Cases of forced deployment to the front are multiplying. Mediazona compiles known incidents

Sergei Skryabin, 49

Kirov, May 15

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. Under the pretext of a fine for drinking beer on the street, 49-year-old Sergei Skryabin was taken from his home to a police station, and then to an assembly point.

According to his wife, “they made a passport for him in 15 minutes on a weekend,” and then, “threatening violence”, forced him to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence, despite his diagnosed epilepsy. The medical fitness board was conducted as a mere formality in Lyangasovo village—and Skryabin was found fit for service.

From the military enlistment office, he was sent to the self-proclaimed DPR and assigned to military unit 41698, where the 5th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade is deployed.

The last time Skryabin called his wife was on July 23, 2026. Four days later, a political officer called her and said that her husband was already listed as missing in action—although, according to her information, this status was officially registered only in August.

She appealed to the prosecutor’s office, but they replied that Skryabin had signed the contract voluntarily.

“There’s also deception regarding the payments. My husband has been at war for almost half a year, but I haven’t received anything. I don’t need blood money. I want my husband returned home safe and sound,” the woman said in a conversation with Mediazona.

Alexander Stepanov, 33

Penza, August 19, 2026

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. 33-year-old Alexander Stepanov was abducted by unknown individuals when he was leaving a shop in the evening, wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops.

“Strangers put handcuffs on him and bundled him into a car. My son said they brought him to what seemed like a military enlistment office, beat him, and tore his t-shirt. Until he signed the contract,” recounted his mother, Tamara Stepanova.

At the enlistment office, according to his mother, “they made new documents for him in 20 minutes”. Similar cases have been mentioned not only in Penza but in other cities.

On August 23, Stepanov reported that he was in Donetsk. His mother sent appeals to the military prosecutor’s office, the human rights commissioner, the Ministry of Defence website, and the reception of the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. She has not yet received any replies.

Andrey Lazarov, 48

Penza, July 9

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. 48-year-old Andrey Lazarov from Penza disappeared after he left his home without his phone and told his elderly mother that he would be back soon.

The next day, an unfamiliar woman called the 72-year-old pensioner. According to her, her husband and Andrey Lazarov had been detained by the police the day before, after which they were taken to an assembly point, and then “given a change of clothes and taken away” to the Rostov region.

“One guy is walking all by himself, they drive up and grab him”, she said, adding that her husband was snatched on his way to work.

Lazarov did not have a permanent job and often went on drinking binges—he had developed epilepsy against the backdrop of alcoholism. Over the following days, his relatives tried unsuccessfully to bring the man back home.

“At the enlistment office, they told me: ‘Well, he’s a drunkard anyway, so at least there’s some use for him, he’ll earn good money,’ ” recounts Lazarov’s niece. “My uncle was supposedly detained drunk and taken to the station, where he was offered an administrative offence or [an army] contract, and he chose the contract himself. I say: ‘You don’t know who you’re talking about, this person would never in his life choose war over an administrative offence!’ I understand how it sounds, but my uncle drank and didn’t bother anyone, he was just quiet and harmless. He chose this way of destroying his own life, but he didn’t harm anyone with it except himself.”

Andrey got in touch only once from someone else’s phone: he dictated his unit number, No. 90600, and told his family that he was forced to sign the contract. Since then, there has been no news of him. His family only knows that he was supposed to be sent to the Donetsk region.

Nikita Konzhezerov, 26

Petrozavodsk, July 27–29

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. 26-year-old Petrozavodsk resident Nikita Konzhezerov was detained drunk on the street and taken to a sobering-up station at a drug treatment clinic. According to his friends, this happened at the end of July. The Barents Observer publication, citing a source close to Konzhezerov’s family, reported that “they slipped him a contract, he doesn’t even remember how it happened.”

“He didn't plan or want this at all, he’s not a military man, he doesn’t know how to fight,” the publication’s source said.

Early in the morning of July 29, Konzhezerov was put on a train and sent to an assembly point in the Leningrad region.

Shortly before this, Konzhezerov had a son, and both of his parents have disabilities. “He is the sole breadwinner in the family, and now his sudden dispatch to the service puts his family in a very difficult position,” reads a post sharing Konzhezerov’s story.

This is not the first such case in the region. The same Barents Observer reported how recruiters get people drunk and then slip them a Ministry of Defence contract.

Roman Alfutin, 48

Luga, Leningrad region; first mobilisation — September 2022, second deployment — March 2026

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. 48-year-old Roman Alfutin was mobilised in September 2022 and taken to Valuyki, a town in Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine—although, according to his sister, he did not fit the age criteria for conscripting non-commissioned officers:

“My brother was a sergeant major. He received this rank back at training camps in 2006. Well, he didn’t fit the age bracket at that time,” Alfutin’s sister told Ostorozhno Novosti. Roman also had no combat experience—he served as a staff driver.

Following the family’s appeals to the governor of the Leningrad region, the military prosecutor’s office, and the enlistment office, the decision to mobilise Alfutin was overturned; he was placed on the military register as a civilian, and he lived in Luga for almost four years.

In March 2026, several people broke into his apartment, took his documents and phone, and took him away to a unit. A few days later, he was sent in handcuffs to the “special military operation”—to the village of Markivka in Luhansk region of Ukraine. He was told that he was listed as absent without leave and had been placed on a wanted list.

The family provided his discharge documents and medical records regarding spinal problems requiring treatment, but the unit claimed that the discharge documents had been lost.

“They said that Roman is now officially listed in a completely different unit. He was mobilised into military unit 29760, but somehow he ended up in military unit 29298. At the same time, there is no discharge order for him anywhere,” Ostorozhno Novosti quotes Roman’s sister.

A court adopted a preliminary protection measure, forbidding Alfutin’s deployment to the war, but simultaneously confirmed that formally he remains a serviceman. Lawyer Maxim Grebenyuk called this a dangerous precedent: “If a serviceman was mobilised and sent to a unit, even if he was mobilised illegally... you can’t unring a bell: he is already a serviceman regardless, now try getting discharged however you can. And in practice, this is very difficult, almost impossible.”

Alexander Glebov, 63

Penza, allegedly September 26

Circumstances of detention and contract signing. 63-year-old Alexander Glebov drove his car to go for a walk along the embankment in Penza, where unknown men approached him and demanded his documents.

“They started asking why he was alone, what if he’s a drug addict, what if he’s planting dead drops,” his niece Yulia recounted on Threads and Instagram.

Mediazona tried to find out the details of her uncle’s detention, but she did not reply to our messages.

Glebov did not have his passport on him; he showed his driving licence, which was confiscated. They also took his mobile phone and drove him away somewhere. According to Yulia, her uncle was “beaten, pressured so he would sign a contract.”

She claims that Glebov is unfit for military service due to his health: he has hypertension (“he was taken away by an ambulance more than once with a blood pressure of 200”) and kidney and liver diseases.

Later, the same people brought him home—to pick up his passport and military ID. “Of course, at 63, at that moment he was very frightened, and under such pressure, he signed it. He didn’t have the strength to resist,” his niece writes.

His phone was only returned to him towards the morning—that was when Glebov called his brother and said he was being taken through Voronezh to Rostov. Later, he ended up in Millerovo, Rostov region, from where he was supposed to be sent to military unit 90600 in the Samara region.

All his life, Glebov worked as a chef and pastry cook. “What kind of rifleman or stormtrooper is he at his freaking age?” Yulia wonders.

Editor: Dmitry Treschanin