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Russia
During mass raids carried out by military registration and enlistment offices in Penza and other cities in the region, dozens of men were arrested, Ivan Chuvilev, a representative of the “Walking Through the Forest” project, told Meduza.
In the Telegram channel “Go through the forest” She saysAs of the evening of June 19, human rights activists had received 16 complaints about the detention of men in the Penza region, who were forced to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense and send them to war.
Chuvilev estimates that local authorities tried to force “at least a hundred” people to sign the communication. “How many people were deceived into concluding a contract, how many people are still in police custody – unfortunately, we will find out all this only after a while, when our relatives come to us: to cry about sending a loved one to the front,” he said in an interview with Meduza.
Evidence of joint raids by security forces and military commissars in Penza and neighboring cities began to emerge from 17 to 18 June. Human rights activists announcesThat the police first detain people from socially vulnerable groups – those who have problems with the law or money. For example, these are men who have convictions and outstanding debts, or those who have been arrested for a minor offense (for example, being drunk in a public place). The detainees were transferred to the police or the military registration and recruitment office. There they were asked to sign a military communication. According to unconfirmed reports, violence was used against some detainees.
The Walking Through the Jungle project reported that in a number of cases, men were able to be released without consequences when their relatives and lawyers intervened. However, others were actually sent to war.
The previous day, it was widely circulated on social media videoIt was photographed near the military registration and enlistment office of the Oktyabrsky and Zheleznodorozhny districts of Penza. In it, women block the path of a minibus in which their relatives sit under military guard. In all, there were 18 men detained on the bus. I found out “an agency”. Mediazona spoke with one of the participants in the video. She said the detained men were beaten at the military registration and enlistment office and forced to sign contracts. Her husband has already been transferred to a military unit in Mariupol, which has been annexed.
Another woman said in an interview with Sevier Reale that her son was arrested without documents and sent to war. “Within an hour, he had all the documents – from his passport to his military card. The real documents were left at home, and he is now being sent to Ukraine. He managed to get through and said calmly: ‘They are taking me to Ukraine’. You could hear that he had already resigned. I shouted: ‘Why did you sign?’ He replied: ‘I had to’. I’m sure he was beaten. He had no intention of going to war.” He said she.
Security forces are also launching large-scale raids in the cities of Kamenka, Zarechny and Kuznetsk, neighboring the city of Penza. According to a local human rights activist, it began at the end of May, and individual cases have been recorded since April.
“In June, all this reached a level of ban. At the end of May, dozens of wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of detainees contacted me every day. Now the number has reached hundreds of messages. I simply do not have time to sort through all the complaints and delve into each story,” the human rights activist told Sever.Realii.
Another thing videowhich captured the raids, was filmed in Kuznetsk. The video shows a man in a wheelchair cursing military patrol officers who are making arrests. He shouts, “What will you say to the mothers then? They take the little children. If there is no one to intercede, I will intercede. Without legs, I will intercede.” When one of the soldiers began photographing the man, he followed him in a wheelchair with a knife in his hand.
“Important stories” I found out Identity of a man in a wheelchair. It turned out that he was a former participant in the war in Ukraine. He was also convicted five times on charges of battery and robbery, most recently in January 2026.
The authorities in the Penza region deny that they are carrying out mass arrests of men with the aim of sending them to war. In the press service of the governor maleAll the videos distributed on social media sites are fabricated and this is a “widespread provocation.”
The same thing was said by the Military Commissar of the Penza Region Andrei Surkov. “If you watch the video well, there are men who will be taken, imprisoned, and sent, and they will sit and smile at the comedy I presented there.” – male He is in conversation with Mediazona.
Surkov added that he knows “the names [тех] Who made this fabricated video,” and accused the video’s authors of trying to harm the army and committing acts of sabotage against the Russian authorities.
Representatives of the Ministry of the Interior in the Penza region described the raids as “planned events.” “During Internet monitoring, posts were revealed stating that the police, together with employees of other departments, are conducting mass raids in the city of Penza, arresting men and forcing them to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. The information contained in these posts is incorrect.” She says In a statement to the police.
The security forces claim that they simply helped the Investigative Committee “carry out raids to identify people who obtained Russian citizenship and did not register themselves with the army in a timely manner.” The Ministry of Interior added, “These raids are planned and carried out periodically in the region.”
There was no information about mass raids in other regions of Russia. In Ukraine, in recent years, there has been a widespread practice of TCC officials (similar to military registration and enlistment offices) forcibly detaining those responsible for military service in public places. It was called “busification”.
War in pictures. Kharkov
On the night of June 20, Russian forces attacked the Khlodnogorsk district of Kharkov with aerial bombs. by Data Local authorities: A two-story residential building was damaged. Nine people were injured, including a six-year-old child. The body of a deceased citizen was recovered from under the rubble.
War through the eyes of Medusa readers
Medusa’s readers live in different countries and have different attitudes toward war. We publish your messages to see this event through your eyes. Our editors try to represent all viewpoints, even if they do not match the editorial position. However, in accordance with the Medusa Law, we do not publish messages that contain “hate speech,” justify the killing of civilians, or express direct support for an aggressive war.
Lisa (Moscow region). War… At first, like everyone else, it seemed to me that this did not concern me.
I am 24 years old. My stepfather died last month in the war, and my younger brother is left without his only friend and support, and most importantly, his father. My younger brother’s tears are a huge pain, he dreamed that my father would come back and in the summer they would go fishing on a boat, but what now? Another person is shocked… I will try to be a support for my brother, but that will not change anything.
I wake up all week to the sounds of air defense, we live under constant stress, and antidepressant sales are at number one.
For only four years I have not been able to understand and answer the question: why did everyone start this, why? Why do we need foreign lands if we have slums and slums farther than the Moscow Ring Road?
Can we change something? I don’t think we are so tired and afraid that we simply no longer have the power of our opinions and words. There is an emptiness inside, there is no hope anymore… And it’s funny that people really wanted to change something, to vote for Boris Nadezhdin, for example, and stand in huge queues – there was no sense.
Everything has been bought and we are just pawns.