22-year-old Russian conscript sent to war despite suicide attempt. He went missing after an assault operation and was later declared dead.

Alexander Korolkov, a 22-year-old conscript from Dmitrov, outside Moscow, was sent to fight in the war with Ukraine despite having attempted suicide during his military service, Veter reported after interviewing his mother.

Korolkov had been studying to become a food technologist at a vocational college when, in the summer of 2024, he took academic leave — and immediately received a summons from the local draft office. He was sent to serve, and a month later doctors diagnosed him with “mixed personality disorder.” At a training center for engineering troops in the Nizhny Novgorod region, he attempted to take his own life.

“I think it’s all because of the army, because Sasha is very kind, trusting, and sensitive. We didn’t have any problems like teenagers sometimes have, with partying or anything like that. He’s a very homebound boy. There, it seems, he couldn’t handle the pressure,” Maria Korolkova, the conscript’s mother, said.

After the training center, Korolkov was sent to a military unit in the town of Boguchar, in the Voronezh region, his mother said. There, he was admitted to a psychoneurological clinic and prescribed medication. She was assured he would not be deployed. But five days after his discharge from the clinic, Korolkov signed a contract for military service in Ukraine.

“We told Sasha that he absolutely should not sign a contract. Then he called me and said they had pushed him into it,” his mother said. The military unit refused to show her the contract, and she believes it was fabricated.

In April 2025, Korolkov’s unit sent him on an assault operation in the occupied territories of Ukraine. He went missing there, and in the summer of 2026, the unit petitioned a court to have him declared dead. His mother received a death certificate for her son.