Before he left, Kirill* called his mother to confess something.
"I told her, 'When I was a kid I would steal money from your purse. Now it's time to pay you back.'"
To do that, however, the 41-year-old would have to die.
"If I die, they say they'll send you 5 million roubles ($80,000)," Kirill told his mother.
She was angry. He said his decision was final. Then he joined the Wagner Group.
The private military company emerged during Russia's annexation of Crimea 10 years ago, but gained particular attention more recently for its role in Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a 2023 uprising against the Kremlin, ordered by former leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
This week, in a rare statement, the group said its mercenaries were no longer fighting in Ukraine and were deployed only in Africa and Belarus.
The group has become renowned internationally as a violent and ruthless killing machine.
The ABC has spoken to a former Wagner soldier who fought in Ukraine. He shed light on the group's inner workings, as well as its training and recruitment procedures.
Kirill, a career criminal, was recruited to fight for the group from prison "like everybody else".
He said the organisation's representatives that came to his penal colony in Russia's Smolensk region warned if he signed up, it would likely be a "one-way trip".
But for someone who had already been to jail three times previously, and was due to serve six more years behind bars, the offer was too good to refuse: survive six months, and be granted freedom.
"It was my fourth time in prison. I thought, whatever, damn it," Kirill said.
"I have no family, no children, no wife, no nothing. I have a mum, but she minds her own business. I usually only visit her on her birthday."
The former inmate said he participated in battles in and around Bakhmut — a city in eastern Ukraine which, after months of intense fighting, fell to Russian forces last year.
Kirill said he had just over three weeks of training before being sent to the front lines, although he claimed many Wagner mercenaries had less.
Once he arrived in Ukraine, he said it was chaos.
"I told them, I just came here, I don't know s**t, I don't know where to run," Kirill said.
"The commanders told me, 'Just run there right now, you'll see it, along the fence. There is a destroyed school there, that is where ours guys are.'
"That's it. They don't explain anything to you."
'I saw a bullet hit someone ... I thought: what if I'm next?'
More details of Wagner's involvement in the war, particularly in the so-called "Bakhmut meat grinder" battles, have also been revealed after an investigation led by independent Russian media outlet Mediazona.
The report cited documents — seen by the ABC — from the private military company, which outline records of more than 20,000 fighters killed between January 2022 and August last year.
While neither Russia nor Ukraine make their casualty numbers public, the documents claim over 19,500 Wagner fighters were killed in theatres in and around Bakhmut. About 17,000 of them were former convicts recruited from penal colonies.
Some analysts have suggested Bakhmut was the world's most deadly battle since World War II, and the documents regularly refer to the "Bakhmut meat grinder".
The documents also claim at least 48,000 prisoners were recruited to fight for the Wagner Group.
Prigozhin had once been quoted as saying he preferred murderers and other violent offenders when looking to fill his ranks with convict mercenaries.
Kirill said he had observed Wagner fighters — or "hyenas", as he describes them — sourced from Russia's ultra-harsh prison camps in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.
"They were thirsty," he said, of their behaviour on the battlefield.
The Russian government has subsequently announced the closure of several penal colonies in the area, due to dwindling numbers of prisoners.
After two months of fighting, Kirill said he was injured and removed from the front lines, serving the rest of his time in hospital.
He said most of the people he was recruited with had been killed in Ukraine.
"You try not to get attached to anyone. They're here one day, but gone tomorrow," Kirill said.
"They replace and supplement people endlessly."
The former fighter, now living on Moscow's outskirts, said before going to the front lines, he had enjoyed playing shoot-em-up video games.
"I took part in competitions for those and really loved it, and paintball as well, all that stuff," he said.
"It's just scary because, at war, there is no restart round. There's no such thing.
"On the front lines, I remember I looked right, and I saw a bullet hit someone near me. I thought: what if I'm next?"
Prigozhin, a former close confidant of Putin's, was killed when his private jet crashed in August 2023, two months after his attempted mutiny. It has since been claimed the plane was blown up intentionally as part of a Kremlin plot.
Prigozhin had been openly critical of the war effort, and the equipment his mercenaries had been given.
After he called off the attempted insurrection, Prigozhin agreed to relocate his forces to close Russian ally Belarus.
Putin announced Wagner fighters who wanted to join Russia's official military could do so with no consequences for being involved in the uprising.
That's not something that interested Kirill, however, who is enjoying his new-found freedom.
"Putin is a damn thug. This is obvious," he said.
*Not his real name
