Residents of Penza and nearby towns have reported raids on men since June 16 involving police, bailiffs and military enlistment officials. According to witnesses, men were stopped in the street, checked for military registration, taken from apartment sweeps and brought to draft offices. The Conscious Objectors Movement and the School of the Conscript published guidance on what to do during such detentions.
The strongest reaction followed a video filmed on the night of June 17 outside the military enlistment office for Penza’s Oktyabrsky and Zheleznodorozhny districts on Skladskaya Street. In the footage, women surround a minibus with men inside, demand time to say goodbye and ask whether the contracts were signed voluntarily. One of the men in the vehicle responds by shaking his head.
Mediazona found one of the women from the video, Tamara. She said that on the morning of June 16, her husband was detained on his way to a bus stop by people in civilian clothes who arrived in a white Lada Largus marked as belonging to the federal bailiff service. He was first taken to local bailiffs, then driven by taxi to Penza. Once he reached the draft office, contact with him stopped, and relatives were not allowed inside.
When Tamara later saw her husband, she said he told her that officials had issued him a new passport, canceled the old one, handed out bank cards and forced him to sign a contract. She said there were no visible injuries, but he appeared extremely frightened. Experts from Get Lost and Call to Conscience told the outlet that a replacement passport can be issued within a day, and military salary cards are often non-personalized.
Near midnight, the detained men were brought outside under guard to a bus. After an argument with relatives, they were briefly returned to the building and then, Tamara said, taken away through a back exit in a Gazelle van. On the evening of June 17, her husband said he was in Rostov; a day later he said they had been issued uniforms and were in Mariupol.
Andrei Surkov, the military commissar of the Penza region, called the video staged and said there had been no raids or forced deployment. On June 19, the Defense Ministry, through the War on Fakes channel, described the events as registration checks targeting people who had obtained Russian citizenship but had not registered for military service on time.