Unwilling signatories

Conscripts as young as 18 are being pressured to sign up for war at a garrison in the Russian Urals

Chebarkul, a little-known town in the Russian Urals, hit the headlines last year when a military garrison stationed there featured in multiple reports of conscripts being forced to sign contracts with the Russian army.

Despite the district’s military prosecutor’s office acknowledging the violations last year, conscripts from various military units at the Chebarkul garrison, in the Chelyabinsk region, say that as recently as this spring they were still being forced to sign contracts with the Defence Ministry, which would make them eligible to be sent to the frontline in Ukraine.

Cash in advance

Mark Leonov and Pyotr Yando, two conscripts serving in Chebarkul, told news channel Ostorozhno Novosti in September that they had received substantial sums of money on their bank accounts — much more than the 2,500 rubles (€27) they were supposed to receive by law as a monthly stipend for regular conscripts, who typically serve far from the frontline and are only made to serve for a year.

Professional soldiers earn a salary for their service, but — crucially — must serve indefinitely and can be sent to an active war zone after signing a contract with the Defence Ministry.

But the sums Leonov and Yando had received — 305,000 rubles (€3,380) from the authorities of Tatarstan and 400,000 rubles (€4,430) as a lump sum — were similar to those received by professional soldiers, who earn a salary for their service, but who — crucially — must serve indefinitely and can be sent to an active war zone after signing a contract with the Defence Ministry. Both men said they had signed no such contract, having rejected the offer.

It became сlear the following month that Leonov and Yando’s cases were far from unique when the parents of other conscripts reported that their sons, who had just started their service, were being forced to sign contracts with the Defence Ministry, being told that those were just “formalities”.

Some even said they were being threatened with being sent to the front if they refused to sign a contract — a threat that made little sense, as soldiers can only be exempted from serving in Ukraine if they do not sign one.

In November, it came to light that another group of recruits from the republic of Chuvashia, in the Volga region, faced a similar situation in which they were intimidated into signing papers on arrival at their military unit under the same absurd pretext — to avoid being sent to the front.

They then received payments ranging from 400,000 (€4,430) to 2.1 million rubles (€23,200), which became proof of signing the contract, although the conscripts themselves and their families continue to claim that they were misled. Several families have filed complaints with the military prosecutor’s office and the courts.

Earlier this year, the military prosecutor’s office in the Chebarkul garrison confirmed that contracts had been falsified in several units, with signatures either being forged or made under duress.

In February, the same prosecutor’s office also demanded the cancellation of 13 such contracts, but the command didn’t comply with the order, despite the higher Central Military District military prosecutor’s office claiming the next month that “the violations mentioned have been rectified”.

Under pressure

Semyon* (name changed) was conscripted in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, having served in the Pskov region of northwestern Russia for the first five months, where he was asked to sign a contract several times but refused. On 20 April, he was transferred to the Chebarkul garrison and signed up for professional service after just two and a half hours.

His mother says that on the way to the unit he complained of being actively pressured into signing a contract, after which Semyon was taken to a separate office, where a sergeant fired a gun next to him and showed him a video of dead and wounded people, threatening that the same thing would happen to him if he didn’t sign. Semyon broke under the pressure, his family says. On the same day, he applied to have the contract annulled, saying he had signed under duress, asking for it to be declared invalid as the commander had not yet signed it, but to no avail.

“If a contract signed by me appears, it means I did so under pressure or it’s a fake.”

Semyon’s family immediately went to Chebarkul to meet with commanding officers but were told he had signed voluntarily. The family filed a complaint, only to discover Semyon had been sent to another garrison, with official documents implying he agreed at first and then changed his mind. His family is yet to hear from the Investigative Committee.

Two other families of conscripts from Chebarkul have contacted local news outlet 74.ru with similar stories. “People stop trusting the government after such stories of local officials abusing their power,” one conscript’s mother wrote, urging the garrison to “stop this humiliation of human dignity” and annul her son’s contract.

Ibragim Aliev, a conscript from a military unit in Chebarkul with just a little over two months left to serve, also told his family in April that he was being forced to sign a contract with the army, as the officers threatened to open a criminal case against him for allegedly having pictures of classified documents on his phone.

Trying to protect himself, Ibragim recorded a video saying he had no intention of signing up. “If a contract signed by me appears, it means I did so under pressure or it’s a fake.”

A mother’s cry

“This is a mother’s cry. Please help get our children out of there. It’s unbearable,” Natalya Dmitrieva, the mother of 18-year-old Viktor Dmitriev, said in a video message that went viral on social media in April, after her son told her about soldiers at his military unit in Chebarkul being pressured into signing contracts.

Three of his fellow soldiers signed a contract under duress on his first day there, Viktor told his mother, while those who refused to sign were told they would be sent to the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk to replace soldiers that had been killed.

Viktor’s mother said that he had previously been trained as a diver in the military unit, but that now he was in the sapper battalion. He told his mother that he was under constant pressure to sign up, but that he had not relented. Two other conscripts: Danila Nazarov and Artyom, whose last name is unknown, did not sign a contract either.

“Please end this pressure and stop sending our children to war,” Dmitrieva urged, but was left without a response.