One Russian woman sobbed hysterically as the group of men sat calmly in the darkness of a white minivan; another yelled at a soldier in camouflage fatigues as he slammed the van’s door. Another wept and made the sign of a cross at one of the men: “Lyosha! I love you!”
“Guys, tell me, did everyone sign the contract? Was it voluntary?” a woman who filmed the June 17 incident in Penza, a regional capital of a half million southeast of Moscow, asked the men. “Were you forced to do it?"
As the minivan moved to drive away, another woman stood in front of it, trying to stop it.
According to witnesses and relatives with whom RFE/RL spoke, the men had been detained a day earlier, taken off the streets, forcibly moved to a military recruitment office, and forced to sign contracts that would result in them being sent to fight in Ukraine.
“Of course, all of this looks like illegal coercion. My father had no intention of going to war; we discussed this with him,” one woman said. “I see no explanation for this, other than threats, violence, or pressure.”
Like all the people RFE/RL spoke to, she asked not to be named, or to use a pseudonym, to avoid prosecution by authorities.
In Russia’s all-out war, now in its fifth year, Ukrainian forces have fought Russian troops to a virtual stalemate, with Moscow struggling to eke out substantive battlefield gains.
The cost to both sides is eye-watering; Russia has suffered nearly 500,000 war dead, according to British intelligence and other Western estimates, and the tally of wounded is at least twice that.
While both sides have struggled to replace casualties, Russia has had more success, using generous financial incentives, as well as coercion and threats.
This year, however, has seen an inflection point, experts say.
There are growing rumors that the Kremlin may seek to call a second mass mobilization possibly as early as this fall, something that was a tectonic shock for Russian society the first time it happened, in September 2022.
In the meantime, recruiters appear to be increasingly relying on forcible methods of getting men to agree -- or submit -- to fighting in Ukraine. In Penza, residents said police have moved from detaining men on city streets, and started going door-to-door.
Lyudmila, a resident of the town of Kamenka, west of Penza, said she spent several days outside the main Penza recruiting office trying unsuccessfully to locate her son who, she said, had been abducted off the street.
“This is outrageous. People are basically being kidnapped. Something needs to be done, but I don't know what,” she said.
Two days after the video was published on the social network VK, law enforcement authorities called the reports of men being forced to sign contracts “untrue.” The video was later taken down by VK.
In Ukraine, It’s Called ‘Busification’
In Ukraine, the practice of grabbing potential military-eligible men off the streets, and hauling them to recruiting offices, is hugely controversial. Ukrainian call the practice “busification” -- the word “bus” referring to the vans that officials prowl the streets in, searching for draft-dodgers and other military-age men.
With the exception of President Vladimir Putin’s September 2022 mobilization decree -- which largely targeted military reservists -- authorities have been able to avoid ordering mandatory service -- like a full nationwide draft.
Officials have used a mix of federal and regional budget payments, and other incentives, to persuade hundreds of thousands of men to voluntarily sign contracts to fight in Ukraine. The flood of money has had an outsized impact in more rural, poorer regions of Russia.
Officials have also bent the rules on sending conscripts to fight, something largely prohibited under the law. Recruiters have cajoled and coerced conscripts into signing contracts just months into their first year of mandatory service.
In one example, a conscript sent to a military camp on the Pacific island of Sakhalin reported an officer ordering soldiers on punitive marches to get them to sign -- or even forging signatures on volunteer contracts.
Authorities have also relied on prison inmates to fight, dangling the offer of a pardon to convicts to agree to be sent to the front. And they’ve targeted foreign migrant workers, offering an expedited route to Russian citizenship if they agree to fight.
This year, Ukrainian drone attacks have been close to keeping pace with Russia’s recruitment pipeline, experts said, and that has forced Russian recruiters to increase wages and bonuses for new volunteers.
And, as in the case in Penza, prompted them to use more physical methods.
Another woman in Penza, Margarita, said her son had been detained and taken to the enlistment center without any documents. They processed paperwork to send him to Ukraine in an hour, she said.
“He managed to call me up and quietly said, 'They're taking me to Ukraine,’” she told RFE/RL. “You could tell he'd already resigned himself to going.
“’I shouted: 'Why did you sign it?'” she said. “He replied: 'I had to.' I'm sure he was beaten. He wasn’t planning to go to the war.”
‘People Are Being Snatched Right Off The Streets’
Rights activists claim that the practice of detaining men arbitrarily and forcing them to sign contracts to fight is showing up in other regions aside from Penza.
Authorities detain men under the pretext of checking identification, said Valery, a lawyer who provides legal counsel to soldiers. The goal is to see if they’re wanted for desertion or if they’re migrants who recently received Russian citizenship but haven’t registered with their local recruiting office.
"People are being snatched right off the streets," he said. "Previously it was mostly drunken passersby who were targeted, now they're picking up men of any age and in any condition.”
“It’s now widespread throughout the country,” he said.
In the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, 26-year-old Yaroslav Kubov was detained on June 9 as he returned home from a friend’s birthday party. Kubov’s relative Igor said two men wearing civilian clothes invited him for a beer, and after he declined, they grabbed him and drove him out of town.
Kubov was beaten and yelled at, and authorities issued him a new passport and military ID card and sent him to Rostov-on-Don, a southern city that serves as a military transit point to nearby Ukraine, where Igor said he contacted relatives five days later.
He had no reason to want to fight in Ukraine; he was not in need of money, Igor told RFE/RL, adding that he and other relatives have been filing appeals with military police and prosecutors.
“If he doesn't escape, there’ll be no way to get him out legally," Igor said.
Artyom Nikolayev, another Penza resident, said his 53-year-old relative was detained while returning home late from work, and was forced to sign a contract. He said he and his family spent three weeks searching for him before he contacted them from Rostov-on-Don.
“He's in shock, of course, and we're all in shock here. It's simply dangerous for men to walk the streets in Penza right now,” he told RFE/RL. “Doesn’t matter if you're elderly, sober, or have documents; anyone can be grabbed.”
‘Like A Cow To Slaughter’
Arina, a resident of Spassk, a town northwest of Penza, said her neighbor Sergei’s door was broken down on June 19 by authorities looking for him.
“They yelled at him to 'show his documents, right now.’ He refused, so they kicked the door down” and took him to a waiting minivan, she told RFE/RL. “I don't know where he is now.”
“This isn't just happening in Penza. Traffic police and bailiff vans are driving around,” she said. “Now it's not just the streets that are dangerous; soon we'll have to hide at home to avoid being broken into."
Arina said another relative in the village of Kamenka argued with police and court bailiffs who claimed he was in arrears for a loan. When authorities sought to forcibly take him away, the man’s children held onto him, and his wife tried to keep him from being dragged off.
“They wrenched his arm, kicked off the children, and dragged him out of the house.
Once he was in the car, she managed to hand over copies of the loan documents, she said. “But they clearly didn't care. The goal was to get him to the recruitment office. Like a cow to slaughter.”
There have been similar stories for several years, said Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the nongovernmental organization Conscientious Objectors, but they have attracted outsize attention in Penza due to scope of the detention raids, and the outcry from relatives.
“Often you don’t need to beat or torture a person. It's enough to just intimidate them with the potential consequences for themselves or their families,” Klyga told RFE/RL. “People are under intense psychological pressure and make decisions out of fear.”
