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“They come highly motivated, much more so than the average recruit today,” says Valentyn about the former prisoners. There are hundreds of them, although he doesn’t reveal the exact number. In routine training, at least 50 huddle among the trees of a dense forest of bare branches on the outskirts of Kramatorsk. Some receive instructions to simulate an assault, others practice with their rifles, and others learn how to provide first aid to a wounded person.

Not every prisoner benefits from the new law. Those convicted of treason are excluded, as are drug traffickers, rapists, pedophiles, or those convicted of murder. The final say on release always rests with a judge. “There are mainly thieves and those convicted of assault,” Arey believes. Garik, a 28-year-old professional middleweight boxer, ended up in prison over a fight. He broke several bones in a man’s face, and because he was a federated athlete, the judge gave him a sentence equivalent to if he had committed assault with a knife, an aggravating circumstance that also exists in Spain. He received 13 years, but his lawyer managed to get his sentence reduced to eight. “I had been in my cell for two years, with nothing to do, when they asked me if I wanted to come. I didn’t think twice,” he says.