Russian Police Chief Killed in Ukraine after Swapping Jail for War

A former Russian police chief has been killed in Ukraine fighting alongside convicts after swapping a jail sentence for military service.

Igor Trifonov, the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Yekaterinburg department, was killed while fighting in Ukraine with Russia's military at the end of 2023, his lawyer, Olga Kezik, told Russian newspaper Kommersant.

In 2022, he was jailed for nine years and four months in a maximum security prison on charges of bribe-taking and illegal possession of weapons, but was released in late 2023 to fight in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has recruited tens of thousands of prisoners since the full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine began in February 2022, offering them presidential pardons for six months of military service in Ukraine.

The convicts have largely been deployed as part of Russia's "Storm-Z" squads, which carry out highly attritional, infantry-led frontal assaults at the most dangerous parts of the battlefield.

Newsweek learned that the total number of convicts who have been offered presidential pardons in exchange for six months fighting in Ukraine exceeds 100,000, with some 50,000 now free to walk the streets of Russia.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

"Igor Trifonov's family intends to prove his non-involvement in the crime for which he was convicted," Kezik said.

Kezik told another local publication, It's My City, that Trifonov "wanted to prove to his homeland that he did not do this."

"He told me: 'Olga Vyacheslavovna, you fight in the courts, and I'll go there. Together we will win,'" the attorney said. "Unfortunately, this is what happened."

Kezik told Kommersant that she learned Trifonov died shortly after being sent to fight in Ukraine. The circumstances of his death were not reported.

Trifonov headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Yekaterinburg from 2011 to 2017. He later headed the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia, local outlets reported.

A list of some of the prisoners recruited into the Russian military obtained by Newsweek revealed that men past retirement age are among them. The majority are convicts from the country's ethnic minority republics, Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, a charity advocating prisoners' rights, told Newsweek.

The practice of recruiting in Russia's penal colonies began when the Kremlin was believed to be facing acute manpower shortages. Luring prisoners in with pardons from Russian President Vladimir Putin and cash incentives has allowed Moscow to boost its manpower without mobilizing the young, urban population, which could result in political repercussions.

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