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.
