rates than regular army soldiers. In fact, the regular army thinks of them as cannon fodder.

“Storm fighters, they’re just meat,” said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in May and June.

He said he’d given medical treatment to a group of six or seven wounded Storm-Z fighters on the battlefield, disobeying an order from a commander – whose name he didn’t know – to leave the men. He said he didn’t know why the commander gave the order, but claimed that it typified how Storm-Z fighters were considered of lesser value than ordinary troops by officers…

The Storm-Z squads are useful to the Russian defence ministry because they can be deployed as expendable infantry, according to Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent organisation that’s tracking the war. “The Storm fighters are just sent to the most dangerous parts of the front, in defence and in attack,” the group, which was founded in Russia, told Reuters.

The existence of the Storm Z squads is well known but also not an official designation. The seem to be replacements for the Wagner Group prison recruits who left the battlefield and were subsequently involved in a mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. The squads are generally made up of around 100-150 former prisoners but soldiers being disciplined can also be assigned to these squads.

While convicts form the core of the penal squads, some regular soldiers have been assigned to them as punishment for breaking discipline, according to two soldiers who said members of their units had been transferred in this way, as well as a Storm-Z fighter called Igor, a convict jailed for attempted murder.

The two soldiers, including the one from unit no. 40318, said officers had sent soldiers to Storm-Z for being drunk on duty, for using drugs, and for refusing to carry out orders.

This is technically illegal as soldiers are not allowed to be transferred into a penal unit unless they are convicted of something by a military court. But in practice, Russia just sends soldiers with poor discipline into these units where they are far more likely to be killed.

At the end of June one group of Storm Z fighters staged a revolt saying they would not fight because they were not receiving any food or ammunition.

“We’re given dreadful orders that are not even worth carrying out,” he added. “We refuse to continue carrying out combat missions.”

The soldiers who appeared in the video were reportedly beaten up by military police as punishment. Russia has a history of creating punishment squads going all the way back to Stalin:

…in 1942, when the Red Army was retreating from a Nazi advance, Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered soldiers who panicked or left their posts into “punishment battalions” deployed to the most dangerous parts of the front, according to a decree he signed.

Back in July a group of Storm Z soldiers made a direct appeal to Putin saying they were being wiped out not just by Ukrainian forced but by their own artillery. “We voluntarily signed the contracts to take part in the SMO [special military operation], to destroy the fascism but fascism is among us,” the spokesman said.

Convicts from Storm Z units are asking the Kremlin Ripper to stop sending them into "massacres", appealing to his human feelings I suppose, which is ironic given that he gave a go for convicts to be utilised on the frontlines.

They say they're being purposefully "murdered" with… pic.twitter.com/nJmzzMGFhs

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) July 10, 2023