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Penza Oblast residents report abuses during draft raids
For the past week, authorities have been carrying out draft raids targeting men across Penza Oblast. People are being detained on the streets, lured out of their apartments, taken to military enlistment offices, stripped of their phones, and pressured into signing military contracts. 7x7 readers from Penza and Spassk described how the raids unfolded in their cities.
According to residents of Spassk, on June 18—the first day of the raids—Rosgvardia personnel and military enlistment officials detained any man they found alone on the streets. The following day, they began going door to door. In one case, they reportedly broke down the door of an apartment after a man refused, through a window, to accompany them. "If you stepped outside [to talk to them], you were taken away," one subscriber said.
The men were reportedly taken "to a place where people in civilian clothes stood alongside Rosgvardia personnel. They were then loaded into minibuses, after which all contact with them was lost." Officials also went door to door asking who was officially registered at each address and when those residents had last reported to the military enlistment office.
In Penza, the men were taken to the enlistment office at 19 Skladskaya Street, where they were beaten and forced to sign military contracts. Those who did not have identity documents with them reportedly had replacement paperwork prepared on the spot within two hours, while their medical examinations were processed just as quickly.
7x7 subscribers also said that some people ended up at the Skladskaya office after being deceived. They had been told they only needed to update their military registration records ("they’ll stamp your papers and send you home"). Instead, everyone’s phones and documents were confiscated. According to the subscribers, only people diagnosed with HIV infection, AIDS, or tuberculosis were released.
One subscriber also said they overheard Nikolay Khorev, an employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service at 18 Lenin Street, threatening one of the detained men. According to the account, Khorev said that if the man refused to go to the enlistment office voluntarily, they would "add another charge" and take him there under escort.
According to 7x7 subscribers, Penza military commissar Andrey Surkov told those affected that they could file complaints with the military prosecutor’s office. In practice, however, this is nearly impossible because detainees are immediately sent to Rostov. One subscriber barely had time to say goodbye to her brother after he had been beaten. She was forced to hand over her phone to prevent her from photographing his injuries. "We would have accepted a draft notice. Even though we’re against the war, there’s nowhere to escape it. But what they’re doing now is absurd," she said. Relatives of those detained have contacted the military prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Penza’s internal security department but say they have received no response.
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