In Penza and other towns across the Penza region, draft offices and security forces have been carrying out mass detentions of men, according to human rights advocates. Ivan Chuvilyaev, a representative of the support project Get Lost, told Meduza that dozens of men had been detained. The group said that by the evening of June 19, it had received 16 complaints about men in the region being pressured to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry and sent to war. Chuvilyaev estimated that pressure may have been applied to at least 100 people.
Accounts of joint raids by police and draft officials began to surface on June 17–18. Rights advocates say the main targets are socially vulnerable men, including those with debts, unspent convictions, or people stopped for minor offenses. The detainees are reportedly taken to police stations or draft offices, where they are told to sign military contracts. Claims that violence was used have not been independently confirmed, but relatives have described such cases.
According to Get Lost, some men were released after lawyers and relatives intervened, but others were allegedly sent to the war. A widely shared video filmed outside the draft office for Penza’s Oktyabrsky and Zheleznodorozhny districts shows women trying to block a minibus carrying detained relatives. The outlet Agentstvo reported that 18 men were inside.
“In one hour they issued all his papers, from a passport to a military ID. His real documents were still at home, and now they are sending him to Ukraine... He answered, ‘I had to,’” a woman who said her son had been detained told Sever.Realii.
Similar reports have also come from Kamenka, Zarechny, and Kuznetsk. A local rights advocate said isolated cases had been recorded since April, while by late May appeals from relatives had become widespread. In one video from Kuznetsk, a man in a wheelchair tries to interfere with the detentions and shouts at members of a military patrol.
Regional authorities deny the allegations. The governor’s press service said the videos were staged and called them a “CIPSO provocation.” Regional military commissar Andrei Surkov also described the footage as fabricated. The Penza region Interior Ministry said reports of men being forced into contracts were false, adding that police had merely assisted the Investigative Committee in checks on people who had obtained Russian citizenship and failed to register for military service on time. The ministry said such raids were routine.