‘Judging by the documents, I’m not even here’: Russian conscript drafted with incorrect personal data. Authorities refuse to address the mistake

Alexander Oleynikov, a resident of St. Petersburg, was drafted with a call-up paper containing incorrect personal data, his mother Yekaterina Neverova told Sever.Realii news outlet.

Alexander Vadimovich (a patronymic, part of a person’s name in Russia derived from the name of their father — translator’s note) Oleynikov is a 26-year-old employee of the St. Petersburg metro. He did mandatory conscript service in 2014-2015. On 24 September, he received a draft notice. Two days later, he was sent to a military unit in Sertolovo, St. Petersburg region.

His mother sent the copy of the draft notice to Oleynikov’s workplace. She was then told that the man indicated in the call-up paper does not work there.

It turned out that the draft notice was in the name of Alexander Vladimirovich Oleynikov, and that his personal file at the draft board also had the Vladimirovich patronymic. The personal file also says that Oleynikov is “temporarily unemployed”.

His parents filed claims to the prosecutor’s office, the defence ministry, St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov and the presidential administration, however, neither of those institutions have addressed the mistake. Local draft office employees “are running away from her and hiding”, Neverova says. One of them said that it might take up to 30 days to consider this case.

“In this time, they might send him [to Ukraine] already. It’s total lawless mayhem, I don’t even know what to do! <…> They hold them there like they’re in prison. They only allow them to see their relatives in the evening near the checkpoint. He said: ‘Judging by the documents, I’m not even here,’” Alexander’s mother recalled.

Earlier, conscripts from the city of Menzelinsk in Russia’s Tatarstan shot a video in which they said that their wives were told in a “voluntary-compulsory way” to collect money for the purchase of their equipment.

“Our wives work in kindergartens, schools; they’re being made to donate money in a voluntary-compulsory way. We don’t need this kind of money,” the men say in the video. They stressed that they do not want to leave their families with no money.