An 18-year-old in Russia says he was tricked into signing a military contract before he came of age
An 18-year-old from Krasnogorodsk, a town in Russia’s Pskov region, says he was tricked into signing a military contract while still a minor, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported. Anton Filimonov is an orphan — his mother died a year ago, he does not know his father, and his only close relative is his grandmother.
Six months ago, Filimonov decided to drop out of the Pskov Agrotechnical College. When he and his grandmother went to the college to notify administrators of that decision, a man in camouflage who introduced himself as Alexander pulled the student aside into an office and began pressuring him to sign documents, promising safe service conditions. Filimonov signed the papers but kept no copies or photographs of them.
On July 7 — Filimonov’s 18th birthday — staff from a local draft office took him in for a medical examination, where he again signed “some papers” after being told there was “no turning back.”
He was ultimately sent home with a summons ordering him to report to the draft office on the morning of July 11 to begin service in military unit No. 77795. “I have no idea yet,” Filimonov told journalists when asked about his plans. “I really want to challenge this somehow, so that I don’t end up going there.”
Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department of the Conscientious Objectors Movement, told Mediazona he knows of at least one other case in which a young man was made to sign a contract before turning 18. “They put in any date they want, hand over the contract for signature without a date, and issue the order for the contract to take effect once the person turns 18. And formally it’s all legal,” the human rights activist said.
An anonymous lawyer with the Prizyv k Sovesti (“Call to Conscience”) project said signing a contract before reaching adulthood is “impossible by definition” and that a contract with no date indicated “would have no legal force.” After reviewing Filimonov’s summons, the lawyer suggested that the young man had in fact signed the contract on July 7.
Students at Russian universities and colleges began to be recruited for the war in Ukraine in late 2025. They were promised service in drone units, high pay, and a one-year contract, even though the contracts are in fact open-ended. The independent Russian political newsletter Faridaily reported that Russian authorities had set universities a quota for recruiting contract soldiers — 2% of their student enrollment.
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