Payment records show that more than 17,000 prisoners were killed trying to capture the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine between July 2022 and June 2023 alone.

To plug the losses, Wagner, and later the Ministry of Defence, have adapted their recruitment strategies to broaden the pool of people they can draw on.

Some people accused of crimes refuse the new deal because they are against the war in principle, others because the risk of dying or being injured on the battlefield is too great, and others because they want to stay at home to fight their case.

But they can come under huge pressure from the authorities, says Andrey Perlov’s daughter Alina.

“He refused and we made quite a big noise in the local media so he was sent to the strict punishment cell, where they brought him the contract again.”

She adds that when he refused a second time, he was forbidden from seeing or calling his family.

They still hope to prove his innocence, but the last time Alina saw her father in court in mid-July, he had lost a lot of weight. “He tries to keep himself cheerful,” she says, “but if this goes on, they will break him.”

We asked the Russian authorities about Andrey Perlov’s case and whether they are unfairly pressurising detainees to join the army. They did not respond.