Communities across Russia have been brutalized by scores of crimes perpetrated by these returning convicts, according to a Wall Street Journal review of court documents, interviews with friends and relatives of suspects and victims, and reports in Russian media. Rights activists said dozens more go unreported.

One man staged a shootout in a cafe, killing one person and seriously wounding another, according to court documents. Another is accused of raping two girls. A third, who had been convicted of murder three times, poured gasoline on his sleeping sister and burned her alive, according to the court’s press office.

The offenses committed by the convict soldiers risk shattering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s narrative that the war protects Russia from its enemies.

“I don’t feel safe. Thousands of criminals are walking our streets,” said Anna Pekaryova, whose grandmother Yulia Buyskikh was killed in March by a convicted murderer, Ivan Rossomakhin. He had wandered the streets of her village 600 miles east of Moscow—swinging an ax and carrying a pitchfork—after fighting for the Wagner paramilitary force in Ukraine and returning a free man. “I have lost count how many times such crimes have happened.”

[I’d love to think that this utterly predictable outcome would undermine support for Putin, or at least his invasion and attempted conquest of Ukraine. Unfortunately, I’ve grown skeptical that anything other than a collapse of the lines in the Donbas or the liberation of Crimea would significantly impact Putin’s grip on power. — Ed]