How men in one Russian region are being abducted and sent to war

Since mid-June, mass roundups have been taking place in Russia’s Penza region: men are grabbed right off the street, forced to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, and sent to fight in the war in Ukraine. Authorities are using a range of methods: deception, bribery, threats, and force. Behind the quotas for rounding up potential contract soldiers may be Tamara Pavlutkina, head of the Bashmakovsky District administration and the local branch of the United Russia party, according to iStories. Journalists at the outlet spoke with local residents and found out how and from where men are being abducted in Penza.

• Some men are taken straight from their homes. One resident of the village of Bashmakovo — a man with no spleen who must take medication constantly — was taken while his mother was out at the store. “Neighbors told her that someone had taken him away. He later got in touch, called, and explained that he’d been forced to sign a military contract,” the source told journalists.
• Others are grabbed right outside their front door. One woman told iStories that a patrol detained her 42-year-old brother as he sat outside his building in Kuznetsk with a friend in December 2024. He was taken to a draft office and disappeared less than a month later. After 13 months of searching, his family learned he had been killed.
• Men are taken under the pretext of a trip to the district administration. That’s how officials tried to take Bashmakovo resident Alexei Denisenko to Penza — a relative caught up with him by car and brought him back.
• Or under the guise of a visit from a new local police officer. In July, several men in civilian clothes showed up at the Bashmakovo home of private security guard Sergei Teplyakov and tried to lure him outside to take him away.
• Others are lured with promises of a new job. One Bashmakovo resident was offered work as a security guard and told to come to Tambov to get an ID made — instead, he was sent to Rostov and made to sign a contract.
• Some are taken straight from the police station. The brother of a woman from the Belinsky district ended up at a police station one evening while drunk — from there, he was sent to a military unit in Millerovo, in the Rostov region.
• And still others are taken from “houses where they drink.” A woman from the Kuznetsk district said a district administration employee makes the rounds of these houses, “bringing a bottle and getting the men drunk.” “Then they leave together, get into the car, and the men are never seen again,” she said.