Russia's Elite 'Storm-Z' Units Now Effectively 'Penal Battalions'—UK

Russia's "Storm-Z" recruits have tumbled from "elite" status to fighting in what are effectively "penal battalions," the U.K. government has said, in the latest example of Moscow's forces being plagued by chronic issues at the front lines in Ukraine.

The Kremlin is still relying on its "Storm-Z" units to carry out local pushes on the front lines in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.

Yet while Russia likely conceived of the units as "relatively elite organizations which could seize the tactical initiative," recent months have seen them "effectively become penal battalions, manned with convicts and regular troops on disciplinary charges," the U.K. government added in an intelligence update posted to social media.

Russia has an established pattern of drafting convicts into military service in Ukraine, which likely avoids the Kremlin having to introduce further unpopular mobilization measures. Drafting prisoners into military service was rife among the Wagner Group mercenary organization, and reports have long suggested the tactic has been used to fill "Storm-Z" ranks.

Although reports about the penal units first surfaced in early 2023, "these company-sized groups were likely first fielded in 2022," the U.K. ministry added. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

After Russia lost a slew of professional soldiers in the early months of the war, prisoners formed the bulk of casualties sustained in the spring and summer months in Ukraine this year, according to a project published in mid-June by the BBC and Russian independent outlet, Mediazona.

Russian commanders "send them forward in the expectation that they will be killed," Jack Watling, of the London-based defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, told the project earlier this year. "The Russian military is burning through these troops at a significant rate."

"Storm fighters, they're just meat," one soldier told Reuters earlier this month.

Western analysts have said throughout the war that Russian forces, both its conventional military and mercenary forces fighting for Moscow, have suffered from poor morale, high rates of alcoholism, and have received little in the way of thorough training before deployment.

Convicts in "Storm-Z" units are believed to have been part of Russian operations in northeastern Ukraine earlier this year.

Yet the overall picture is murky. In April 2023, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, described each "Storm-Z" company as "outside of conventional army unit structure," yet somehow attached to existing Russian regiments and brigades.

Each penal squad slotted within regular army units has around 100 to 150 recruits, and have "typically been sent to the most exposed parts of the front and often sustain heavy losses," Reuters reported in early October.

"Multiple accounts suggest the units are given the lowest priority for logistical and medical support, while repeatedly being ordered to attack," the U.K. government said on Tuesday.