Take a look at this picture.
This is a woman
named Maria Ponce Marenco.
She's a Russian journalist.
This is her
in the cage of Russian judicial
Russian prosecutors want a sente
or 29 years in prison,
according to the human rights gr
Well, why?
Well, the reason is because she
on the bombing of the Mariupol T
You know, the one full of innoce
and children, hundreds were kill
The theater that was labeled chi
above it in Russian,
one, Marenco was arrested
because she described
what happened on Telegram.
What really happened right.
That there was a bombing
and all those women and children
so many were killed.
So now she is there
in that cage
charged
with disseminating false informa
about the Russian army.
She's a mother of two
And she may very well
spend the next decade of her lif
in prison, a penal colony.
After all, Russian courts
do have a history of rubberstamp
what prosecutors recommend.
So this is the crackdown happeni
inside Russia
as Russian soldiers take those i
losses on the battlefield
that few want to be anywhere nea
Our Fred Pleitgen is OUTFRONT
live in Kiev tonight.
And Fred,
you're there on the front lines.
You had a chance to speak with
some of those Wagner fighters.
Who are the ones in those trench
by those tanks?
They are now the ones you spoke
to, Ukrainian prisoners of war.
An incredible opportunity for yo
to come face to face and speak t
What did they tell you?
I earned your first be absolutel
It was certainly a remarkable op
that we had.
And at the same time, of course,
it's also something that we need
to treat in a very sensitive way
It was Ukrainian intelligence
that allowed us access to these
Wagner fighters that had been ca
late last year on the battlefiel
in eastern Ukraine.
And, of course,
we had to make clear to these fi
that they were under no obligati
whatsoever to speak to us.
Also, of course,
we had to assure ourselves
as best we could
they did not feel under
any sort of duress to speak to u
And those are certainly things
that we conveyed to these fighte
The other thing that we obviousl
is we hid their identity.
We changed their voices.
But they gave us
some pretty remarkable insight
into some of the tactics
that Wagner is using,
specifically those human waves
of expendable fighters
that are being sent
towards frontline positions,
many of them getting killed
before they even get anywhere ne
the Ukrainians.
And also about some fighters bei
if they refuse to do so.
Here's what we heard
More
artillery targeted us.
We had no chance to hide anywher
We got an order just to run forw
We ran forward.
But one guy was hiding behind a
and refused to advance.
We reported him to the commander
and they condemned him
after he returned to the base.
He was simply taken out of the b
He dug a grave for himself
and he was shot down
50 meters from the base.
Today was
groups of fighters
were brought to the starting lin
400 people were taken there
and more and more were coming co
They were always nearby
on the starting line.
They were constantly sent
to storm positions.
One group was sent, decimated,
and then it was disbanded.
Then more and more, other
groups were sent
And, Aaron, both of these men
were Russian convicts.
They were languishing in Russian
When they said
that the boss of Wagner, Yevgeny
Prigozhin, came there
and recruited them to fight in U
At least one of the men said tha
he was told that actually
he would be in the rear echelon,
that he wouldn't
even be in the front line.
But he said he quickly realized
that it was going
to be very different than that.
You know,
those brutal assaults
were so many of these prisoners
One of the guys said
that he had taken part in four o
where many of the people around
them were just mowed
down by the Ukrainians
because they were trying to run
towards us.
But this positions
the other one
so that it was five assaults
they took part in.
Remind our viewers about 50,000
such people,
the Ukrainians say,
have been brought to the front l
by Wagner,
and many of them
have already been killed, captur
or have run away Erin.
All right. Thank you very much,
And incredible to have the oppor
to speak to them.
And as you point out, you know,
doing so with as much
care and directness as you
possibly can,
just to try to hear their story
as best as you can.
Fred Pleitgen live from Kiev.
And I want to go now to the reti
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt,
who was the former
assistant secretary of state
for political military affairs a
And Ekaterina
Karzai, the news director
and anchor for TV Rain,
which is an independent
Russian language television chan
that was shut down
by the Russian government
at the start of the war.
General Kimmitt,
these Wagner fighters,
you know, it's interesting,
Paul Wieland,
the American who's
been held for 1500 days
now in a Russian penal colony, s
some of the worst, worst operato
in that penal colony left.
They took
the offer,
will go put their hand up
and went to Ukraine
and that it's such that it can b
I don't even want to use that wo
But but some of the worst operat
and went to the front lines.
So I don't want to say this
with sort of sympathy
but nonetheless these are human
and they're being put on the fro
and they're fighting.
And you hear them talking to Fre
about a fellow fighter being sho
and killed by these commanders
after they refused to advance.
He keeps referring to this
point of where they're going to
as the starting line.
What does that even tell you
about the fighters here and the
Well, first of all, I think
we've always got to take prisone
footage with great suspect.
That's why it's against the law
land warfare.
We certainly don't
want to see our prisoners as a s
held up by the enemy.
And that's why we traditionally
do that with our prisoners. For
But what it does say is that the
people coming from the penal
colony is obviously think the fr
gives them a better chance
than living in a Russian penal c
especially since
if they do a good job,
they'll be released.
That's that's a real devil's bar
that they're signing up for.
And I think the way they're bein
demonstrates how callous
the Russian way of war is,
whether those were penal colony
Bognor Group or regular Russian
This is the way
Russia treats their soldiers.
Right. Right.
And as I said, you know,
you are talking in each of these
these are human beings.
That we are watching die.
Catarina, one of the Wagner figh
Fred, asked him
whether it was the right choice
to join Wagner
and he said to Fred, quote,
I think it was the wrong choice.
If I were at home
instead of at the penal colony,
I wouldn't have joined up.
I wouldn't have needed it.
I didn't know anything about the
Then they brought us here
under a false pretext.
And so we're at war.
But I don't think it's a just ca
Now, again,
you understand the situation
that they are there
in when they say this but,
you know, in a penal colony righ
they're saying, if I hadn't been
I wouldn't have done it.
It was just
because of how bad my situation
Does this make sense to you from
everything you're hearing?
Yeah, absolutely.
There has
been so many investigations by t
you know,
independent journalists
and human rights activists telli
about the situation in penal pen
colonies in Russia, in jails.
It is terrible
what people are going through th
and you know, that the biggest e
of how
they torture people in Russian p
is Alexei Navalny,
the biggest Russian opposition
or the leader of opposition.
I was just watching again
that the
pictures and videos
from how people were protesting
when he was arrested
and how the how the wave of, you
protests in Russian citizens
was going through the whole coun
when he was detained
after coming back to Moscow.
What I'm what I'm saying is that
people in Russia are scared of
of jails, of colonies
because of the history of terrib
attitude to prisoners.
Historically, it's
always has been like that.
But another problem is that
I don't want to lose the sense
of responsibility
for those who are going to this
I mean, it's important as well.
People didn't want to know about
They were feeling comfortable in
their lives, you know, small,
personal lives.
They didn't want to get involved
in politics.
Millions of Russians, unfortunat
they were
you know, they were choosing
to have
this normal, comfortable
lives with this president.
Who was not entering their,
you know, private spaces.
And it was a huge mistake.
Unfortunately,
a lot of the big percentage
of Russian population
was living like that above polit
And this is how they're paying r