Workers at a plant near Penza defended their colleague

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In the village of Sakhzadov, Penza region, a conflictoccurred between employees of a local sugar factory and unknown persons in civilian clothes. They tried to detain an employee of the enterprise, Gennady Petrukhin, after his shift.

The workers demanded that the men in civilian clothes present their instructions, and then drove him out of the plant, shouting “Run from here, you scum!” and “Fucking creature!” The factory workers believe that they tried to take Petrukhin to the war. The recruiters said they wanted to take the man because he had a “convict.”

The policeman, who stood nearby during the conflict, did not interfere in any way with what was happening.

Commenting on what happened, the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Penza region stated that their employee was looking for a suspect in the rape of a minor, and the plant workers allegedly “mistakenly mistook the legitimate actions of police officers for detaining a citizen for delivery to the SVO zone.”

DOXA discovered that the director of the sugar factory, Alexey Isaev, was prosecuted under criminal charges in 2013 for tax evasion in the amount of 166 million rubles. The case was related to the enterprise where the recruitment attempt took place.

Raids in Penza

In mid-June 2026, security forces began conducting raids in the Penza region, during which men were detained on the streets, in public transport and during car checks. Human rights activists report at least 16 men detained and cases of pressure to sign contracts to go to war against Ukraine.

Raids are recorded in Penza, Kuznetsk, Serdobsk and Kamenka. Local residents report that minibuses with the sign “Storm” are driving around the region. After the raids began in the region, a Telegram channel “News of what’s happening || Serdobsk / Penza”, where they publish warnings about places where security forces stop and detain men.

Military commissar of the Penza region Andrei Surkov confirmed the raids, but called them planned measures to search for draft dodgers and deserters. The Ministry of Internal Affairs said that reports of men being forced to go to war were “false information.”

In a conversation with DOXA, a local resident confirmed the increase in anxiety in the region: men are trying to appear on the street less often, leaving cities or temporarily hiding, and residents are creating channels and chats to monitor new raids.

Context

The raids in the Penza region are taking place against the background of the expansion of the digital military registration system and the gradual strengthening of control mechanisms over citizens liable for military service.

A unified register of military records and an electronic register of summonses began to be created after the adoption of amendments to the law “On Military Duty and Military Service”, signed by Vladimir Putin in April 2023. The operating procedure of the system and the application of restrictive measures was established by government decree No. 506 of April 19, 2024.

Although individual elements of the system were tested earlier, the full launch of the registry at the federal level took place in the fall of 2025. It allows military registration and enlistment offices to automatically send electronic summonses, update data on those liable for military service, remotely register citizens and remove them from military registration, and also apply restrictions provided by law.

In March 2026, the Conscious Objector Movement reported the first known case of the application of several restrictive measures at once through the electronic military register. We were talking about a resident of Kaliningrad who did not appear at the military registration and enlistment office after receiving a summons “to clarify data.”

At the same time, pressure on potential contract workers is also increasing. Thus, at the beginning of 2026, according to Faridaily, the Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov informed the rectors of the largest Russian universities that at least 2% of students must enter into a contract with the Ministry of Defense.

At the same time, preparation of the mobilization infrastructure continues. On June 17, mobilization training exercises were held in the Volgograd region with the participation of specialized officials from the Astrakhan, Rostov and other regions, Kalmykia, as well as from the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine - Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk and Sevastopol. The exercises were conducted under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President of Russia.

The “partial mobilization” formally announced by Vladimir Putin in September 2022 was never completed by a separate decree. Already at the end of October, the authorities announced the implementation of the plan to recruit 300 thousand people, but an official document on the cessation of mobilization activities never appeared. Human rights activists have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the absence of such a decree retains the ability of the Ministry of Defense to resume mass conscription at any time.