Rights defenders reported violent detentions and coercion into signing contracts in at least 17 regions of Russia

Rights defenders reported violent detentions and coercion into signing contracts in at least 17 regions of Russia

Residents of at least 17 regions of Russia have complained to rights defenders about violent detentions and coercion into signing a contract with the Defense Ministry over the past month and a half, organizations “School of the Conscript”, “Get Lost”, and “Call to Conscience” told “Verstka.”

Thus, “School of the Conscript” reported that in July they received three complaints from Udmurtia and one each from Primorye, Irkutsk Region, and Ryazan Region. In August, they received two more complaints from Udmurtia and one each from Arkhangelsk Region and Buryatia.

Timofey Vaskin, head of the project’s legal department, said that relatives and acquaintances of other people who were forced to go to war reported threats by traffic police to plant drugs, abduction straight off the street, and delivery to a military unit, or coercion into signing a contract while intoxicated.

“In most of the appeals we receive, people directly indicate that the victims are men from vulnerable social groups. That is, those with alcohol, drug, or mental health problems, as well as the elderly and/or physically ill, lonely people, or those with problems with the law,” Vaskin says.

At “Get Lost,” three complaints came in July from three regions. But in the incomplete month of August there were already more than 15: from Blagoveshchensk, Arkhangelsk, Novorossiysk (Krasnodar Krai), Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Region), Ulan-Ude (Buryatia), the village of Yekaterinoslavka in Khabarovsk Krai, and a military unit in Totskoye-2 (Orenburg Region, coercion of a conscript). Two cases each were recorded in Izhevsk and Omsk.

“Call to Conscience” noted that in July the organization recorded a spike of 12 complaints about violent recruitment, from Ulyanovsk and the surrounding region, Vladivostok, Penza, Izhevsk, Kirov, Udmurtia, and Bashkortostan.

“At the beginning of August there were no such reports, but starting from August 10 there were six such cases from Izhevsk, Penza, Omsk, and in two more cases we do not know the city. There were more reports in total, but in the rest people were talking about events that happened in July,” a representative of the organization said.

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