Wagner is volunteers mainly from among the former prisoners. I dont care what they believe and whether they believe in anything at all, I am of the opinion that the exchange of Wagnerites for Ukrainians, which has been taking place in the Artyomovsk direction for several months during fierce street battles, is beneficial for Russia and unprofitable for Ukraine.
Just classic. ''Nazis'' in Ukraine is terrible thing, but everything is ok when criminals like serial killers, pedophilles, rapers and etc is fighting on your side. Many of time had lifteime sentences. Lifes of these peoples don't have big value in Russia, but I just remind that if they will be lucky enough to comeback alive from Ukraine, they won't get back in prisons and I'm just wondering how they will integrate in your society.
In one of the [pro-Wagner] propaganda pieces they made a big deal about NOT qualifying sex criminals and other undesirables as being offered recruitment opportunities. This specifically because of the threat they may pose to civilians. Of course it was clearly propaganda so who knows how it has been in reality? I put more to independent reports from the field when trying to get an accurate picture of reality.
I would say that from a penal recruite's point of view, most of them probably do very much wish to be 'redeemed' in the eyes of the Russian public and it would be individually important to them that the Wagner organization as a whole not develop a Blackwater-ish reputation for criminal behavior. In such a case they would be more prone to self-police the bad apples. Maybe even using the sledgehammer method in egregious cases.
From a business perspective Wagner's services would be much more valuable if they didn't come with crimes against humanity built in. For some contracts, terrorism might be a value add, but for others it is certain to be a negative to the counter-party. Thankfully to the former Ukrainians in the areas that Russia is likely interested in, the latter is the case from the Russian perspective.