Russian military unit commanders eager to meet Kremlin recruiting quotas are torturing teenage draftee soldiers into “volunteering” for service in the Russo-Ukraine War, the independent news agency Astra reported on Wednesday.
Materials published by the Kremlin-critical information platform cited official complaints written by parents of men drafted into the Russian army in the Ural Mountain regions of Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk, as well as the remote central Siberian Khakassia region.
The news platform made public, along with scans of the complaints, images of Telegram chat threads and video interviews with individual soldiers claiming to have been abused by their chain of command.
By Russian law, a conscript may not be deployed outside Russia for service in combat, while a contracted soldier must go wherever he is ordered, including into combat in Ukraine, should military leadership see a need.
According to those complaints, new conscripts, even before arriving at their intended service station inside Russia, while still on the train from recruiting centers, were approached by officers and sergeants and told they must “volunteer” for service as contracted soldiers – or else.Conscripts not willing to sign up as professional Russian soldiers ready to deploy to Ukraine were humiliated, threatened, beaten, placed in stress positions, or tied up and left hours on cold train car floor, the complaints alleged.
According to complaints filed by other soldier relatives, at least nine draftees en route to Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky Krai were unable to hold out against threats and physical violence used against them by accompanying non-commissioned officers and officers, and signed army contracts against their will.
Materials published by Astra identified the receiving units as elements of Russia’s 5th Guards Combined Arms Army, a Far Eastern formation with a primary mission of securing Russia’s maritime provinces facing China and North and South Korea.
Natalya Sergeeva, the mother of a soldier, said that of the some 150 new recruits heading east, at least 50, along with her son, Semyon, were browbeaten into signing army contracts. Soldiers refusing to sign the contract were denied water and abused. All had been drafted into the Russian army in November, she said.
“A system of moral oppression was effectively established, including constant psychological pressure, shouting, threats, humiliation, rude and obscene language, waking up in the middle of the night during lights out, when we were deliberately woken for pressure, conversations, and ‘explanations,’ depriving us of sleep; and the creation of an atmosphere of constant fear for our health and safety,” a collective complaint filed by relatives said in part.
Russian lawyer and rights activist Maksim Chikhunov in mid-January accused commanders in a unit in the Far Eastern city Ussuriysk, a unit also identified in the joint complaint, of having conspired with hospital officials to force severely wounded soldiers with rights to quit service on grounds of their injuries, to return to the Russian army as volunteers.
Tactics allegedly employed by leadership against invalids included threats of or actual beatings, rape with a metal object, detention in solitary confinement, being tied into fetal position, denial of medical care and cancellation of invalid status. Even soldiers missing limbs, unable to see at distance or needing institutional care for reason of severe mental health problems. The common means by which a soldier might avoid the punishments was payment of bribes to hospital management, Chikhunov claimed.
Video testimony of Russian soldiers and images of complaints filed by them and their relatives with authorities was published by Chikhunov on Jan. 12 as partial evidence. Kyiv Post researchers confirmed the materials were consistent with a unit based in the village of Sergeevka in Russia’s far eastern Primorskiy Krai region and generally with Russian army practice, but it was not possible to confirm the individual abuse allegations independently. Unconfirmed reports said the unit’s formal name is 60th Motor Rifle Regiment, and its parent unit is possibly the 143rd Motor Rifle Brigade, both 5th Guards Army.
The independent Conflict Intelligence Team in a Monday report detailed similar difficulties faced by the war-injured Russian soldier Anton Simonenko, who, having received battle wounds leaving him unable to walk without a cane, was re-assigned to frontline duty along with 20 other similarly combat-incapable soldiers. According to that report, when Simonenko refused orders to go fight on medical grounds, unit leadership declared his medical evaluation forged and assigned him to an assault detachment of the 110th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment.
Astra in 2024 reported that officer Lieutenant Alexander Yemelyanov, of 143rd Brigade, shot and killed 19-year-old conscript Artem Antonov but was not prosecuted for the killing because a military court canceled homicide charges against him so Yemelyanov might transfer to a frontline combat unit.
Reports of detentions and beatings of at least 27 conscientious objector draftees assigned to the Ussuriysk-based units first surfaced in independent Russian media in April 2024 and became higher profile news following lawsuits filed by Chikhanov and reporting by the usually pro-Moscow news magazine Ostrozho Novosti. A late 2025 article by that publication on hazing, violence, and corruption forced authorities to open an investigation into possible criminal activity by unit leadership, Astra reported.
The Ukrainian military information channel Ne Zhdi Khoroshie Novosti, a platform devoted to publicizing Russian army problems and complaints, on Jan. 16 published a video interview with a Russian soldier identified as Andrey Shekhovtsev, according to that material, a new Ukrainian prisoner of war.
According to Shekhovtsev’s account, he was a service member of the Ussuriysk-based 60th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, and taken prisoner in fighting in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia sector near the hotspot city Huliaipole. In video later confirmed authentic by Ukrainian military journalist Yury Butusov, Shekhotsev accused his commanders of ordering him to “find” vodka and caviar for an upcoming officers’ party and, when he refused to carry out the order, demanding a two-million-ruble ($25,600) bribe with the alternative of being sent to an assault unit.
Shekhovtsev alleged commanders locked him in an open pit used by unit leadership as a latrine as a pressure tactic.
Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Federov recently told Kyiv media Ukraine’s military will follow a strategy of attrition against the Russian army with the objective of killing or wounding about 40% more Russian soldiers every month – about 15,000 men – than the Russian government is capable of recruiting.
Kremlin officials have said recruiting targets have been met or exceeded throughout the war, and that a Russian draftee will never be sent to Ukraine to fight.