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“The unwilling were tasered or had their papers signed for them”: Russia’s fall conscription drive reaches new levels of brutality

Russia’s fall military draft is drawing to a close. The nearer the end, the harsher the methods employed by recruitment officers tasked with meeting quotas. Law enforcement officers break into young men’s homes, dress in plain clothes to ambush them near buildings, and handcuff them in subway stations and shopping malls. Newly drafted conscripts are even apprehended during trips to other cities and dragged into police cars in the streets. Conscripts and their families told […] how military enlistment officials, together with Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya), tase prospective soldiers with electric shockers and threaten them with criminal charges in an effort to force them into uniform.

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For their targets, the risk of being sent to war has increased significantly. While conscripts cannot legally be deployed to participate in military operations in Ukraine, several of them have nevertheless been killed and injured on the front lines since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Previously, their participation in the war was concealed — even as recruits were dying under fire in Russia’s border regions and occupied Crimea — but conscripts now are directly threatened with deployment to the Kursk Region, where more than 120 soldiers called up for compulsory service were reported missing or captured in the first month of Ukraine’s incursion. Publicly available information […] — and the combatants themselves — testify that the death toll is even higher.

This reality does little to increase the draft’s popularity. Instead, it has led enlistment offices to act more aggressively. Aside from the all too familiar tactic of “same-day transfers to the assembly point” — a practice that gained traction in the fall of 2022 — conscripts are subjected to beatings, handcuffing, detention at enlistment offices, and are coerced into signing contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense on the spot.

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In the final month of this year’s draft, young men are being seized everywhere — on streets, in the metro, at bus stops, and in food courts in malls across the country. Raids have also targeted student dorms (1, 2). The Get Lost project (“Idite Lesom”) reports that at least 125 raids on conscripts have been recorded across Russia so far.

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In Moscow, the work of local draft offices has been simplified via the introduction of a Unified Draft Point (“Ediniy Punkt Prizyva” or EPP). The local authorities are flaunting it as an innovation “accelerating and simplifying all procedures related to conscription into military service.” In reality, however, it only expands opportunities for breaking the law: “It’s a massive body where responsibility is completely blurred, which creates fertile ground for violations — when people unfit for service, who have had non-draftable diagnoses for years, are declared fit.”

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There seems to be next to nothing young men […] could have done to avoid being forcibly conscripted into the Russian military. Technically, it is not illegal to decline to open the door to the police, but often enough officers simply force their way in. This is what happened to the brother of [a] Moscow resident [who] explains that the police burst into their apartment completely unexpectedly:

They came around noon and started ringing the doorbell. My mother refused to open, but they broke the lock and came inside. They justified their intrusion by claiming the apartment was municipally owned and, therefore, they had the right to enter whenever they pleased. They tried to intimidate everyone. **My mother stood in the hallway, yelling and trying to block their way, but they pushed her aside harshly, leaving bruises on her arm, and made their way inside [the home]. ** My sister started recording everything on her phone. Three men came in. They identified themselves as Nikolai Igorevich Yakushev, a sergeant from the Khoroshevo-Mnevniki [District] police department, and Alexander Balashov, the senior district officer. With them was a plainclothes man — a bald guy who refused to identify himself. We later realized he was from the draft office.

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The easiest way to catch potential conscripts is by approaching them in public places: shopping malls, metro stations, bus stops, or simply stopping them on the street. Russia’s security forces have carried out raids like these in Moscow and St. Petersburg since the first days of the draft — and they’ve only gotten more frequent as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches.

[As one conscript recounts:]

I exited at Arbat [metro] station. At the intersection, after the underground passage, there was a checkpoint — they were checking documents. I didn’t think much of it — [it seemed like] just a routine check — and handed over my passport [to the policeman]. He looked at me and asked, ‘What about your military obligations?’ I thought: well, that’s it, I’m finished. […]

The draft office was completely insane. Some people were crying, others were in shock. Next to me stood a man — completely pale, a blank expression on his face. Another young guy was visibly distressed — he works in film, rents an apartment with his girlfriend, and now his whole life turned to sh*t in an instant. His name was Matvey, and he was really unwell. I was in a daze, too.

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[Another conscript recounts:]

They asked for my documents [in the metro station], and I was half-asleep, not thinking — I just handed them my passport. One of them looked at it and said, ‘Yep, it’s him,’ and immediately: ‘Come with us to the police room.’ They cuffed me right away — the officer holding my passport handcuffed my arm to his — and led me up the escalator. They didn’t return my passport. I demanded it back, but they said they would only give it back in the police room. I asked them to remove the handcuffs, but they said it wasn’t allowed.

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In the tent where they were searching me, they handed me a form and said, ‘Sign here to confirm you’re handing over your phone.’ I read it and saw that it stated I was voluntarily handing over my phone for safekeeping. I refused to sign, saying I shouldn’t even be here and that my phone had been stolen. They tried to force me, but I flatly refused, so they signed the document for me.

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