Forced recruitment for the Russian army: kidnapped in shorts and flip flops

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Mediazona opens a window to Russia with the following article. You can find the whole article in Russian here.

Vitali Smidovich suffered from epileptic seizures and died last week during the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. He was lured with the offer to repair houses damaged by drones. Once he had done that, he was forcibly recruited and sent to the front.

More and more often, people are tricked or tricked into signing contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. The number of people wanting to join the Russian army voluntarily is falling, while at the same time the “need” at the front continues to rise. Mediazona has compiled known cases in which Russian men are picked up individually on the street.

For example, 49-year-old Sergei Scriabin from Kirov, which is about 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow. He was picked up from his home under the pretext of a fine “for drinking beer on the street,” taken to a police station and then to a military assembly point.

According to his wife, he was “issued a passport within 15 minutes” one weekend. He was then forced “under threat of violence” to sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense despite his diagnosed epilepsy. He was then sent to the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR).

Scriabin last contacted his wife on July 23, 2026. Four days later, she received a call from the unit's political officer. Her husband is already missing. However, according to Scriabin's wife, this status was only officially established in August.

The woman from Kirov turned to the prosecutor's office because of her husband's situation. There she was told that Scriabin had signed the contract voluntarily. "We were also deceived with the payments. My husband has been at war for almost half a year now, but I haven't received a single kopeck. I don't want this blood money. I want to bring my husband back home alive and healthy," the woman said in an interview with Mediazona.

Similar cases are reported not only in Kirov, but also in other cities. 33-year-old Alexander Stepanov from Penza was kidnapped by unknown assailants as he left a store in the evening - he was only wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops.

“Unknown people handcuffed him and put him in a car. They took him somewhere - my son said, probably to a district military replacement office -, beat him and tore his T-shirt,” said his mother Tamara Stepanova. “And that continued until he signed the contract.”

According to his mother, new documents were “issued to him within 20 minutes” at the district military replacement office. On August 23, Stepanov announced that he was in Donetsk. His mother turned to the military prosecutor's office, the human rights commissioner and the civil office of the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, and to the authority through the Ministry of Defense website. She hasn't received any answers yet.

26-year-old Nikita Konscheserov from Petrozavodsk was picked up drunk on the street and taken to the sobering up station of an addiction clinic. According to his friends, this happened at the end of July. A contract was foisted on him and Konscheserov couldn't even remember how it came about, reports the Norwegian online media Barents Observer, citing a source close to his family.

"He didn't intend to do that at all and didn't want to. He's not a soldier, he can't fight," the source told the newspaper. Early in the morning of July 29, Konscheserov was put on a train and taken to a military assembly point in the Leningrad region.

Konscheserov's son had been born shortly before. In addition, both parents are disabled. “He is the sole breadwinner of the family and his sudden call-up to military service puts his relatives in an extremely difficult situation,” says an article about Konscheserov’s story.

It is not the first case of its kind in the region. As the Barents Observer reported, recruiters deliberately get people drunk and then sell them a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry.

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