A Russian convict soldier slaughtered 11 of his comrades after going on a lethal killing spree with a grenade and an AK-47 rifle, it has been claimed.
The Kremlin has actively recruited dangerous convicts in a desperate bid to fill out the ranks of its frontline troops in the Ukraine war.
Serial killers and murderers have been among those pressed into military service as part of penal battalions known initially as Storm Z.
Units of 100-150 prisoners have been attached to regular army battalions, and are often used as cannon fodder by their brutal commanders.
As part of the deal, the criminals are offered an amnesty for their crimes, if they complete and survive their deployment to the meat grinder in Ukraine.
However, numerous convicts have used their newfound freedom to escape and have often turned their guns on their comrades in the process.
In the latest horrific incident, Maxim Fedorchenko was deployed to a unit near Polohy in the Zaporizhzhia region last Saturday.
He had been serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence at a penal colony in Ussuriysk, in Russia’s far east.
On receiving his weapons, he made his way to the dugout, where he threw an RDG-5 grenade and let off a burst of rounds from his AK-47. He then fled the scene, taking his weapons with him, according to posts on Telegram and X.
Eleven soldiers are reported to have died as a result of the ferocious and unprovoked attack.
Russia’s military police have launched a manhunt for Fedorchenko and have issued a photo and physical description of him.
He is described as 180cm tall, of thin build, and with dark hair and green eyes. He has a tattoo of Death with a scythe on his left shoulder blade.
It is believed that more than 100,000 convicts have been sent to fight in Ukraine since the war started in February 2022.
Last year, a Russian deputy Justice Minister announced an astonishing drop in the country’s prison population.
Vsevolod Vukolov said the number of inmates in Russia’s prisons had gone down from a pre-war total of 420,000 to a historic low of 266,000.
Some of Russia’s most notorious criminals have been signed up to fight. One such person is Dmitry Malyshev – an infamous cannibal.
A member of a ruthless criminal group, he was convicted for the murder of two people, gun running and cannibalism in 2014 and sentenced to 25 years.
In a gruesome video, Malyshev filmed himself frying the heart of a former acquaintance and then eating it.
