“Drafted on the same day, slashed his wrists upon arrival at his army unit”: Coercive tactics in Russian military conscription

In the pursuit to meet the quota — as per Vladimir Putin's decree, at least 130,000 men must be called up — people are seized from everywhere, often with violations of all possible laws and regulations. The initial weeks of the conscription were marked by a loud scandal: on October 21, police spetsnaz stormed a prayer house in the Kotelniki district of Moscow and took away parishioners present there — both migrants and Russian citizens.

In the enlistment office, they were forced to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, sending them into service “on the same day.” Later, mosque visitors in the Balashikha suburb of Moscow became targets, followed by raids on Wildberries warehouses in Elektrostal and Reutov, and a little later — on a warehouse in Aleksin in the Tula region.

“This morning, police spetsnaz raided the Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal and took many people from there. Among them is my boyfriend <...>, they were taken to the enlistment office in Lyubertsy, and now he is being held there illegally, forced to sign a contract... I have no contact with him. He also said that after all this, they will be taken to the assembly point in Zheleznodorozhny,” — such a message was sent to Elena Popova, the coordinator of the Conscientious Objectors movement, during the raid in Elektrostal, by a girl who worked there; after that she stopped responding. Later, it was revealed that 105 people were brought to the enlistment office from the warehouse.

If such “checks” are a frequent but irregular occurrence, sudden visits by law enforcement and enlistment office personnel to workers' dormitories and hostels have become almost constant recently. “During one of these visits, they almost took a guy from Donetsk — he came here to work on a rotational basis,” Popova recounts. “He managed to escape right from the enlistment office; his family will be filing a lawsuit.”

However, not everyone was so fortunate. Maxim, who learned that his partner had been taken from the hostel while he was at work, recounts that they held him in the enlistment office all night, and the next day, despite his valid deferment, they sent him to the assembly point:

“On November 23 at nine in the evening, the beat cop and a civilian from the migration service came to our hostel. It's unclear why because there are no migrants living with us since the majority of the rooms are occupied by our organization: Oleg and I work in security. There were no migrants, and they seized the first person they encountered — which happened to be Oleg. He is 19 years old, and he has a valid deferment until the summer of 2024 — all the supporting documents are in the Belaya Kalitva enlistment office, where he is registered.

The next day by five in the evening, they grabbed all his belongings, and by one in the morning, they took him away — we have access to each other's phones, and I saw the location when he left from there. I'm sure there was no communication between enlistment offices; they simply decided to send him to serve immediately. Moreover, the Kuntsevo military enlistment office, where they brought Oleg, was open — meaning it was operational for the beat cop at 10 in the evening, although its normal working hours are until five, and that's surprising. I told Oleg's mother to file a complaint about abduction by officials because they took him without any documents, without a court order — without anything.”

Since being sent to the assembly point, Oleg has only been in contact once, informing his mother that he is in a psychoneurological center in Podolsk. Maxim couldn't ascertain the exact information about his whereabouts; however, several days later, he learned that Oleg ended up there after a suicide attempt:

“I found out that on the very first day of arriving at the military unit, Oleg slashed his wrists, and since then, he has been at the psychoneurological center at 4 Mashtakova Street. They haven't explained anything to him all these twenty days: they say they might release him, and if they don't, he will continue to serve.”