Translation:

In 2024, Russia’s Defense Ministry launched an experiment: for the first time, it began sending large numbers of women from penal colonies to the war. They were promised one-year contracts, salaries starting at 220,000 rubles, 1–3 million rubles in compensation for injuries, and 5 million rubles in the event of death. But most importantly, they were promised pardons and release from their sentences. Instead, many ended up in units where, according to their accounts, they faced sexual violence, extortion, threats of being “zeroed out,” and an inability to get commanders’ crimes investigated.

“Verstka” reconstructed the history of the project using dozens of voice messages, documents, correspondence, and testimonies from military personnel and their relatives.

“To start my life over”

In July 2026, military medic Lyudmila Poltarakova sent several messages to people she knew from the combat zone.

“Today, the commandant’s office staff told me straight out that there’s an 80% chance I’ll die right now. I don’t give a fuck, I’m tired of this fucking bullshit!”

“I’m afraid they’ll simply take me away at night. They’re already moving the girls who were helping me to positions away from me. Our command is preparing something.”

Several days earlier, Lyudmila had refused to go to the front line. Poltarakova believed the order was an attempt to get rid of her. Shortly before that, she had reported a rape to a military investigator and told him about corruption in her unit. In her written statement, she said she feared being “physically eliminated.”

A year and a half earlier, Lyudmila had volunteered to go to war herself.

Representatives of the Defense Ministry came to the penal colony in Irkutsk Oblast where Poltarakova was serving a 14-year sentence for drug trafficking. They offered the women prisoners contracts—supposedly for one year, as usual. They promised salaries starting at 220,000 rubles, 1–3 million rubles for injuries, and 5 million rubles in the event of death. But most importantly, they promised pardons and release from their sentences.

Poltarakova agreed almost immediately. “To start my life over,” a friend later recalled her saying in a conversation with Verstka.

Lyudmila was one of 73 prisoners whom the Defense Ministry brought together to form an experimental unit of convicted women serving as military medics.

“They didn’t know what they were supposed to train the women for”

Russia’s Defense Ministry had already made its first attempts to send female prisoners to war in Ukraine in 2022. At first, recruiters visited individual prisons and conducted targeted campaigns, but almost no one made it to the front.

By 2024, Verstka found, the Defense Ministry had decided to launch a much larger project—possibly because of a shortage of personnel at the front. As an experiment, recruiters gathered several hundred volunteers from women’s penal colonies across Russia, formed special battalions of female prisoners, and sent them to the war to provide tactical medical care—evacuating wounded soldiers from the front line and providing first aid. The project was called “Choice.”

The first group of female contract soldiers was recruited in early 2024 from Russia’s Southern Federal District, including Krasnodar Krai, according to a Verstka source involved in the Choice project. “As far as I was told, there was no selection or training. And the contingent was, well… AUE [a prison subculture slogan]. They were simply told, ‘If you want your freedom, sign the contract.’”

But, the source claims, “they were quickly thinned out”: “They killed each other, drunken accidental shootings, someone threw a grenade into a dugout, someone died from drugs, someone was killed out of jealousy… And a small number were killed while carrying out combat missions.” Verstka was unable to find information about the first recruitment from other sources.

“At first, they were used in evacuation teams—and these are literally suicide squads, because they’re fired on with every type of weapon,” the Verstka source explains. “Both sides are increasing medical casualties, there’s no point hiding it. They target medics so that the wounded are left without any possibility of assistance or evacuation.” The surviving women were eventually transferred to the rear to work as orderlies at military hospitals.

For the next recruitment of female prisoners, the authorities did arrange training. In the fall of 2024, Defense Ministry recruiters came to a penal colony in the settlement of Bozoy in Irkutsk Oblast and offered the prisoners contracts to go to the front as medical orderlies after completing a training course.

The local Health Ministry was tasked with training the future military personnel in tactical medicine. “The civilian medics were horrified when they were given this task,” says a Verstka source who worked with penal colonies in Irkutsk Oblast. “They understood that they had no specialists in military field surgery, or tactical medicine, as it’s commonly called now. So they turned to volunteers involved in the war.”

Eventually, they found Wagner PMC fighters and veterans of combat operations in the Caucasus, Syria, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine. They became the women prisoners’ instructors.

“They didn’t know what they were supposed to train the women for,” recalls one of the instructors who accompanied them. “To put it mildly, they were shocked. They were taken into the colony, and the impression was indescribable… They were brought into the community center, where about a hundred women were sitting. They were all wearing prison uniforms and headscarves, and everyone had tense faces. The group was, of course, very mixed. You could tell just by looking at their faces that their previous lives had inevitably led them to prison.”

It quickly became clear that it would be impossible to work effectively with all the prisoners at once. “You can’t work with each one individually. We needed to find people, leaders within the group, through whom we could influence the others.”

One of these women was 37-year-old Lyudmila Poltarakova, who had been convicted of large-scale drug trafficking. “The military picked Lyuda out immediately. She had, how should I put it, an intelligent face. She was neat, took care of herself, dressed properly, and spoke well,” the Verstka source recalls.

“She can walk the line if she has calculated every move ahead”

Before her imprisonment, Poltarakova practiced aikido and strength sports. In 2017, she won first place at the Vladimir Kravtsov European Arm Lifting Championship, lifting 44 kilograms with the “Russian Brick” apparatus. She was awarded the title of Master of Sport of International Class.

Two years after the competition, Moscow’s Butyrsky District Court sentenced Lyudmila to 15 years in a general-regime penal colony. The 31-year-old Poltarakova was arrested in Moscow while making drug drops, leaving packets of mephedrone around a courtyard. During a search of her rented apartment, investigators found another roughly 1,500 packets and almost half a kilogram of the drug.

She immediately admitted her guilt, having “initially taken a position of remorse and told the whole truth,” according to the court ruling. During questioning, she explained that she had grown up in an orphanage, did not use drugs herself, and sold them for money—to help her brother and sister.

After the trial, she was transferred to Penal Colony No. 40 in Irkutsk Oblast.

“She’s very smart, inclined toward calculated risks, and can walk the line if she has thought through every move in advance. Not a typically feminine mindset, very strong-willed, even compared with my combat comrades. She has a highly developed sense of justice,” one acquaintance described her to Verstka.

“The sentence is unfortunately long. So you can’t forget that besides this life, there’s another life too—one that looks like this, beautiful,” Poltarakova said in an interview with Vesti-Irkutsk in February 2024. Lyudmila took part in an all-Russian competition for prisoners. She sang in French, wearing a dress and hat in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The television report explained that the colors actually came from the bags used to bring synthetic padding material into the prison—the material Lyudmila had repurposed into the dress. By then, she had already spent five years in the penal colony.

A few months later, Defense Ministry officials arrived at Penal Colony No. 40 and offered the women contracts.

“You girls are a powerful destabilizing factor”

When they first saw the military instructors, the women whispered and giggled, recalls one person who was in the room. The instructors then told them that a week earlier they had buried a comrade, a special forces soldier with experience in campaigns in the North Caucasus. “And in this war, he lasted eight months. You have none of his experience, and you women are a priori weaker than men in this situation. Your chances of survival are even lower. If you don’t do what I tell you and listen to me, you’re taking that chance away from yourselves.” The room fell silent.

After confirming that everyone in the room was there voluntarily, the instructor said they were expected to obey him without question: “If I say crawl, you crawl. If I say squat, you squat. Don’t ask why. I’ll explain everything at the end.”

The prisoners, who had never even heard of tactical medicine before, underwent two weeks of training. “But the girls were incredibly motivated. I had trained soldiers for the war before, and I’d never seen anything even close to this. These girls were giving it everything they had. Discipline was excellent, and there wasn’t a single conflict during the training,” one of the instructors told Verstka.

They trained outside during the winter as well: “The girls would put on makeup and dress up for these training sessions.” They were taught how to crawl, apply a tourniquet and pressure dressing, and evacuate a wounded person from the battlefield. Working in pairs, they carried each other around outside.

They also attended classes taught by instructors from a medical college, and the prisoners were issued a “paramedic certificate.” “But it was a super-condensed program,” recalls one person who attended the classes.

According to those who took part in the training, Lyudmila constantly asked for additional information. Eventually, she was allowed to receive a tactical medicine textbook.

For the final class, the instructors arrived in full uniform and wearing their medals. They gave each woman a first-aid kit and advised them “under no circumstances to go to the front line.”

“Generally speaking, if women have ended up at war, that’s a sign that things are really fucking bad in the country,” one of the instructors said. “If I were a commander and they told me they were bringing women into my unit, I’d do everything I could to refuse. You girls are a very powerful destabilizing factor. Men have been at war in the trenches for three years, and then women are brought in. Hormones will go through the roof. No law, no regulation will be able to contain it. It’ll turn into chaos.”

But, according to one person who was in the room, the prisoners did not listen. “Everyone believed in their own rosy dream. We’ll break through, we’ll get our freedom…”

“Their lives turned out very differently,” an acquaintance who knew the prisoners told Verstka. “Some, having escaped into this illusion of freedom, went completely off the rails. Some started building a new life. Some have already died. A small percentage genuinely tried to earn their freedom honestly. I’m talking about Lyudmila first and foremost.”

“You’re not a medic, not a service member, not even a woman. You’re a ‘Veshka’”

Just before New Year 2025, the women were taken out of the penal colonies. A week passed between signing their contracts and being sent “across the ribbon.” First, they flew to Rostov-on-Don, then traveled in a convoy of military vehicles, and finally arrived in Luhansk Oblast.

The new contract soldiers were first brought to the headquarters of the separate 370th Medical Battalion in Novopskov, 130 km from Luhansk, commanded by Ramazan Mutalipov. From there, the women were assigned to units of the 1st Tank Army. On paper, they were listed as military medics.

In practice, they soon discovered, they had a different status in the army: “Veshkas.” The prisoners were given the nickname from the first letter of the word “Vybor” (“Choice”), the name of the project to recruit people from prisons for military service.

“You quickly realize that to the command, you’re not a medic, not a service member, and not even a woman. You’re a ‘Veshka,’” one of Verstka’s sources says.

The women would later repeat this word dozens of times—in correspondence, voice messages, and statements. “Want leave? You’re a Veshka. Want an award? You’re a Veshka. Want medical treatment? You’re a Veshka. Want justice? You’re a Veshka.”

Lyudmila was assigned as a medic to the 12th Tank Shepetovsky Regiment of the Kantemirovskaya Division of the 1st Tank Army. In the Svatove district of Luhansk Oblast, they were given an underground dugout with three bunk beds, moldy pillows, and a landline telephone. The women made the new quarters more comfortable. “We covered all the walls, the guys helped us, installed a water heater, built a shower, bought everything we needed. It stopped being a dugout and became a picture-perfect place,” recalls one of Lyudmila’s fellow medics, who had also come from a penal colony.

They bought bed linen, blankets, a kettle, and stuffed animals. As a precaution, guards were stationed at the entrance to the women’s dugout: military police officers were on constant duty. Relations with ordinary soldiers got off to a good start—something that could not be said about the commanders.

“She’s okay, you can fuck her”

“The abuse started immediately… The very first battalion commander who came to us said he could send us to the front line, where we would be killed right away, or he could keep us at the hospital. But for that, the girls had to come to him at night.”

Some of them went—and only later realized that they had simply been deceived and that the officer had no ability to influence where they served, recalls one of the medics who spoke to Verstka. Another medic said she had “heard” about similar cases, but Verstka was unable to locate the women who had allegedly been deceived in this way.

In early 2025, a new regimental commander, Sergei Zhitkov, call sign Oskol, came to meet the former prisoners. In voice messages, Lyudmila told an acquaintance: “He looked us over very deliberately… If there had been younger girls, I might have gotten away with it. But he clearly took an interest in me.”

Zhitkov began summoning Lyudmila to his trench to give him medical massages. For the first few times, that was all that happened, according to Poltarakova’s acquaintance, who recounted her words. “When he started getting handsy and she refused, he yelled, ‘Then why the hell did our battalion commander recommend her to me?’ It turned out that Oskol and the commander of the medical battalion, Mutalipov, were longtime friends. And that it was the commander of the 370th Medical Battalion, Mutalipov, who had sent Lyudmila to him, saying, ‘She’s okay, you can fuck her.’”

Then came February 14. The women medics put on music in the dugout and danced. “We had such a good celebration,” recalls one of the medics.

Then, according to the medic’s testimony, a drunk Oskol called. He summoned Lyudmila to him again, ostensibly to give him a sports massage. As she walked the two kilometers to Zhitkov’s quarters, she became hot, took off her body armor, and unzipped her fleece jacket. Underground, the commander led her into a separate room and immediately began pulling off her sweater.

“I only read later that the victim shouldn’t feel ashamed…,” Lyudmila said during questioning. “When it’s happening, and there are objects around you that can kill you right there—guns, grenades, knives… I stopped resisting. I just froze. When he finished, he said nothing. I went back into the common room, and there were young staff officers sitting there, all looking down at the floor, and no one said a word.”

Commander Zhitkov, the woman later told a military investigator, continued raping his subordinate throughout March.

According to Poltarakova’s statements, there were many witnesses to the abuse. For example, a serviceman with the call sign Viy would take Lyudmila to Commander Zhitkov. “He was acting commander of the medical company. And Oskol would send him to get me at night, during the day—it didn’t matter, whenever he felt like it. Viy would come and get me from the dugout and take me to Oskol’s command post,” Lyudmila said in a voice message to a friend. Verstka tried to contact the serviceman, but he did not respond.

“The whole 12th Regiment knew about it. And when Oskol called our dugout one night in April and told us to provide sexual services to the division commander, who had come to visit him, I couldn’t take it anymore. I started screaming. I had a breakdown.”

Other medics in the dugout and the military police officers guarding it witnessed the incident. One of the convicted women who served with Poltarakova also confirmed to Verstka that Lyudmila was summoned over the “tapik” in the middle of the night: “They said some big shot had arrived and that he needed to be serviced.”

Instead of Lyudmila, another convicted woman went to the commander. She returned toward morning and said that “nothing happened, they just drank.” “But she’s probably afraid too, because she knows what it means out there at the front. I mean, it’s very easy to kill someone,” Lyudmila explained in voice messages.

After the public scandal, Poltarakova was urgently sent back to the 370th Medical Battalion. Before that, she was made to sign a statement saying that there had been no sexual violence by regimental commander Zhitkov and that she had no complaints against him. Poltarakova signed the withdrawal “voluntarily, because she wanted to leave the story in the past and was afraid it would negatively affect her future service and her chances of receiving an award that could help reduce her sentence,” according to her testimony to an investigator obtained by Verstka.

She left for an evacuation point on the front line—“to stay as far away from the rapist as possible,” she explained to acquaintances. The other “Veshkas” remained, “already for a year and a half, constantly in a forest belt underground.” One of the convicted women told Verstka: “There are different numbers of wounded here—sometimes 15–20 people in 24 hours. We stay on our feet for two or three days without sleep or food. I don’t count all the wounded, there’s no time. Sometimes there’s just one, but he’s very badly wounded, so we work on him for seven hours or so, and then wait for evacuation. But they told us to forget about leave altogether, just like awards. They say we’re prisoners, that we don’t deserve them. They don’t give a damn. They always throw it in our faces that we’re prisoners.”

“At first everything was fine, but then the commanders were left tearing their hair out”

Poltarakova is not the only woman from the experimental medical battalion to report attempts at sexual abuse. “I’m at a position where some guy comes to me, says he’s the brother of an FSB officer, and that he’ll throw a grenade into my dugout if I don’t have sex with him. Who am I supposed to report this to—you?” 23-year-old former prisoner Darya Chirukhina, call sign Aga, asked a senior officer in a phone conversation.

Chirukhina went to war with Poltarakova from Irkutsk Oblast, also serving as a medic with the 370th Medical Battalion. She asked for a recording of the conversation to be posted in one of the chats about the war, and then stopped responding. In public complaints about conditions in the battalion, she mentioned physical abuse, bribes, and a lack of medical care.

“Even in the penal colony, I had more rights when it came to resolving civilian problems… I developed diabetes during the war,” Chirukhina wrote and said in a public complaint. “I repeatedly appealed to the command for medical care, and for six months they simply turned me away. Our command used all kinds of manipulation and pressure to make me submit a report refusing treatment. Whenever men with stars on their shoulders come to visit, they deliberately hide us so we don’t say anything we shouldn’t…”

In a recorded conversation with the commander of her medical battalion, Mutalipov, Chirukhina complained about threats and said: “They shoved me into the 1432nd Regiment to haul 200s [dead] with an inflamed ovary and polycystic ovary syndrome. I’m not refusing combat missions—I carry these bodies, crying.” She wrote about this as well in the comments under her post on the Insider Zov Telegram channel: “Every other day I carry up to 130 kg on my back… The bodies are heavy, and it’s summer too… rain, so they get heavier from the water, and the bodies swell up as well.”

The experimental group of prisoners from the penal colony was split in two: half—around 40 women, according to Poltarakova—serve in hospitals in Luhansk, Starobilsk, Svatove, and Severodonetsk, while the other half work as medics on the front line.

“I could feel the girls’ mood changing as their service went on,” says one of Verstka’s sources who knew the prisoners who signed contracts. “At first everything was fine, but then it started. The commanders were left tearing their hair out. Some of the women got carried away with the easy access to alcohol, drugs, and huge numbers of men… There were some wild ones among the women from prison. Then came scandals, intrigues, the suicide of a young man whom one of them had taken a liking to, and then she started seeing another one… Exactly what I was afraid of. I don’t know what the command was thinking, but I was shocked when one of the girls called me on video and I saw that she was in a dugout with men. It’s ridiculous to have them living together like that.”

One of the convicted women who signed a contract in Irkutsk Oblast says that both commanders and the women who came from the penal colonies drink heavily. “Yes, there’s plenty of everything, considering where we came from. There are, of course, girls who don’t turn anything down, but they also live like they’re in the lap of luxury, close to the command. And there are people like us who suffer because of them. And as for those of us over 40, don’t even get me started.”

The women from the penal colonies told Verstka that some of them also entered into romantic relationships with men at the front—voluntarily. “But the girls get pregnant,” Verstka’s sources say. Babies are sent away from military hospitals: “The babies are where things really get fucked up. The little one isn’t even a month old, and they take them away from their mothers. I personally sent babies away, and I still feel terrible about it,” one of the convicted women told Verstka.

The prisoners told Verstka about at least three births and babies who were initially threatened with being sent to an orphanage. Eventually, the mothers managed to find distant relatives, and the children were sent to them under powers of attorney.

The women are not demobilized after giving birth, the Verstka sources claim—they continue serving “under duress.” Verstka was unable to speak with the women who became pregnant at the front.

“People are making so much money here that they lose their humanity”

On June 6, 2025, Poltarakova was wounded when a drone attacked her in the Svatove district as she was carrying a wounded soldier. The resulting traumatic brain injury led to epilepsy; Lyudmila suffered her first seizure on the plane on her way back to the war. Despite this, she returned to her unit and went back to the front as a medic. Over the following months, she evacuated dozens of wounded soldiers from the battlefield and stabilized them before they were sent to hospitals. According to her fellow soldiers, Lyudmila saved more than 300 people during her service.

Lyudmila spent New Year 2026 with the 6th Assault Company of the 2nd Battalion of Regiment No. 15 of the 2nd Taman Division, ordering green peas and boiled sausage for Olivier salad.

In January, she told acquaintances that she had witnessed a “zeroing.”

“The commander planted an explosive device on the quad bike that the senior enlisted man used to transport radios and soldiers,” Poltarakova said. According to her, the soldier had refused to collect 300,000 rubles from the troops: the platoon commander allegedly demanded the money, threatening otherwise to leave the soldiers at “point zero” on fabricated pretexts, including fake medical diagnoses. The senior enlisted man threatened to appeal to the military prosecutor’s office and was soon killed when the quad bike exploded.

Poltarakova claimed that the previous night she had accidentally seen the commander planting the explosive device, but only understood what she had witnessed after Zhukov’s death. “The commander planted the explosive device,” she said in a message to an acquaintance obtained by Verstka.

Verstka contacted the platoon commander. He denied the allegations, saying that the senior enlisted man “was a worthy soldier and died doing his duty, on a combat mission,” while Poltarakova’s version was “speculation.” “There is no way she could have supposedly seen someone planting an explosive device, because the dugout and all the utility buildings are some distance away from where the vehicles are kept! The photos showed drone batteries. And you can see a crater in the ground. This soldier had been in my unit from the very beginning, since 2022. I appointed him senior enlisted man, and he did his job excellently. There simply is no motive, and what kind of explosive device would it have been? Like in the movies—you drive five kilometers away and detonate it! We don’t use remote devices here; we simply don’t have them. I have absolutely no idea why Lyudmila would make accusations against me,” the serviceman told Verstka.

The officer called the contract soldier a “pathological liar” and said that after she refused to follow an order, she “started slandering the higher command.” He said he “didn’t look into” why Poltarakova had been transferred out of his company.

Lyudmila’s military acquaintances said they believed her, primarily because such extortion is so widespread. One of them explained why such cases are not investigated: “You have no idea what’s going on in the newly occupied territories, how much mutual protection there is here. People are making such enormous amounts of money here that they lose their humanity and any sense of boundaries.”

“I tarnished the Defense Ministry’s impeccable reputation”

Soon afterward, Poltarakova was wounded again at the front. In June 2026, after being admitted to a hospital, Lyudmila learned that the rape allegations had not gone away. She began receiving threatening calls again and was pressured to sign statements saying she had no complaints against Commander Oskol. She eventually broke and sent messages to be published on one of the channels about military service in the war, which had 83,000 subscribers.

“I’m constantly at the front. I’m well known in my area, and my medical post provides care to more than one frontline unit,” Poltarakova said in her public statement. “I refused evacuation when a Ukrainian Baba Yaga drone dropped explosives on my medical post while I was working there with the wounded, because there was no one to take over. No one is eager to go to the front. Because you can’t leave an entire sector without a medic.”

“I can now say with full confidence that we are all powerless slaves. Want an award for being wounded? You’re a prisoner, you’re not entitled to one! They struck me off the list for the award! In the end, another woman from a penal colony received it—one who had never even been to the front. She simply slept with the chief medical officer of the 1st Tank Army, call sign Tonus, and gave him a convertible. Want leave after eight months of hellish work at the front? You’re a prisoner, you’re not entitled to it! Want to simply rest in a hospital after surviving at the front? You’re a prisoner, you’re not entitled to it! Never in my life have I had my conviction thrown in my face so often! I’ve served honestly from the very first day I signed my contract. I don’t hide in hospitals; I’m always on the front line, under… But the command of the 370th Battalion doesn’t give a damn. The command is living it up in the rear, starting second families, opening businesses, drinking so much that they have to dig themselves out afterward.”

“I was never humiliated like this in prison as I have been in the army. I’ve heard dozens of times already: ‘When are you all going to fucking die?’ Send us back to prison if you think this experiment has reached a dead end! We take the same risks as everyone else on the front line, perform heroic deeds, come under fire, but whenever they get the chance, the command still reminds us: ‘You’re a fucking Veshka, you’re nothing but trouble!’”

After Poltarakova’s complaints, the commander gathered the women who had signed contracts from the penal colonies and announced that there would be no pardons for them—and that once the war was over, they would all be sent back to prison to serve out the remainder of their sentences. A scandal erupted in the medical battalion. Lyudmila recorded several more video appeals.

According to Poltarakova, “there’s a third person who benefits from keeping this rape story alive,” but Zhitkov believes she is the one doing it herself. “It became clear to me that I wouldn’t get out of this situation alive, so I submitted a report requesting termination of my contract because of the changes to it, because I believed this information to be true and decided that it would be safer to be in prison than to be killed by a colonel who was covering his tracks. I also made this story public and brought it to the attention of the media because I saw this as the only way out. Otherwise, the case would be buried and I would quietly be eliminated. The war will cover everything up.”

Verstka was unable to contact Zhitkov.

On June 30, Poltarakova filed a rape complaint with Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Sergei Yegorov, deputy military prosecutor of the 1st Tank Army. Several days later, she was locked inside a hospital in Novopskov, had all her phones confiscated, and was told she was being sent on a combat mission.

“Today I barely managed to fight them off and stop them from taking me to the front line, to the 1432nd Regiment. They read out the order assigning me there in front of the entire battalion—a completely unheard-of thing,” Lyudmila wrote to acquaintances. “I refused. They threatened to put me in prison. I agreed. They were stunned.”

Instead, a report was drawn up against Poltarakova for misconduct.

“So apparently, with my post, I tarnished the Defense Ministry’s impeccable reputation and offended their finest sensibilities! I insulted the Defense Ministry!? Seriously, me?! And not the officers who have completely overstepped the mark and come to believe they are above the law? Not the commanders of regiments and divisions who are convinced that every female Veshka is obliged to give herself to them with all the passion and fervor at the first snap of their fingers? Not the officers who have imagined themselves to be God and taken it upon themselves to decide who lives and who dies? Nooo, I’m the one who dishonored the Army because I decided to speak out!

“I’m telling you openly now that I will no longer keep silent about any known cases of commanders violating the law! I’m even prepared for my own side to ‘zero me out’! Maybe my death will force someone else to start talking too, because by keeping the problem quiet, we’re only making our situation worse.”

The military prosecutor reassured the contract soldier that if anything happened to her on a combat mission, “the military prosecutor’s office would make sure the suspicions were correct and would definitely punish those responsible.”

“So, in order for them to believe me when I say they want to physically eliminate me, I have to die first. That course of events didn’t work for me, so I decided to inform the public about this abuse of power,” Poltarakova said in a recorded video.

“I understand that I will never be able to fight this system of mutual cover-ups, the inaction of government officials, and the authority wielded by such senior commanders as Lieutenant Colonel Mutalipov and Colonel Zhitkov on my own, and that I will become another victim of the war.”

“Chaos, anarchy—and this is the inevitable result”

From July 15 onward, Chirukhina and Poltarakova, who had begun speaking out about the situation in the 370th Medical Battalion, stopped responding. Lyudmila managed to tell her relatives that military police had come for her at the hospital, “took me out in handcuffs, didn’t let me change clothes or pack my things, drove me away like a criminal in this cage at the back of the vehicle, and took away my last basic phone.”

Military personnel and soldiers’ relatives on the Insider_ZOV Telegram channel, which has more than 80,000 subscribers, began collecting signatures for a petition to the Prosecutor General and the head of the Investigative Committee. They are demanding that the missing service members be located and that all the allegations they made be investigated.

Another convicted woman, Natalia, was sent to the assault company to replace Lyudmila. In a conversation with Verstka, the commander described the new medic, a “Veshka,” this way: “A person with a difficult life. From talking to her, I understood that this isn’t her first sentence. Apparently her daughter did something, and she took the blame. I think her first sentence was for killing her husband. Quiet, modest, not particularly sociable, and not demanding in everyday life.”

Another convicted woman from the medical battalion who spoke to Verstka continues to work at the front, hoping that someday she will finally be granted leave so she can see her grandson. “Some of the girls have already finished their prison sentences, but they still can’t leave here,” she sighs.

According to a Verstka source close to the Federal Penitentiary Service, a third recruitment drive for convicted women began in penal colonies in Irkutsk Oblast in 2025: lists were drawn up and training began—but then “an order suddenly came down to stop everything.”

“The project was deemed a failure. And I said from the very beginning that it was a doomed idea. Chaos, anarchy—and this is the inevitable result.”

The day before this article was published, it became known that Poltarakova was alive and at the front. A criminal case was opened against her over her refusal to follow an order to go on a combat mission from the hospital. No criminal case was opened over the rape. Colonel Sergei Zhitkov was promoted in 2025 to acting commander of the Kantemirovskaya Division.

Translation:

Former commander of the 4th battalion of the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade, and now chief of staff of a mechanized unit, Dmytro Hlushchenko, told Yuriy Romanenko in an interview about the battle for Huliaipole a year ago, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost significant territory. The full video is here; there is a lot of interesting information in it.

We are publishing a somewhat shortened version of the part of his account about how officers sent from higher headquarters, who were supposedly there to help, actually harmed the defense during an active enemy assault.

The Arrival of “Supervisors” from Headquarters

When the situation on a particular axis begins to escalate, supervisors — representatives of higher headquarters — immediately show up at the brigade and battalion command-and-observation posts (COPs).

They are called “helpers” — and not without reason. But let me say right away: what I personally encountered does not apply to the representatives who were at my COP — there were no problems with them.

However, “overseers” arrived at the brigade, in the worst traditions of the 1990s. Their activities looked more like sabotage against us.

First of all, they treated the personnel like trash. I had never seen anything like it — insults and humiliation. They humiliated the brigade commander in front of his personnel, which is absolutely unacceptable. They communicated like a bunch of crude village thugs. I was genuinely shocked — it completely undermined the morale of the personnel.

Another interesting point: these “comrades” directly controlled combat operations, even though the brigade commander is responsible for all the results, and the battalion commander at the battalion level. The decisions should have remained with them, but the brigade commander was effectively removed from command and carried out all their nonsensical orders.

These people generally have no combat experience — they encountered the war in headquarters and acquired their understanding of military affairs from monitors and livestreams. They have absolutely no idea what is happening on the front line or at the positions. I called them adherents of the “cult of restoring lost positions through the redistribution of forces and assets.” For them, it is a genuine religion.

The “Cult” of Restoring Lost Positions

We have a fairly aggressive reactive cult whose only concern is restoring lost positions. There aren't enough men? Doesn't matter — redistribute forces and assets and restore the lost position.

I tell them: “I have 100 infantrymen left covering 14 kilometers.” And they say: “Find reserves, redistribute forces and assets, restore the lost position.” And that's it — with absolutely no regard for whether it makes sense. It is a religion.

We don't have the task of winning, nor do we even have the concept of setting objectives. The actual goal of war is very simple — destroy the enemy's army.

But we don't have the task of destroying the enemy. The task is to hold points on a map, half of which are drawn on paper without taking the actual situation into account. Someone sitting in the rear draws: occupy this, move there — but they don't go there themselves; they send the guys there. Half of these points aren't needed at all, no matter what. Of course, there are key heights and positions worth holding, for which it is worth taking risks and making sacrifices. But half of the points drawn on the map are completely unnecessary — and we are still expected to die for them.

The principle of these “helpers” is this: 100% blind obedience, unquestioning execution of orders, and holding points on the map.

If you sacrifice a battalion for some useless hole in a tree line — you're a great commander. But if you destroy a lot of the enemy and preserve your personnel while losing a hole in a tree line — you're no longer a commander and don't know how to fight. That's the logic of these overseers. This is a very widespread culture that has been actively imposed and cultivated over the past year and a half.

Micromanagement

I'll tell you what these supervisors started doing. During the very first week of the enemy's assault operations, the “helpers” broke our communications. The battalion's communications system had been set up quite efficiently: each company had its own dedicated channel on the repeater, as well as a point-to-point channel so that the company COP could communicate with its positions and the commander could exercise command from anywhere. The battalion mortar battery had its own channel, there was a general alert channel so everyone could hear what was happening, plus two backup channels as required.

And what did these geniuses come up with? They put everyone on a single channel. Fourteen kilometers of front — all on one channel. Why? They wanted to hear the positions and know what was happening at the strongpoints.

We fought them for about a week until we managed to adapt: the mortar battery stayed on its own radio channel, while transferring everyone else to a single channel ultimately proved impossible. Somehow, it worked out. The communications personnel suffered the most — they were running around with these repeaters, the enemy was hunting them, and men were killed because of these unnecessary changes.

It's worth going back a little. Before the enemy's assault operations began, they had learned the lessons we had taught them, systematized them, and scaled them up — primarily in their work against our logistics. First of all, there was engineering and mine-laying work. I suspect an engineer-sapper company was involved — two or three crews that mined our logistical routes: trails and road junctions.

They laid the mines using large numbers of cheap drones made “from shit and sticks” — the only task was to reach the target, drop the mine, and release control, after which the drone would crash. Everything was covered with these drones. At first, they mined whatever they could reach — we could see them on electronic warfare systems. Then they started covering our trails and key junctions.

At first, I managed: we organized crews that flew over and checked the roads, plus several groups that walked around and shot down these drones along the routes. We held out for a while. But as time went on, it increasingly felt like trying to bail water out of a sinking ship with a spoon — a pointless exercise, because the enemy's sappers were constantly mining all our logistics around the clock. A lot of equipment and personnel were lost because of this.

They put anti-personnel mines on the trails to blow people's legs off. At junctions, they used anti-tank mines to stop vehicles. The “Rubicon” unit was also operating separately, using optics at ranges of up to 40 kilometers — constantly monitoring our roads and setting up ambushes. At first, we fought them quite successfully: we dropped grenades, launched drones, and maintained listening posts. For the first three weeks or so, we were actively dealing with them.

The next level was the assault units — battalions that directly conducted the attacks. They operated straightforwardly against the front line: they would focus on a position and start destroying it. If I had 50–60 drones for the entire battalion per day, that was already considered good. They could send up to 80 drones into a single position in one day. And they did this every day.

So these “beauties” put us on a single channel, and command and control effectively became dependent on the radio, because it was impossible to effectively manage everything through one channel. Fortunately, our communications were organized differently — every COP had Starlink, Farlep, and, as a last resort, “Zelenka.”

And that's when it started: “You're not talking enough on the radio. Why are you silent?” They kept getting on my case about it. Meanwhile, I was dealing with enemy assaults — three to six or even nine attacks a day, with the enemy attacking from morning until dark.

At my COP, I had the full picture — screens, intelligence, a mortar battery, UAVs, all our feeds and those of neighboring units, communications with all the MITs, radios — I could hear everything the positions were saying. I had complete situational awareness and coordinated everything. My job as a commander was coordination, not direct control. The company COPs received tasks from me by phone, Farlep, or IP telephony and directly controlled their own positions.

The brigade chief of staff calls: “Aleksandrovich, why aren't you communicating with the infantry over the radio?” I reply: “Colonel, why would I need to communicate with them? I have communications with the company COPs, and according to the regulations, I command the company COPs. If necessary, I contact the strongpoints directly. But overall, I control the entire situation, I'm constantly up to date, and have maximum situational awareness.”

Twenty minutes later, the brigade commander calls: “Aleksandrovich, you need to command the strongpoints directly.” This is how this chain of micromanagement works — first they pressure the chief of staff, then the brigade commander.

I explain the same thing to the brigade commander and ask him not to interfere because we are about to be attacked. Another 20 minutes pass, and the deputy corps commander at the COP calls: “Aleksandrovich, you have to command the strongpoints directly.”

I reply: “Fine, I definitely will.” Forty minutes later, the chief of communications arrives with some representative: “Sanych, what's not working for you?” I say: “Andriy, what do you mean?” — “What is it that you can't do over the radio?” — “Andriy, are you kidding? I have a phone, I have an MIT, I hear everything, and if necessary, I can tell the MIT and press a button — everyone hears me. The radio is a last resort. I have everything under control, everything is working. What do you want from me?”

He says: “Can you say something on the radio from time to time so they’ll get off my back?” I ask: “Is it really that bad?” — “These ‘helpers-saboteurs' are eating us alive.”

I pick up the phone and call the COP: “Get on the secure line with the guys right now and tell them: the battalion commander is going to come on the radio now and say a few things for show. Have them acknowledge it and don't do anything.”

So once a day I get on the radio so they can hear me, order them to “hold firm,” wish them good health, plus-plus. Meanwhile, I have assaults going on — it's absolute chaos. And for them, the main thing is: “Oh, the commander is working, he started talking on the radio!”

And these aren't just random people — they're officers with formal military education, deputy corps commanders, deputy commanders. Not just some random guys.

Texty.org.ua adds that the management style described above particularly flourished during the tenure of Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi.

Translation:

Raids aimed at coercing men into taking part in the war against Ukraine are spreading across Russian regions. In Penza Region, where security forces and military enlistment office officials are conducting particularly aggressive raids, local residents have decided to organize themselves to, as they put it, “rescue men from the recruiters.”

“They took him away, but we caught up with them and got him back”

On July 23, in the Penza Region settlement of Bashmakovo, a district center with a population of around 9,000, unidentified men in civilian clothes arrived at the home of Sergei Teplyakov, an employee of a local security company.

“One of them introduced himself as the new district police officer and demanded his passport. Sergei then called the actual district officer. The men who had arrived became furious, grabbed him and dragged him into a car. It was outright kidnapping — no grounds, no names, no paperwork,” says a local resident, Oksana (we have changed the names of interviewees for their safety). “Sergei’s son, whom the neighbors called, came over, started filming and shouting at them. They let him go. But the next day, Alyosha Denisenko was targeted.”

According to locals, two unidentified men grabbed him in a park where he was mowing grass as part of court-ordered community service for drunk driving.

“They threatened him, saying that ‘things would get worse’ if he didn’t go with them to the Bashmakovo district administration. A district administration employee was sitting in the car with the recruiters, so Alyosha believed them. The car also had local license plates and belonged to the administration,” says a local resident, Artyom. “They told him they were taking him to the administration ‘to clarify his information.’ But witnesses noticed that they were driving toward Penza and called his relatives. His sister caught up with the car halfway there — less than 100 kilometers from Penza — forced them to stop and pulled Alexei out. These ‘recruiters’ — local officials — work for the Defense Ministry, supplying them with unsuspecting citizens. It’s complete lawlessness — these recruiters are breaking into people’s homes. If a man who’s drunk is walking down the street, he’s definitely at risk. But basically, they grab anyone.”

According to residents of Bashmakovo, they had never seen any of the “recruiters” before.

“We checked the drivers of these cars and found out that one of them works as a bailiff!” Artyom says. “The license plate of the second car (O217ХР) is registered to the Bashmakovo district administration. The relatives of Denisenko and Teplyakov filed police reports over attempted kidnapping and coercion into military contracts. Recently, two more men were grabbed. They managed to send them a lawyer, but he couldn’t get them out of the assembly point on Skladskaya Street in Penza — they were pressured into signing contracts there. According to the lawyer, one of them was threatened with criminal prosecution over debts, even though the amount he owed did not constitute a criminal offense. They simply deceived him.”

After these incidents, locals decided to organize themselves into a community patrol to “rescue men.”

“I joined the patrol almost immediately. It all happened spontaneously,” says Galina, a resident of Bashmakovo. “The guys created a group and started posting about what was happening in the settlement and how men were being rounded up. Gradually, people simply organized themselves on VKontakte. We coordinate there too, divided into shifts, and patrol the settlement around the clock. About 250 people have already joined the patrol. Because it’s much more effective to rescue people on the spot, before they are taken to a police station or military enlistment office, since there are simply no legal grounds for detaining them.”

She says that almost everyone in the patrol has personal motives.

“Of course, there’s fear for our loved ones too. I have a husband — God forbid he goes home from work and disappears, you already understand what might have happened to him. And in June they took my cousin. He has two children. I recently learned that he had some kind of loan debt. I don’t know where he is now or what happened to him.”

According to Galina, patrol members monitor Bashmakovo every day, including at night. Those who have cars drive around the settlement and watch for suspicious vehicles or unfamiliar people. The patrol members pool money for fuel. Their common fund also covers unexpected expenses: recently, a minor traffic accident occurred during a patrol, damaging two cars. Acquaintances repaired them for free at a service station, with money needed only for spare parts.

Galina herself has already responded to a report of an attempted detention.

“I was at the hospital with my mother when a message came into the group saying that two police officers were trying to break into Pavel Berdechenkov’s home. My mother and I went there, and the other guys arrived too. In the end, the police had nothing to say — they got into their car and left. There was another case when we were patrolling a neighboring settlement and noticed a Gazelle van we didn’t recognize. All such reports immediately go into our closed group.”

By her estimate, the patrol has managed to prevent at least five or six people from being taken away this way. But it doesn’t always work.

“Today, for example, we failed to rescue someone because the alert came too late. Within 45 minutes, they had already taken him far away. So the most important thing is for us to be notified immediately. Then we can get to the scene.”

The patrol member claims that at least two vehicles belonging to district authorities are being used in the raids: a Lada Granta, which residents call “401,” allegedly belongs to the Bashmakovo district education department, while a Lada Largus “217” belongs to the district administration. Locals hold district head Tamara Pavlutkina responsible for what is happening and believe there is no point appealing to the local police.

“There’s no point complaining to the police. We believe the district head gives the orders and everyone else carries them out. She does everything through other people,” Galina says.

As an example, she cites the case of 58-year-old Sergei Milkin from the village of Podgornoye, 16 km from Bashmakovo. According to her, local district police officer Sinyov invited Milkin to the village council “for a conversation,” after which he disappeared. Galina says Milkin had serious heart problems and had undergone bypass surgery. The day after his conversation with the police officer, he called his relatives from a distribution center in Rostov and told them that he was being sent to the war. Ten days later, he died — already effectively at the front.

“We wrote to every possible authority: the military prosecutor’s office, Bastrykin at the Investigative Committee, and television channels. The complaint was registered — and then silence.”

Another member of the patrol, Alexei, joined after his relative was nearly sent to war.

“He was summoned to the military enlistment office by letter ‘to verify his information.’ We happened to be visiting him and witnessed all of it. The raids had already started in Penza, but not in our area yet. Besides, he didn’t go alone — he went with a friend — so we were somewhat reassured. He left his phone at home,” Alexei recalls. “Two hours passed — he wasn’t back. Three hours — still nothing. His friend came back alone: ‘Yours went to Penza for a medical examination.’ We panicked. I called the notorious Penza military enlistment office on Skladskaya 19. They replied: ‘There’s no one here by that name.’”

Alexei says that at that point, the village head came to the house and asked them to hand over the missing man’s military ID.

“I immediately started filming her: ‘On what grounds are you demanding this document?!’ She replied: ‘The administration sent me.’ I asked her to give me the names and positions — she refused. We rushed to Penza by taxi. At the building on Skladskaya 19, we ran around all the floors. We encountered a drunk man whom someone had brought in, while the man accompanying him bragged that he had already brought in and ‘handed over’ two people that day. Then we met a crying mother: her son had been grabbed straight from his home, and she had come there immediately to get him back. Two of her sons were already in the so-called ‘SVO’ by that time; she said she wouldn’t give up the third.”

Alexei found his relative already on the steps of the military enlistment office.

“He had been brought there in the personal car of an ‘acquaintance of the village head.’ When we started shouting, he said that he ‘had nothing to do with it, he had nobly given him a ride to Penza,’ and took off. We immediately grabbed our relative by the arms, and by that point he had already been ‘prepared’: they had explained to him that after the medical examination he would have to sign some papers supposedly related to verifying his information. What kind of people are they? Shame on them. They’re willing to take people’s lives for these payments.”

Meanwhile, Oksana, who also joined the patrol, told Siberia.Realities that local authorities had already begun pressuring them.

“The security forces have already threatened us, you know with what? Sending us to war! They are openly targeting people who criticized the raids or wrote about them on social media. Police officers came directly to the home of a mother of many children, Vera Makavtsova, and threatened her with criminal prosecution in front of her four children. They threatened to charge her under Article 319 (‘Insulting a representative of the authorities’). All because in a post she called the district administration accomplices in the kidnappings and its head, Tamara Pavlutkina, a co-organizer of the forcible sending of people to war.”

An audio recording made during Vera’s detention captures police officers breaking into her home and demanding that she “go with them.” They claimed that she was allegedly “threatening Russia’s national security,” posting “extremist” material on social media, and participating in residents’ gatherings.

“You don’t have a warrant,” the mother of several children says.

“And do you have a warrant to gather in the center on Saturdays, f***ing?!” a police officer replies.

“They eventually broke down the door and detained her. Of course, this isn’t domestic violence, it’s not her husband beating her. It’s a post criticizing an official and the Defense Ministry. So apparently that’s grounds for the police to ‘intervene.’ They never responded to Denisenko’s and Teplyakov’s complaints. I’m sure Pavlutkina herself filed the report,” Oksana says angrily.

“The settlement head has two sons,” Galina adds. “When I asked her why she doesn’t send her own sons, she said, ‘I didn’t give birth to them for that.’”

Meanwhile, on June 25, a ceremony was held inside the Bashmakovo district administration to present state awards to local families of those killed during the invasion of Ukraine. Relatives of servicemen who had returned home as cargo 200 received orders and medals. The ceremony was attended by local military commissar Alexei Valygin and district head Tamara Pavlutkina, a member of the ruling United Russia party, who assured those gathered that “whenever citizens have any questions, they can always contact the district administration.”

The Siberia.Realities editorial team contacted Bashmakovo district administration head Tamara Pavlutkina asking her to comment on reports that the district administration was involved in detaining residents and coercing them into signing military contracts. As of the time of publication, the official had not responded.

In early August, Penza blogger Stanislav Morozov created a chat to help men who are being detained and coerced into signing contracts. He called on residents to organize and oppose such detentions.

“We are doing this out of desperation. Because we simply have no other choice left. We are people defending our basic rights and freedoms. The right not to be turned into a commodity or deprived of one’s free will under threat of a truncheon. When legal methods of protection stop working, the only shield left is the support of your neighbor. Our strength now lies in this forced but conscious consolidation,” Morozov explained in the chat’s description.

Within the first 24 hours, 300 people joined the chat, and within a week, the number of participants exceeded 1,200. Morozov urges witnesses to promptly report detentions and promises to help find lawyers for those detained. He warns that security forces and provocateurs may have joined the chat and asks everyone to be careful about what they say.

Amid the raids, other ways of warning people about them have also emerged. In early August, an online service was launched with a map where users could mark locations where people had been detained. Several days later, the developers reported that the service and its associated Telegram channel had been hacked, and that the website had begun redirecting users to a pornographic site, according to the Mobilization Telegram channel. The project’s creators suggested that the security forces might have taken an interest in it, but it is currently impossible to independently establish who was behind the hack.

“They Took a Blind Man Away!”

Men are being lured into going to war through deception across the country.

On August 8, a case of abduction and forced contract signing occurred in Omsk.

According to Valentina, three unidentified men took her 31-year-old brother Danil from the courtyard of their home in Omsk’s Kirovsky District on Saturday morning.

“He has a wife and children. In the morning, he went outside with a can of beer to sit on a bench near his own apartment building. That’s where they took him. The car was privately owned; luckily, the neighbors managed to record the license plate. While we were looking for him, he came back on his own. He said they had taken him to the volunteer recruitment center at 8 Maryanovskaya Street. He barely managed to escape and ran away without signing anything. So we calmed down a little,” Valentina says.

But that same evening, she says, they came for him again.

“Danil was in the courtyard walking with his wife and children. A Niva arrived with some men, they twisted his arms behind his back and took him away to an unknown location. The children were screaming, his wife was trying to get him back — it was useless. We were horrified: what do we do? We started filing complaints with the military prosecutor’s office, the military Investigative Committee, and the police. We found out that he was back at Maryanovskaya. We demanded that they release him — they wouldn’t even let us speak to him by phone. It was a real kidnapping.”

Some time later, her brother was released, but Valentina claims that before that he was beaten and forced to sign a contract.

“Finally, they released him — they intimidated and beat him so badly that he signed the contract. We’re in shock now, trying to raise money for lawyers. What else can we do? He’s currently at home, but now they have this forced contract. They could come back and break down the door. It’s simply horrifying what’s happening.”

In August, in Primorsky Krai, according to former serviceman Ivan, soldiers stopped his brother Mikhail, who is a Group I visually impaired person.

“On August 3, Misha went to the store. Two servicemen stopped him and initially offered him a contract with the Defense Ministry,” Ivan says. “My brother refused — he immediately told them that he was a Group I visually impaired person. They started pressuring him: then you’ll build barracks in Sibirtsevo (a settlement in Primorsky Krai’s Chernigovsky District, where military unit 16871 is stationed). He explained to them in detail that he could barely see at all. He had gone to the store by memory and by feeling his way around. Then they grabbed him and took him away by force.”

The next day, Ivan, who himself had been discharged from the military due to an injury sustained during the war in Ukraine, brought all of his brother’s medical documents to the recruitment center in Ussuriysk.

“They kept him at the recruitment center on Lermontova Street. I showed them his medical records and disability certificate. Group I. I was sure they would look into it and release him. But early the next morning, Misha called and said they were loading him onto a bus to the airport,” Ivan says. “That’s it! He’s already being sent to Ukraine to fight. How is he supposed to manage there?! He can barely get around here on his own, only because he knows the streets by heart. There, he won’t even be able to walk. Why do they need him?!”

Mikhail’s family filed a complaint with the military prosecutor’s office over coercion to sign a contract.

“They said they have 30 days to respond: ‘Wait.’ But how can we wait when a blind man has been taken to a combat zone? He’s in danger every minute!” Ivan says indignantly.

Human rights advocates note that once a contract has been signed, getting it terminated is extremely difficult, even if a person claims that they signed the document under pressure.

“Coercion is theoretically illegal, but once a contract has been signed, terminating it voluntarily is almost impossible. In this case, you also need to submit a written statement to the military commissar refusing to enter into the contract,” says lawyer Yaroslav Mukhin, who specializes in cases involving people refusing military service (name changed for security reasons). “But practice shows that even medical disability certificates no longer help. The case may go to court, but while the proceedings are ongoing, a contract soldier in such poor health may already be killed.”

Raids targeting men in Russia are taking place against the backdrop of growing difficulties in recruiting people willing to fight under contract. According to the Financial Times, the Kremlin and Defense Ministry have tasked the regions with recruiting 409,000 people in 2026, while local officials are expected to meet established recruitment targets. At the same time, the cost of recruitment is increasing: according to estimates by Vazhnyye Istorii, in the first four months of 2026 alone, the regions paid recruiters 3.2 billion rubles — more than twice the average monthly amount paid a year earlier.

The Wall Street Journal reported in early August on complaints of men being detained and coerced into signing contracts in Penza, Ulyanovsk, Rostov, Amur and Yaroslavl regions, as well as Udmurtia, Tatarstan, Kaluga, Voronezh and Arkhangelsk. According to the newspaper, US officials believe the Kremlin is also considering a larger-scale option — a new wave of mobilization. If such a decision is made, the WSJ’s sources expect it to take place after the State Duma elections on September 18–20. Russian authorities deny that there are plans for a new mobilization.

Translation:

Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said that an attempt is being made to fabricate a criminal case against Andrii Kryuchkov, the Ombudsman’s representative in Zakarpattia Oblast.

Lubinets wrote about this on social media.

In his view, this is connected to Kryuchkov exposing numerous violations by representatives of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers (TCC).

“It seems these facts proved too inconvenient for someone. Instead of an appropriate response to the violations that were uncovered, the person who spoke out about them came under pressure,” the Ombudsman said.

Lubinets said he had received information that the head of the TCC intended to fabricate a criminal case against Andrii Kryuchkov, allegedly for obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations.

He sees these actions as signs of interference with the work of the Ombudsman and his representative aimed at preventing them from carrying out their official duties. Liability for this is provided for under Article 344 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code.

“Attempts to force us into silence will not work. I have responded and will continue to respond firmly and decisively to every violation of human rights during mobilization. Because a strong army does not begin with people being deprived of their rights. It begins with the law, accountability, and respect for people,” he emphasized.

What preceded this?

During a monitoring visit to the Berehove TCC, Andrii Kryuchkov, the Ombudsman’s representative in Zakarpattia Oblast, documented widespread violations.

He said that people with valid documents were prevented from leaving the TCC premises, restricting their freedom of movement.

According to the Ombudsman, deferments were canceled, and in some cases this was done without meetings of the relevant commissions and without drawing up official minutes. The head of the TCC entered knowingly false information into the state information system.

At the assembly point itself, inspectors found unsatisfactory sanitary conditions in the toilets, a shortage of drinking water, a lack of bed linen, blankets, and hygiene products, as well as only a summer shower.

Back in April, Dmytro Lubinets also publicly reported serious human rights violations at the Uzhhorod TCC, which had been identified during a monitoring visit.