"Return was not planned from the start"
NotMoscow wrote Oksana From Siberia. Her younger brother, Dmitry, served time in a penal colony, was recruited, and in the spring of 2026, went to war in Ukraine, where he disappeared after less than a couple of weeks on the front lines. Trying to find any traces of him, Oksana created a chat for relatives of missing soldiers—and discovered that there were hundreds of such families from all over the country.
All these men - prisoners from the colonies, debtors, defrauded "shift workers" and seriously ill people - were taken to one point: to military unit No. 21720 in Amur area, that is, to the 38th separate guards motorized rifle brigade, to be thrown without training and radios into a small area, which was nicknamed the patch - near the Ukrainian village Peaceful в Zaporizhia areaSomewhere in between Small Tokmachka и Gulyaipole.
From the colony to the training ground, and then to the front lines
Oksana's brother - Dmitriy — from a small Siberian town. In civilian life, he was a painter. He worked for many years at a large factory. His sister recalls that he approached every job with the utmost responsibility: if he took it, he did everything perfectly, down to the last detail. However, according to Oksana, he had one flaw: he was inept at choosing women. So he became a single father, raising a teenage son. He ended up in a penal colony on drug charges. When Oksana learned of this, she immediately got involved. Within two weeks, she knew both the staff and the cellmates. She visited him twice a month and kept her brother in line so he wouldn't get into trouble in the colony. There was no talk of recruiting him to the front lines, but in early 2026, Dmitry was transferred to a neighboring town for three months. Contact was lost for a time, and during this time, my brother succumbed to the recruitment of a priest who visited the prison. Dmitry was released on March 5, 2026, and on March 6, he signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense. By March 8, he was already at the training ground.
"He was taken from the penal colony, along with 30 others, to the training ground in Suzhenka in the Donetsk region. All his original documents—his passport and military ID—were left at home. The military enlistment office never even saw my brother. At the training ground, the contingent was mixed, combining former prisoners and those mobilized from the outside. Several people died there before being sent to the front: two during field training, seven in dugouts, and two more while being unloaded from vehicles (one soldier shot himself, the other suffered heart failure)," Oksana recounted.
My brother only managed to stay at the training ground for a short time, less than two weeks. During that time, he called his sister only a couple of times. And on the night of March 20-21, 2026, a group of 130 men without radios or personal identification tags was sent to the village of Myrne—a patch of land between Mala Tokmachka and Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhia region. They were to advance and clear fire points.
"People like that are called 'can openers.' Command hadn't anticipated their return from the start," Oksana added. Oksana learned about her brother's deployment from a fellow soldier. And that at least he left with a weapon and a bulletproof vest.
When a month passed and there was no news from Dmitry, Oksana began looking for him. She created a chat room, initially connecting people from 30 families whose relatives had also become "can openers" on that patch of land near the village. PeacefulThere are now about 400 relatives. They have pieced together the events and are writing to various authorities to find their sons, brothers, and husbands.
According to Oksana, the fields in that area are open, completely exposed to fire and strewn with bodies. Evacuation teams only reach the edges, collecting bodies from abandoned houses and copying dog tags. Some evacuation teams charge up to 500,000 rubles for transporting a wounded person to a rear base.
Almost no one leaves alive: if anyone manages to crawl out of the field, they're immediately sent back. For the chance to "sit it out" for a month, commanders charge the same 500 rubles, and when the money runs out, they're sent back to the slaughter.
At the same time, Oksana encountered a mess in official paperwork. In response to her inquiry (available to the editors), a document arrived from the Eastern Military District headquarters stating that a request to search for her "son, Mansur Maratovich Galeev" had been received, and that "Sergeant Mansur Galeev, born October 20, 2022," had been considered missing in action since November 2025. The department also added that the remains were not listed in databases, and that relatives needed to provide DNA evidence. As a reminder, Oksana is searching for her brother, Dmitry.
Six months after the soldiers' disappearance, investigations began at the military unit, and relatives in Oksana's chat began receiving mass notifications that the men had been declared dead by the courts—without producing their bodies. Oksana believes this is an attempt by the headquarters to "clean up the paperwork" and purge the lists. The reaction to these notifications in the chat is the same: they ignore official documents without any evidence and continue searching for their loved ones on their own.
"They think that if they recruited people from prison colonies or villages, no one will look for them. But they were wrong. And we'll see this through to the end," says Oksana.
Went on a shift, but ended up at war
Sending your partner off to war Eugene I wasn't planning on it. They lived peacefully. Sometimes, though, they'd fight about money. He didn't have a permanent job; he worked part-time as a security guard.
"Andrey is a good man, a homebody. We met after we'd already been in other relationships. We'd had a lot of things going on, but yes, he was unlucky with work, constantly getting by on odd jobs. I wasn't asking for millions, but I needed at least the basics—food, water, and rent. My husband kept quiet, but that evening I heard him arranging some kind of business trip. He used to sometimes leave for 10-15 days to work security at parking lots or hotels, so I didn't suspect anything was wrong. Andrey packed a change of clothes, soap, a washcloth, and left," says Evgenia.
Three days later, he stopped responding. A couple of days later, Evgenia's childhood friend wrote to her: "Do you know that Andrey left to sign a contract?" It turned out that Andrei had even lied to his own mother, saying he was on guard duty at the hotel. From a photograph sent to his mother, Evgenia determined his geolocation. Lower NovgorodWhen Evgenia reached her husband by phone, she said she was leaving immediately. Andrey responded curtly, "I don't have time to talk to you now. I'm signing a contract, and we're leaving tonight." Evgenia realized it was too late to dissuade him. Evgenia recalls that Andrey once told her he'd tried to go fight two years ago, but it hadn't worked out. She also once saw him texting a volunteer, who was demanding he bring some documents and saying, "We're waiting for you." Evgenia then wrote to the volunteer and threatened to report him to the prosecutor's office. After that, he stopped writing.
After signing the contract, Andrey was taken from Nizhny Novgorod to Rostov, to the distribution point. They stayed there for 10 days, then their commanders arrived to pick them up and took them through Mariupol to the training ground in Suzhenka, then to the training ground in Zaporizhzhia, directly to the LBS zone. That's when Evgeniya learned where Andrei had been sent (that same military unit 21720), which was effectively a penal colony—it was where misbehaving soldiers, contract soldiers, and former prisoners were sent.
"The commanders treat people there like trash, there's no other way to put it," says Evgeniya.
At the training ground in To the narrowed one They stayed for about two weeks. On the night of April 28th, at 12:30 a.m., Andrey texted a short "good night" and didn't contact anyone again. And on May 2nd, a message arrived that Andrey was "missing in action, lost contact." As it later turned out, 44 people had gone with him, and only 12 returned.
From the moment Andrei went missing, the family seized on any opportunity to find any information about him. Andrei's mother took a DNA test, and his sister filed a report with the Red Cross. The relatives also created a search map, scoured social media groups, and hired a lawyer to help them submit official inquiries to various authorities. However, instead of responses, the family received formal replies. Three weeks later, Andrei's mother received a death notice with the following message: "Expect cargo 200 in a week."
"The news simply stunned her. I started insisting that when the shipment arrived, an autopsy of the coffin was mandatory. I think she replied, 'Yes, yes, everything is fine.' But when the shipment arrived, as my sister later told me, there were essentially two coffins in the train car: choose whichever one you wanted. There were no accompanying sheets, no description of what was inside, absolutely nothing," says Evgenia.
The military recruitment office staff tried to persuade Andrei's mother to refuse the zinc casing, Evgenia recalls. They said, "You don't need this; it'll leave a lasting impression. Remember your son when he was young and handsome, that's how you remember him."
"Well, my mother is a simple woman. She, of course, refused. The Ministry of Defense paid for the funeral in full. He was buried with an honor guard on the Walk of Fame in his hometown. Six boys carried the coffin. You could see how light it was. We all understand perfectly well that there could have been very few remains there—or none at all," says Evgeniya.
Contract under pressure and medical examination in a minute
For Yaroslav с Volga region The reason for signing the contract was an old debt. Back in 2004, Yaroslav stole money from his employer and never repaid it. For years, no one came to collect the debt, and Yaroslav lived peacefully, working occasionally. As his sister recounts, Elizabeth Yaroslav never served in the army due to epilepsy and a severe leg condition. However, Yaroslav maintained contact with his sister Elizaveta and regularly helped her furnish her apartment.
In 2022, when the war with Ukraine began, Yaroslav repeatedly said he would be drafted to the front, feeling like the police were keeping tabs on him. And indeed, at one point, a local police officer arrived and took Yaroslav away. Elizaveta was then told he would serve under contract, despite his health restrictions. The military enlistment office then rejected Yaroslav, claiming he was unfit for duty due to his health.
The second attempt to send Yaroslav to the front occurred in March 2026. Elizaveta was at a wake for her grandmother's death, and, as she recalls, her brother's partner ran up to them and said the police had taken him away. At the police station, Elizaveta was told they hadn't received any such document.
It later emerged that Yaroslav had been apprehended not by the police, but by bailiffs. They took him to the regional capital and there forced him to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
"I don't know what pressure they put on him to sign it. He wasn't even allowed to come pick up his things or his phone. And in the contract itself, he didn't name me or my brother, but listed our mother as living! Our mother, who died back in 2005. He was too scared and under pressure to even remember that our mother had been dead for a long time. And he passed the medical examination in a minute: he walked in, stood there, and walked out," Elizaveta says.
Yaroslav arrived at the training ground with lightning speed: on March 5th, bailiffs picked him up, and on the 8th, he was already calling his sister from the training ground. He was given a uniform and boots, and informed that their group would be leaving for its first combat mission on March 20th. As Elizaveta recalls, when she asked why he was doing it so quickly and without preparation, Yaroslav only replied fearfully into the phone that he had no time to talk and needed to go wash up. It seemed to Elizaveta that someone was standing next to her brother, monitoring the conversation.
On the evening of March 20, Yaroslav called his sister for the last time: "Okay, little sister, we're heading out on a mission. I'll call you as soon as I get a connection." Since then, there has been no news from him. Like everyone else, Elizaveta began searching for her brother. The military registration and enlistment office kept giving the same answer: "The search is ongoing, go to the military registration and enlistment office." Written inquiries to the Ministry of Defense were ignored, and eventually they were blocked altogether. The only thing they were able to learn was that Yaroslav had gone missing in action in that very same small area near the village of Mirnoye.
Incidentally, after Yaroslav was declared missing, the man's debt remained. Bailiffs handed Elizaveta her brother's bank card and demanded that she withdraw the money and pay the debt. Elizaveta refused, saying that if her brother got in touch, they could demand it from him.
They promised drones, but sent them to the front lines.
Nikita, like many others, was recruited into the war with the promise that he would not end up in a combat zone, but would only operate drones. Sister Inna He says Nikita wouldn't have been able to pass the medical examination anyway—his brother has a serious illness, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Because of the long treatment, he was unable to graduate from college, where he was studying to be a pastry chef.
Nikita lived alone in a workers' settlement, worked as a rigger in a brick factory, and was computer savvy. Due to leukemia, he never served in the army, although, according to his sister, he always wanted to. According to Inna, the reason Nikita went to the military recruitment office was the death of his grandmother in February 2024. Inna and Nikita were orphans, and their grandmother raised them alone.
Nikita was no longer able to escape the military registration and enlistment office. He passed the medical examination in one day, which declared him fit for military service, and signed his contract. Inna barely managed to "pull" her brother away for just two hours, enough time to notarize a power of attorney and deliver his belongings and medications.
Nikita never received the promised money after signing his contract, nor his bank card or local SIM card. His sister had to help, transferring money to his fellow soldiers' cards to cover essentials like radios and medications.
Nikita contacted them a couple of times a week, explaining that they were undergoing two weeks of training, running, and target shooting. When his sister asked him how they were treated at the unit, Nikita replied that everything was fine, except that they might be scolded, and those guilty of drunkenness were thrown into the pits.
The training lasted only two weeks. Nikita's last call to Inna was around 10 p.m. on March 15th. He asked her to urgently transfer money to someone else's phone number, saying they would buy him combat boots and other items on a list. Inna immediately transferred the money, and half an hour later, Nikita called back and shocked his sister with the news: "We're being sent to the sergeant's office tomorrow; they won't buy us anything." His sister's request for a refund was ignored.
The next morning, March 16th, at eleven o’clock Nikita sent a short text message: "Okay, we're leaving. Go to church and light some candles for us."And the connection was lost. Nikita didn't say who he was going with or where, repeating only: "We can't."
Inna, who was completely unfamiliar with military matters, didn't understand how long a mission could last or when to start panicking. She called her brother every three days, but his phone was switched off. It wasn't until April 2nd that her sister received a call from the unit, asking casually, "Did you know that your brother has been listed as a combatant since March 17th?" When Inna, astonished, asked how she was supposed to know this, the caller simply read out her name and a false address, telling her to wait for official notification. Ten days later, Inna was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office, handed a missing-in-action notice, and told, "Ninety-nine percent that he died."
The military registration and enlistment office refused to provide a copy of my brother's contract, and when asked to elaborate on the circumstances of his disappearance, they responded with a smirk: "Do you want to be told that he was running across a field and something happened? No one's going to do that to you!"To which Inna replied that yes, she was not satisfied with the answer that her brother “disappeared during a special military operation on the territory LNR, ДНР и Ukraine».
Trying to find any trace of her brother, Inna sent inquiries to every possible authority, including the Red Cross and the Ministry of Health of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region. The Red Cross accepted the request, promising to contact her if her brother was found in a hospital or in captivity. The only agency that provided a definitive answer was civilian medical personnel: the Ministry of Health confirmed that Nikita had not sought medical attention and was not listed as a patient.
He's not listed anywhere in the documents—not among the wounded, not among the captured, not among the dead. At first, the unit commander contacted him, but soon he, too, stopped answering calls and messages.
Six months after Nikita's disappearance, Inna's access to his online banking and Gosuslugi was blocked, and her notarized power of attorney was revoked. The military unit reported that they were preparing documents to have the soldier declared dead in absentia, without a body, through the court.
"Relatives are searching for their loved ones themselves, using every means possible. No one from the unit or the military registration and enlistment office is particularly willing to contact us. Either they haven't made payments, or they've lost documents, or they've pasted someone else's photo into the documents. They've picked them up, they've signed contracts quickly, and then it's up to you to find your way around. But we still don't trust their paperwork and will continue to search," says Inna.
They said he was in captivity, but a day later they sent a death notice.
My first contract with the Ministry of Defense Victor He signed it two years ago, when he was 21. He signed it in the penal colony where he was serving his sentence. Almost immediately afterward, he suffered a hand injury at the front, after which it stopped working. At first, he told his family that a fellow soldier had accidentally shot him during a formation. However, it later emerged that the young soldier had been bullied by his commander, who had tried to "zero" him.
Viktor couldn't fight with a disabled arm. He was discharged from the medical unit. He was physically unable to return to the front lines and remained in the rear. When he missed another check-in with his superiors, a criminal case was opened against him and he was sent to the Blagoveshchensk pretrial detention center on charges of "absenting himself from his unit without leave." While under investigation in the detention center, in early 2026, Viktor succumbed to pressure and signed a second contract. That March, he was sent back to fight.
Viktor disappeared while on a combat mission. Beforehand, he and his fellow soldiers had to buy walkie-talkies out of their own pockets to maintain some form of communication. But the connection was immediately lost, and there has been no news of him since.
Viktor's mother lives in the village, runs a farm, and is physically unable to travel to government offices and military recruitment offices. Viktor's cousin, Anna, took up the search for him. Having obtained official power of attorney from his mother, she began personally visiting prosecutor's offices and military units.
At the military unit, Anna was told that Viktor was being held captive. According to the unit's staff, a drone flew over the battlefield, and its operator allegedly recorded six soldiers being captured, four of whom were taken away. When Anna asked to see even a fragment of the drone footage, the unit categorically refused, declaring it a "military secret." Furthermore, Viktor was not listed as a prisoner in any official databases, neither through inquiries nor through volunteer registries or chatbots, even though more than six months had passed since his disappearance.
During the search for information about Viktor's disappearance, the floors in his mother's house collapsed, there was no money to repair the damage, and no money was being paid for her missing son. Only after repeated appeals did the mother begin receiving small payments: around 30–40 rubles.
The unit continued to assure them that Viktor was in captivity, and his relatives began to demand that he be exchanged. After this, Viktor's mother received an official letter from the unit directly to her village: "Please accept our condolences, your son has died."
The mother became hysterical. Anna immediately rushed to call the unit, where they began shifting blame, claiming the notice was "some idiot conscript's mistake." Later, the death notice was torn up right there at the unit. Then she and her mother were brought to see the unit commander, but nothing has been clarified yet.
From surveillance to the army
37-year-old Denis in the Buryatia He ended up at the front after a local probation officer visited him and threatened him with a new prison sentence for missing grades. The officer convinced him to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, promising that this would "expunge his criminal record and make him clear before the law." Denis, however, has HIV and hepatitis, and an old injury prevents him from using his arm.
"He wouldn't hurt a cat, and he wouldn't even know how to slaughter a chicken in the village. Kind, sympathetic, and moderately carefree. He loved to drink, have fun, and was attractive to women. He only worked when he felt like it, and if things weren't working out, he'd just leave. An ordinary village boy, completely unprepared for war. He never even served in the army," says Denis's sister, Natalia.
Denis had previously had two previous convictions for petty theft—for stealing a bike and money from a card. This is why he was placed on administrative supervision. He moved to relatives in the Irkutsk region, where they helped him find an apartment and a job, but he didn't show up for his classes.
On January 12, 2026, Denis gave in to the inspector's persuasion and agreed to go to war. His family cried, argued, and tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. However, he wasn't sent to the front immediately: it turned out that a new criminal case had already been opened against him in Buryatia due to missed grades. Denis was returned to Buryatia, placed in a pretrial detention center, and from there, on February 3, 2026, he re-signed his contract.
He never underwent a proper medical examination. No one paid any attention to his HIV, hepatitis, or the fact that his arm was unusable. He was sent from Buryatia to a training ground in Rostov. Denis spent almost a month there, and when his sister asked him what they taught him there, he replied that they shot a couple of shots and rode motorcycles. And that's all.
Before his first combat mission, Denis fell ill. He called his sister and complained of a cough and fever. When his sister asked why he wasn't going to the first aid station, Denis replied, "There are no first aid stations or medications here." His sister had to explain to him over the phone about traditional methods for bringing down his fever and at least slightly alleviating his cough.
That night, at two o'clock, Denis called again and said they were being urgently sent on a combat mission at 8 a.m. His sister started complaining, asking, "What mission? You have a fever." Denis replied, "It's too late."
During this night conversation, the sister heard noise and shouts of fighters in the background.
"Give me the pliers!" I asked him. "What are you repairing with pliers?" He replied, "We're stuffing pieces of paper with our tag numbers into bullet casings and clamping them with pliers. We're taping them to our four limbs—so if they get blown up, at least they can identify them." That's how they sat before battle, clamping the bullet casings.
On March 21st, at 9 a.m., Denis called for the last time, saying, "That's it, I'm at the line. I'll call you when I get a connection." Since then, contact with him has been lost.
When Denis went missing, his sister began calling hotlines, where they told her he was "active and on assignment." And on April 9, the family was officially informed that Denis had been missing since March 24. When his sister asked in shock how this was possible, the agency replied that the information simply hadn't reached them in time.
"They deny all inquiries and play it safe. We grew up reading books about the Great Patriotic War, where the commander stands next to the soldier and answers for him. But here the commander sits somewhere in a dugout and just scribbles with a pencil on who showed up and who didn't. Soon it will be six months since my brother went missing, and we're terrified that this unit will simply declare him dead in court—in absentia, without a body, so they won't have to search for him. But we know he's alive, and we'll see this through to the end," says Denis's sister.
The prosecutor's office has now taken an interest in the military unit. However, relatives fear that the soldiers listed as missing in action will now be declared dead. The relatives refuse to accept this and intend to investigate the circumstances of their brothers and husbands' disappearance.
All character names have been changed for safety reasons.
