Russia is recruiting women out of prisons to serve as front-line medics. A new investigation documents rape by commanders and criminal cases against the women who report it.

‘You girls are a very powerful destabilizing factor’

In 2024, Russia’s Defense Ministry launched an experiment called “Choice,” according to a new investigation by the independent Russian news outlet Verstka. The military solicited volunteers at women’s penal colonies in several regions and assigned them to tactical medicine units to treat the wounded near the front.

The first group of convicted women was recruited in early 2024 from penal colonies in Russia’s Southern Federal District. “From what I was told, there was no selection process and no training, and the crowd there was… ‘Freedom for AUE’ types [a banned prison subculture that glorifies criminal life]. They were simply told, ‘Want freedom? Sign a contract.’ They thinned out fast. They wiped themselves out: drunken self-inflicted gunshot wounds, a grenade in a dugout, some died from drugs, some were killed out of jealousy… And a small number died carrying out combat missions,” a source told Verstka.

The next round of recruitment took place that fall in Russia’s Irkutsk region, where the women did receive two weeks of training in tactical medicine, taught by former fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner. One of the instructors said the women’s commitment was “ferocious.” At the final session, the instructors gave each woman a first-aid kit and advised them never to go anywhere near the front line.

“If women are ending up at war, that’s a sign things are seriously screwed up in the country. If I were a commander and was told women were being brought into my unit, I’d have fought it any way I could. You girls are a very powerful destabilizing factor. Men have been in the trenches for a third year now, and then they bring in women. Hormones will go through the roof, and no law and no army regulation will hold anything together. It’ll turn into chaos,” Verstka quoted one of the instructors as saying. The women did not heed the instructors’ advice, Verstka said.

A source familiar with the women who took the courses said their fates diverged: “Some got a taste of that illusion of freedom and went completely off the rails. Some started building a life for themselves. Some have already died. A small percentage really did try, in good faith, to earn their freedom. I’m talking, above all, about Lyudmila.”

‘You’re a convict, you don’t get that!’

Before her imprisonment, Lyudmila Poltarakova practiced aikido and competed in multi-discipline strength sports. She won the European armlifting championship and earned the Russian rank of International Master of Sports. In 2019, she was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison after being detained while planting mephedrone dead drops. She pleaded guilty and said she hadn’t used drugs herself but sold them for money to help her brother and sister. After the trial, she was transferred under guard to Penal Colony No. 40 in the Irkutsk region.

One of Poltarakova’s acquaintances described her to Verstka this way: “Very intelligent, prone to calculated risk. She can walk right up to the edge if she’s thought through every move in advance. She doesn’t think like a woman, and she’s extremely strong in spirit, even compared to my comrades in arms. A heightened sense of justice.”

Poltarakova signed a contract, studied hard in the preparatory courses, and arrived in the annexed Luhansk region in early 2025 along with other women from the program. She was assigned to the 370th Medical Battalion and from there sent to the 12th Tank Regiment of the Kantemirovskaya Division, part of the 1st Tank Army, as a medical orderly. The regiment’s commander, Sergei Zhitkov — who goes by the call sign Oskol — began summoning her to his trench, ostensibly for medical massages. The first few times, that was all it amounted to, but later, according to Poltarakova, he began “getting handsy.”

“When he was turned down, he started yelling, asking why the hell her battalion commander had recommended her to him. It turned out that Oskol and [the commander of the 370th Medical Battalion, Ramazan] Mutalipov were old friends, and that it was Mutalipov who had sent Lyudmila to him, saying that she was fine and that he could fuck her,” an acquaintance of Poltarakova said, relaying her account.

Poltarakova later told acquaintances and a military investigator that Zhitkov raped her on February 14, 2025, and continued to do so for at least the whole of March. Many of their fellow soldiers witnessed the assaults, she said. “The whole 12th Regiment was talking about it. And when Oskol called our dugout one night in April and told us to go provide sexual services to the division commander, who had come to visit him, I couldn’t take it anymore. I started screaming, I had a breakdown,” Poltarakova said in a voice message to a friend.

Other medics who shared a dugout with Poltarakova witnessed the scene, as did the military police officers guarding it. According to Poltarakova, another woman was sent to Zhitkov that night, while she herself was sent back to the 370th Medical Battalion. Poltarakova signed a statement saying she had no complaints against Zhitkov. She did so voluntarily, fearing that publicity would “negatively affect her future service and her receipt of an award to expunge her conviction,” according to her testimony, which Verstka reviewed.

In June 2026, Poltarakova was wounded and ended up in a military hospital, where, she said, she began getting threatening phone calls demanding that she sign another statement saying she had no complaints against Zhitkov. She then filed a rape complaint with the deputy military prosecutor of the 1st Tank Army and made her story public on a pro-war Telegram channel.

“I can say that we’re all slaves with no rights. You want a medal for being wounded? You’re a convict, you don’t get that! They struck me off the list for a medal! … You want leave after eight months of hellish work on the front line? You’re a convict, you don’t get that! You just want to rest in the hospital after surviving at the front? You’re a convict, you don’t get that! No one has ever thrown my criminal record in my face this often! I’ve served honestly since the first days of my contract; I don’t hide in hospitals, I’m always on the front line. … They never humiliated me in the penal colony the way they have in the army,” she said in a video statement.

After filing the complaint, Poltarakova was told she was being sent on a combat mission — an order she refused, believing it was an attempt to get rid of her. She dropped out of contact on July 15, but not before telling acquaintances that military police had come for her at the hospital. Verstka later learned that Poltarakova was alive and on the front line. A criminal case has been opened against her for refusing the order to leave the hospital for a combat mission. No case has been opened over the rape. Zhitkov was promoted in 2025 to acting commander of the Kantemirovskaya Division.

‘A guy comes up to me and says he’ll throw a grenade into my dugout if I don’t put out’

Darya Chirukhina dropped out of contact at the same time as Poltarakova. Another former convict from the Irkutsk region, she had also been assigned to the 370th Medical Battalion and had spoken publicly about attempted sexual assault.

“I’m posted at an outpost where some guy comes up to me and says that he’s the brother of an FSB [Federal Security Service] officer and that he’ll throw a grenade into my dugout if I don’t put out. Who am I supposed to go to about this — you?” Chirukhina asked in a phone call with a sergeant major. At Chirukhina’s request, a recording of the call was posted in a military chat group.

She also complained about the workload and health problems: “Even in the penal colony, I had more rights when it came to dealing with my own affairs… I developed diabetes at the front. I asked the command for medical help again and again, and for six months they just turned me away. Our commanders used manipulation and pressure to make me file a formal refusal of treatment. When the top brass come to visit, they hide us on purpose so we don’t say anything we shouldn’t…”

Other women from the penal colonies who spoke with Verstka also described consensual relationships at the front that resulted in children. “Things get truly awful when it comes to the kids — the babies aren’t even a month old, and they take them away from the mothers. I sent the babies away [from military hospitals] myself, and I still feel sick about it,” one of the convicted women said.

Verstka’s sources among former inmates said they knew of at least three births at the front. The women who gave birth were threatened with having their children sent to an orphanage, but in the end managed to hand the infants over to distant relatives. They then continued to serve “under compulsion,” the sources claimed.