A few dozen men have used Russia’s courts to reverse their draft notices, journalists find

At least 761 Russians have challenged their mobilization orders in court, and 52 have succeeded, say journalists at Verstka Media who studied the online databases of district and garrison courts across the country. That’s a win in roughly one out of every 15 lawsuits.

Of the cases reporters found, Verstka says 172 were filed in the first weeks after President Putin declared a “partial” draft. The single region with the most mobilization challenges was Krasnoyarsk, where 64 people went to court (and a third of them won). In the far more populous Moscow region, meanwhile, there were just 25 lawsuits.

According to Verstka’s report, no court granted challenges based on claims related to age or the need to remain at home to care for an ailing relative, but several lawsuits succeeded when defense-contractor employers sent representatives to argue that their staff were drafted illegally and warned that the personnel loss jeopardized the enterprise’s ability to remain on production schedule. Some courts also accepted the fatherhood of three or more children as grounds for mobilization deferment, says Verstka.