Russian sociologist and blogger Igor Eidman said in an interview with UNIAN that mobilized prisoners could also threaten the regime.
"I wrote that these prisoners were engaged for six months. They were mainly recruited in August-September-October. That is, by the spring, they will have to be released, and there are tens of thousands of them. Will Prigozhin or the Russian state be able to release tens of thousands of hardened recidivist criminals who have tasted blood and have knowledge of how to handle weapons and explosives? Obviously not.
No one in Russia wants a new cold spring of 1953, which, as you know, was after the death of Stalin during the Beria amnesty. Then a crowd of prisoners came out of the camps and staged terrible massacres and rapes in Russian cities. Nobody wants it, and nobody will allow it. Moreover, there is not even any legal mechanism to release these prisoners. All of them are now "sitting" formally, and at the same time, they are fighting. Who will pardon each of these more than 40 thousand, except for Putin? This is also completely impossible. I think the "prigozhinites" will dispose of them - send them to certain death. This is already partly happening, but later it will be obvious.
All prisoners will be written off as "cargo 200" so as not to face any uprisings, discontent, or protests. After all, try to force a person who miraculously survived these six months to fight again or go to the camp. Of course, this is practically impossible, especially for an armed person. He must either be released or killed. They won't let him go, I think they will kill him. And there will be a massacre. Mercenaries will kill prisoners.
I said this, and literally, two days later, Prigozhin decided to demonstrate to everyone, primarily to the convicts themselves, that he would let them go. And defiantly issued a ticket "to life" to several dozen people, apparently from among some of his loyal dogs, or maybe these were people who did not fight at all, but simply paid off. I think he did this to destroy the rumors among the prisoners that no one would let them go to any freedom but would force them to fight and kill them. I donât know if he read my post, but on this topic, he decided to launch a preventive information strike. He even stated that he would demand that convicts admitted to MGIMO, such as students who had served 15 years in prison. Accordingly, I think he can release several dozen people, but no one will let him release several tens of thousands, and he will not do this. Therefore, the massacre of "Prigozhin's" prisoners will be inevitable by spring."