Mobilization in Russia for April 26-28, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary
Army Recruitment
The Defense Ministry held a meeting with representatives of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Education and the heads of universities and general education institutions to discuss the "principles and conditions for recruiting students into the Unmanned Systems Forces." Viktor Goremykin, chief of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, stated that coercion into signing contracts is ruled out, that the Defense Ministry has no intention of forcing students to participate in the war, and that "acting voluntarily is a fundamental principle." Recruits can sign a contract for one, two, or three years at their discretion. Meanwhile, officials claim that transferring service members of the Unmanned Systems Forces to positions in other units and branches of the military without their personal consent is prohibited. This principle is allegedly stipulated in the terms of the contract and the directives of the General Staff. Furthermore, new instructions from the Defense Minister aim to increase the accountability of commanders regarding contract compliance, standard service procedures and discharge upon contract expiration. The instructions introduce a strict ban on the transfer of Unmanned Systems Forces service members to other units and military formations without their consent. The document is expected to reach the troops by the end of April. Additionally, the ministry has launched a hotline and an online portal to report cases of coercion into signing a contract.
Lawyers note that the restrictions announced by Goremykin do not appear in the contracts themselves and are not legally binding, leaving the transfer decision effectively at the command's discretion. A previously published addendum to a similar contract revealed that assignment to the Unmanned Systems Forces occurs only after a three-month probationary period. If the command rejects the applicant based on their performance, the military can deploy the student contractor anywhere.
The Movement of Conscientious Objectors [a human rights organization supporting those who refuse to perform military service] reported what it describes as the first known case in which a conscript was barred from leaving Russia due to a received draft notice and subsequently denied departure from Minsk airport. In early April, a young man from Saint Petersburg received a summons requiring him to undergo a medical examination on April 29, after which an exit ban appeared in the electronic registry. According to him, when he attempted to travel to Belarus by land, border officials checked all the men; he was removed from the vehicle and verbally informed of the restriction. However, on a subsequent attempt by train, he was able to enter Belarus without checks. Once there, on April 23 and 25, he was twice prevented from boarding flights from Minsk to Tbilisi and Yerevan without being given any written explanation. The project notes that this appears to be a previously unrecorded practice: exit restrictions were applied for the first time at the land border between Russia and Belarus, as well as at Minsk airport against a Russian citizen, which may indicate the beginning of data sharing between the two countries’ systems, including Russia’s Unified Military Register.
At Ufa State Petroleum Technological University, students are being encouraged to recruit acquaintances to sign contracts with the MoD through the university. According to the Groza student media outlet, a message in one student chat said that outside individuals could be formally enrolled in continuing education programs—or even hired by the university—so they could sign a contract through the university. The message also mentions an additional 500,000 ruble [$6,670] payment from the university for those who sign a contract. Current fee-paying students are promised a transfer to tuition-free places after returning from service, including in programs that do not normally offer such places, with the university allegedly covering the cost of their education.
Expelled students at Ural Federal University have begun receiving draft notices. A student’s mother said her son only learned of his expulsion after receiving a draft notice: at the draft office, he was told he had been expelled as of March 3, even though he had continued attending classes and living in a dormitory until April 27. According to her, the student had only one academic debt and was entitled to a retake, and by law he should have been notified of his expulsion within three days. The university, however, stated that once a student is expelled, access to their online account is disabled, so he could not have been unaware of it. It also claimed that he had 24 academic debts, four of which were more than a year old. At the same time, the university is required to report a student’s expulsion to the draft office within five days.
At the Cheboksary branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, students are being recruited into the military. Meetings on contract-based military service are held for students, with participants in the "special military operation" invited to speak. They encourage students to sign contracts, after which questionnaires are distributed to assess their willingness to serve. At the same time, the Cheboksary Electromechanical College has been publishing promotional materials about military service on its official VKontakte social media page.
In Chuvashia, managers of organizations and enterprises are being sent letters requesting that they "provide charitable financial assistance" to support efforts to recruit contract soldiers for the war. According to a source, the funds are to be transferred to the Perle foundation, established by the head of the republic, and the requests are effectively "voluntary-compulsory" in nature.
A mobile recruitment point for contract military service has been set up outside Pavlovsk Technical College in the Voronezh region. A similar recruitment point was previously spotted in the courtyard of the Khabarovsk College of Technosphere Safety and Industrial Technologies.
In Kostroma, a court upheld an Interior Ministry decision to revoke the Russian citizenship of a man who, after receiving a Russian passport, evaded military registration for more than six months.
Mobilized Soldiers, Contract Soldiers and Conscripts
The independent outlet Lyudi Baikala [People of Baikal] reported that the number of residents of the Chunsky district in the Irkutsk region killed in the war in Ukraine has reached half the number of those who died during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, 320 residents of the district were killed, while the number of those killed in the current war has already reached 170—about 2.5% of all working-age men in the district.
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
The Ulan-Ude Garrison Military Court sentenced Junior Lt. Mikhail Savelyev to 18 years in prison on charges of drunk driving resulting in two deaths, repeat drunk driving, theft, attempted vehicle theft and desertion. According to the court, on Sept. 16, 2025, in the Khorinsky district of Buryatia [Russia’s constituent republic] the intoxicated serviceman, who had abandoned his unit on July 24, 2024, and had no valid driver’s license, crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with another vehicle, killing two people and causing grievous bodily harm to two others. Savelyev, who had prior convictions for theft and robbery with violence, went to the frontline from a penal colony in November 2022.
The military commissar of Taishet and the Taishetsky and Chunsky districts of the Irkutsk region, Vadim Stashchenko, was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony and fined 4 million rubles [$53,400] on charges of bribery, abuse of authority and document forgery. The court found it proven that from July 2023 through 2024, Stashchenko accepted bribes from the parents of conscripts in exchange for exempting them from military service. The military commissar entered false information into medical records and draft board protocols and issued fraudulent military IDs. Seven conscripts received military IDs based on the falsified documents; the total amount of bribes received came to 1.25 million rubles [$16,700]. Criminal cases against those who paid the bribes were dismissed.
In Chuvashia [Russia’s constituent republic], criminal charges of committing an act of terror have been filed against an 18-year-old resident of the town of Shumerlya. According to investigators, in the early hours of April 24 he gained access to a parking lot belonging to a local Interior Ministry department and set fire to four decommissioned police vehicles, after which he was detained. Law enforcement officers say the young man was acting on instructions from unknown individuals who had convinced him via a messaging app that he was acting “in the interests of law enforcement agencies.” A court ordered him held in custody.
A 19-year-old resident of Orenburg will be tried on charges of sabotage and preparation for a terrorist attack. According to investigators, in 2025, the young man had entered into "a conspiracy with unknown persons" and agreed to carry out "terrorist attacks" in the Orenburg region in exchange for payment. He then recruited his acquaintance to assist in this endeavor, who has been prosecuted in a separate proceeding. On April 4, 2026, the defendants set fire to a communications operator's base station and left a previously purchased powdered substance, allegedly intended for a terrorist attack, in a cache near a military facility. The cache was later discovered by law enforcement officers.
In Novosibirsk, a trial has begun against three individuals accused of treason and committing an act of terror. Two of the defendants were identified as 24-year-old Sergey Gostyukhin and 26-year-old Aleksandr Shavrin. Both have prior convictions: Gostyukhin had been charged with robbery and theft, and Shavrin had been charged with sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, assault and theft. The third defendant in the case is a minor, presumably 15-year-old Danil Kolesnichenko from the Altai region [Russia’s federal subject]. He has been charged with committing a terrorist attack.
The Krasnodar Regional Court has sentenced 27-year-old local resident Daniil Khizhnyak to 12.5 years in prison in a sabotage case. According to investigators, in December 2024, Khizhnyak accepted an offer to earn 20,000 rubles [$270] and received instructions from an unknown person via a messenger app. After that, Khizhnyak set fire to a relay cabinet and a battery cabinet, which he recorded on video. Khizhnyak did not receive payment for the job. Law enforcement officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) later detained him.
The Southern District Military Court has sentenced Rostov-on-Don residents Vladislav Matukhnenko, Anton Yesaulenko and Yevgeniya Kudryashova to 20, 13 and 10.5 years in prison, respectively, in a case involving arson attacks on the railway. Matukhnenko was found guilty of committing a terrorist attack and involving others in terrorist activity; 35-year-old Yesaulenko was convicted of attempting a terrorist attack; and 29-year-old Kudryashova was found guilty of committing a terrorist attack. According to investigators, in August 2023, Matukhnenko received an offer from an unknown person to set fire to a relay cabinet for money, after which he recruited Kudryashova, who helped him reach the location. In the early hours of Sept. 1, they set fire to a relay cabinet on a railway stretch near Aksay. Matukhnenko later assigned a similar task to Yesaulenko, who was detained at the scene while attempting to set fire to two more cabinets.
The FSB has reported the killing of two men suspected of preparing an act of sabotage at an enterprise of the military-industrial complex in the town of Ukhta, Komi [Russia's constituent republic], during their attempted detention. According to law enforcement, the men were acting on orders from Ukrainian intelligence services and were planning an attack using drones equipped with improvised explosive devices. Officers attempted to detain them as they were retrieving UAVs from a hiding place. According to the intelligence services, the men put up armed resistance and were shot dead. Two drones with warheads, two Makarov pistols and mobile phones were allegedly seized at the scene. According to the FSB, the men had also passed information on oil refining facilities and Russian soldiers to Ukraine.
The Second Western District Military Court has sentenced 18-year-old Kaluga resident Viktoria Belyaeva to six years in prison in a case related to an attempt of participation in a terrorist organization. According to the prosecution, in October 2025 she held a conversation in a messenger app with a person whom investigators believe to be a representative of the Russian Volunteer Corps, telling him she wanted to join the organization to take part in combat operations. The young woman pleaded guilty and stated that she had not taken any real action and had simply wanted to leave Russia. Previously, in 2024, Belyaeva was sentenced to one year in a youth penal colony in a hooliganism case for firing a non-lethal weapon at two people of Asian appearance. She was detained again on Nov. 13, 2025, after which she was repeatedly arrested under misdemeanor charges until, in January 2026, she was sent to a pre-trial detention center on the new criminal case.
The First Western District Military Court has sentenced Kristina Yakunenko, a resident of Komi, to 10 years in a penal colony for aiding terrorism. According to law enforcement, between March 2024 and May 2025, Yakunenko acted for financial gain by messaging at least ten people on the VKontakte social network, urging them to commit acts of terror across Russia. In one instance, Yakunenko allegedly persuaded a minor to plant a mine at a draft office. Investigators believe she was operating under the direction of an outside "handler." Although Yakunenko has developmental disabilities, she was declared legally sane and fit to stand trial. She has an underage daughter who was born while Yakunenko was in a pre-trial detention center. The father refused to recognize the child.
The Southern District Military Court sentenced two residents of occupied Melitopol—35-year-old Denys Hlushchenko and 26-year-old Oleksandr Malyshev—to 26 years in a penal colony each on charges of espionage, participation in a terrorist community and committing an act of terror. According to the prosecution, Glushchenko and Malyshev began cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence in 2022. In February 2023, they allegedly gathered intelligence on buildings and infrastructure used by Russian forces. These coordinates were reportedly used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out strikes on deployment sites of the FSB and Rosgvardia [the Russian National Guard] in the Zaporizhzhia region. The men were detained in October 2023.
The Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria [Russia’s constituent republic] has sentenced a local resident to 12 years in prison for high treason. According to investigators, the man collected and transmitted state secrets, along with other sensitive data, to a representative of a foreign government to be used "against the security" of Russia. The trial was held behind closed doors, and specific details—including the name of the convicted individual and the foreign state involved—were not disclosed in the official case materials.
Children and MilitarizationÂ
According to the Kommersant daily newspaper, Russian schools and colleges are planning to introduce a basic military training course consisting of 64 academic hours per year, which is nearly double the time allocated to the subject "Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland." A final decision on implementing the course at the national level has not yet been made, but it may be introduced as early as the next academic year in a pilot format in several regions.
The Ne Norma [Not a norm] Telegram channel has launched an archive of school propaganda in Russia—an open database containing nearly 70 million posts from social media accounts of more than 30,000 schools across the country. The project’s authors note that schools are increasingly being used as a channel for spreading state ideology, and that the archive allows for the systematic tracking of changes in rhetoric, the scale of militarization and differences between regions.
From February to April, schools throughout Russia held classes using newly arrived collections of short stories about 15 "heroes of the special military operation." The lessons were conducted for students in grades 5 through 9. The collections are formatted as comic books,. with each book telling the story of one of the 15 Russian "veterans." Some of the veterans have been accused of war crimes by Ukraine.
Assistance
The Governor of the Yaroslavl region reported that in 2025, the region spent 6.4 billion rubles [$85.42 million] on "support measures for participants of the special military operation and their families," as well as on assistance to the "patronized Akimovsky District" in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region.