Just a few months ago, ex-convicts recruited by the notorious Wagner Group were boasting about plans to take the fight to Europe. Now, it turns out, they’re working as taxi drivers.
One enterprising young ex-con has even started his own taxi business using the Wagner brand in Russia’s Novosibirsk region. Valery Bogdanov, with five convictions for robbery and theft under his belt, returned from the battlefield in Ukraine over the summer and says he is now getting glowing reviews from clients of his taxi business.
“I saw on the internet that people in the city were complaining about taxis. There are either not enough cars, or you order and then no one comes, or they refuse to drive you far. With us, everything is different, people are pleased that the car always arrives without problems. We’re slowly developing, and we will expand,” Bogdanov told local outlet VN.ru.
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His business card for “Wagner Taxi” features the menacing skull insignia the mercenary group is known for, and the taxi fleet will reportedly be fitted out with Wagner paraphernalia. He says he already has many happy customers.
According to the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit, Bogdanov is not the only former Wagner mercenary to find himself forced to carve out a new career path. After the fiery death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last month, a representative for the group sent out an audio message telling fighters to find a new line of work because the powers that be would no longer let them join the war against Ukraine due to “well-known circumstances.”
Now, families of the former fighters are reportedly complaining in private chat groups that they’ve been turned away from more respectable positions at defense enterprises and factories—and urged instead to work as taxi drivers or couriers for fast food restaurants.
“My son submitted documents to work at one of the city’s factories. Everyone signed off on [his employment] except for security. They rejected him,” one woman wrote, according to screenshots published by Mozhem Obyasnit from a Telegram group for pardoned Wagner fighters.
Others complained that the pardons given to ex-convicts-turned-Wagner mercenaries were useless, as their records still clearly display all their crimes for potential employers.
“It’s insulting that they promised them a clean slate and never fulfilled that promise! And there’s no need to write for the hundredth time that it’s not possible to remove convictions from the database and the guys just don’t understand this. They were promised and they believed it! In fact, they were tricked,” another mother of a Wagner fighter was quoted as saying. She went on to vent about the irony of how easy it was for authorities to “pull the guys out of prison” for the war, while it is now “impossible” to wipe their records.
“Many of them believed it, counted on returning home in six months, but most of them returned only in zinc coffins,” another family member responded.
Tatyana, the wife of a former Wagner fighter in the Tyumen region, told Mozhem Obyasnit her husband was forced into unofficial work after being rejected elsewhere: “He tried to get a job at the factory, but security rejected him. Now he’s working as a taxi driver, without registration,” she said.
An employment agency looking for workers for a factory that makes engines for military planes told the outlet they couldn’t hire ex-cons, even if they were pardoned, and another agency working to fill positions at Sheremetyevo Airport said “the FSB always turns away” candidates with criminal records.
But there’s still hope for the out-of-work war criminals. An employment agency filling spots at Burger King says they wouldn’t be allowed to work as “assistant chef” for the fast-food chain— “but they might take them as couriers.”
