“Congrats, you’re off to war”. As videos of enlistment raids in Penza go viral, we spoke to a man seized off the street and sent to Ukraine last November

“He rolled up his sleeves: ‘Just sign it’.” Army contract under duress

It all happened on November 24, 2025. That day I was at home in Sursk. A friend had asked me to go and feed his mom: she was bedridden, couldn’t walk. He’d gone off to work, and I was on my second day of leave, so I agreed.

Around 10 in the morning I left the house, and there was a car parked on the road. Inside were our local police officer and a second man, who introduced himself as being from the enlistment office. They spotted me, came over, and asked to see my passport and military ID.

I brought out my passport and showed it. They told me it didn’t have the military-registration stamp in it—though it isn’t supposed to be there in the first place; nobody has one. So they said I needed to go to the enlistment office to get the stamp put in. I said I didn’t have time right then, as I was on my way to feed a woman I knew, and that I’d go the next day. They told me: “No, you have to go today; we’ll drive you there and straight back. You all say you’ll go, but then you never do.”

Well, since he was an official, I got dressed and went along. They drove me to Penza, to that contract-service recruitment centre on Belinsky Street. The moment I got there they took away my phone, my military ID and my passport, and led me into a separate room.

There was a young official there, someone I don’t know. He kept telling me it was already getting late and that I was keeping him [at work], saying: “Come on, just sign—this isn’t a [contract] for the [special military operation], this is how they register you for military service nowadays, on the computer.” He said they’d simply put me on the military register, that’s all. He didn’t use force, but he was aggressive, rolling up his sleeves: “Just sign it.” And there was nothing written on the documents at all, they were all blank forms.

Well, I signed. He told me: “Congratulations, you’re off to the [special military operation]. Go out into the yard.”

They took me out into the yard, where there were already about 20 men. I tried to get back into the building—I wanted someone to explain what was going on—but nobody would talk to me. They shoved me out and said: “Go and wait over there.”

And the men standing in the yard didn’t know anything either, nothing at all. They’d been picked up off the street, even ones who didn’t have their military ID on them, or a bank card, or a passport. All those documents were being run off within half an hour. They were issuing them new ones.

They kept us there until evening; it had already gone dark and it was cold. We were there a good six hours, for sure. I paced back and forth, my mind was not in a good place. One man had managed to smuggle in a phone, and people were trying to call his relatives with it, and the military prosecutor’s office. But two burly soldiers came running out of the building, found the phone and laid into him, punched him with their fists. That man came with us to Rostov afterwards, but apparently he was sent back to Penza, as he’d complained about haemorrhoids, or something.

There was another man with us who was very anxious; he said he hadn’t signed anything. So they sat the rest of us down to be taken away, and he was left behind. I don’t know what happened to him after that.

In the end they put us into a Gazelle minivan and drove us off towards Rostov. There was one man in military uniform with us, he was the one carrying the documents. Once we were under way they gave us our phones back, and I called my friend, because I still had his house keys on me—I was the one who was meant to feed his mom, after all. Everyone was calling their own families, so we didn’t really get talking among ourselves.

“Lie low for a bit, then crawl back.” The assault and the wounding

It was a long drive; along the way they didn’t feed us or give us any water. They stopped a couple of times for a smoke and to buy something, if anyone had money.

I’d never served, never been through any medical examination. But once they’d brought us to Rostov and were kitting us out there, they handed us our personal files—only briefly, just for 10 minutes. I had a look, and there it was: a completed medical board for me, saying I was fully fit for service. That’s also where I read how long my contract was: one year.

They brought us to some location in Rostov. maybe a military unit of some kind. Then they sent us on by another bus, to some town, I don’t remember. There was already shooting and all that. And then I ended up… Our unit was out in the forest.

We did two weeks of training there. Our documents were kept at that unit, and they often took our phones too, so we wouldn’t give away too much information or call home. They taught us to shoot, to dig trenches, things like that. They handed us a weapon. Before that I’d never held one in my life. I couldn’t clean it, of course, I didn’t know how to take it apart.

I’d go to the political officer (we weren’t told his last name—everything was by call sign only) and explain how I’d been taken [illegally]. The political officer would say he’d sent my complaint to the military prosecutor’s office and that I should wait for a result. No replies ever came back to me. There was another man with me, and we wrote our formal reports together. But then he got cold feet—he was afraid they’d give us a beating. And he stopped writing. I kept writing right to the end, though, and I’m still writing now. He just got scared.

At the unit my military ID went missing almost straight away. I asked [the soldiers] where it was. They said: ‘We don’t know, you’re the one who lost it.” Maybe it went missing in their hands right away because it said in there that I’d never served… I don’t know where it went.

Anyway, exactly two weeks later, just before New Year, they sent me out on a combat mission. We were in the DPR at the time. My partner and I were in an assault group, holding a position. We dug a shelter. My partner was badly wounded in the arm and the leg, but nobody evacuated us from there. No one cared what happened to us.

We spent about a week and a half like that; I kept changing his bandages and helping him. We had no water. Where’s he going to go, I thought? So I went off for water, and on the way back a drone came at me. I managed to take cover behind a tree, but I must have left my leg sticking out somehow, and it caught me in the leg. In the end it was a shrapnel wound, with shattered toes. I spent a month and a half in hospital, and I still limp.

At one point we had to go and fetch a generator. He kept saying: “There’s no way I can walk [to get it] at all.” Well, I couldn’t carry it on my own either, so he went slowly towards it on a stick, and I walked behind him, also on a stick. And that’s when a drone killed him. He was torn apart, and I saw it. I hid in the reeds and reported it straight away. They told me: lie low for a bit, then crawl back to your spot again. And so I sat there alone for three days. Then they sent another man out to me. He was meant to carry on holding the position there with me. As for my wound, they told me it wasn’t serious.

We had no water; if you found snow, you ate that. Otherwise… every three days or so they’d bring some stale bread… I lay there wounded for about a week. Then word came over the radio that we were “pulling back”—so I pulled back the way I was, on a stick. Going back through the tree lines, I had to keep running from drones.

I made it to the medical post: just a little house, one ward, one medic. Then they sent me round various hospitals, and that’s how I ended up spending a month and a half in them with this leg. The last one was the hospital in Rostov.

Later I was given a referral to the cardiology centre in Penza, but they told me to go to my unit and let them either issue the referral or treat me in their own hospital. But if I go off to the unit, that’s it, they’ll send me straight back.

Right now I’m at home, in Sursk. To every appeal I make, the answer is that nobody took me [to the front by force], that I turned up of my own accord with a completed medical board and said: “Send me to the [special military operation].” But I never wanted any of it. I had a decent job, a decent wage, I’d bought an apartment [in Sursk]. I wasn’t even planning to go there.

Editor: Maria Klimova