Mobilization in Russia for April 30-May 3, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary
Authorities and Legislation
Russia's Labor Ministry has updated the list of professions for alternative civilian service. The list expanded by nearly 100 positions, from 271 to 363. The number of organizations where citizens can complete alternative service increased from 1,798 to 1,927. The list now includes roles such as diver, gas welder, costumer, forest firefighter, piano tuner, turner, rigger, electrician, zoologist, and weather forecaster.
Army Recruitment
In Lipetsk, authorities are holding a group of Peruvian citizens whom recruiters lured to Russia under false pretenses to send into combat, according to the Idite Lesom! [Flee Through the Woods/Get Lost You All] Telegram channel. Lawyers report that recruiters enticed the Peruvians with promises of jobs as security guards, cooks, taxi drivers, and other civilian roles. They were promised salaries ranging from $2,600 to $4,000 a month, along with a $20,000 "welcome bonus," which they ultimately never received. Before flying to Russia, the Peruvians signed documents in Russian. Once they arrived in Russia, handlers confiscated their documents and sent them for brief military training before deploying them to the frontline. According to a lawyer assisting one of the foreigners, the group of men flew to Moscow on April 14, after which handlers transported them to Lipetsk. A source estimates that around 300 Peruvian citizens could be in a similar situation in Russia, along with at least one Colombian citizen who traveled to Russia on an invitation to a sporting event but later also ended up in Lipetsk. Notably, Colombia is on the "blacklist" of the 36 "friendly" countries where Russia previously banned recruiters from hiring mercenaries. Following appeals from relatives and media reports, the Peruvian prosecutor's office launched an investigation. In total, about 600 Peruvian citizens have left their country for Russia since October 2025. At least 13 of them have been killed, and several others have sustained injuries. Relatives have filed 135 missing persons reports and asked the country's Foreign Ministry to help return them home. Reports indicate 250 other possible cases. Over the past two weeks, 18 Peruvian citizens have returned home, and several more are expected to arrive in the coming days, while two remain under the protection of the embassy in Moscow awaiting repatriation. The Russian-language media outlet Meduza details how recruiters initially invited the Peruvian citizens to Russia for civilian jobs and then sent them to the frontline.
According to relatives of Sergey, a 58-year-old resident of the city of Penza, he was forced to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense several months before the end of his prison term. In 2023, he had been sentenced to three and a half years in prison on drug trafficking charges and was due for release on Sept. 14. However, he told his family that he and nine other convicts had been taken for medical tests on April 25, and the following day that he was being sent to the frontline. According to his relatives, Sergey had not intended to sign a contract and was not in financial need. That same day, he and the others were transported to the Rostov region, where they are now undergoing training.
In the Sterlibashevsky district of Bashkortostan [Russia's constituent republic], conscripts are being given a document to sign that includes a clause consenting to a contract, along with a standard acknowledgment form about the rules of statutory military service, according to the Idite Lesom! project. According to one conscript, the text first states that citizens with higher education have the right to replace statutory service with contract-based military service, and then includes a line offering a choice to "agree / disagree" to sign a contract with the MoD instead of being drafted. The document then lists the standard restrictions for conscripts, including bans on the use of phones, laptops, photo and video equipment, and other devices.
In several Russian regions, recruitment for contract-based military service is being carried out among people with socially significant illnesses, including HIV, hepatitis, and closed-form tuberculosis. One such advertisement was posted in the Moscow region. The recruiter listed in the ad said that having such conditions would not be an obstacle, as a separate unit is being formed for individuals with these diagnoses. He also said that the contract would be signed in the city of Rostov-on-Don, while the paperwork is being processed through a draft office in the Primorsky region [Russia's federal subject].
At Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, a 28-year-old man was prevented from leaving the country on April 22 due to a travel ban, after previously receiving several paper draft notices and one electronic notice. The paper notices had been issued as far back as November of last year, and the man failed to report to the draft office in response. However, until April 2026, he had experienced no problems traveling abroad—he had left and reentered the country despite the outstanding notices.
Mobilized Soldiers, Contract Soldiers and Conscripts
BBC News Russian, in collaboration with Mediazona [independent Russian media outlet] and a team of volunteers, has identified by name 216,205 Russian servicemen killed since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, based on open-source data. Over the week since the previous update, the list has grown by 2,347 names. Journalists note that the confirmed losses from Bashkortostan and Tatarstan [Russia’s constituent republics] alone already exceed the total number of Soviet military personnel killed during the ten-year war in Afghanistan.
In Khabarovsk, conscripts serving in the 7th Separate Railway Brigade are being coerced into signing contracts with the MoD. Their relatives have filed numerous complaints with the ministry and the Military Prosecutor’s Office, describing insults, threats and other forms of pressure. Conscripts are reportedly deprived of sleep, forced to stand for hours without being allowed to drink water or use the restroom. Those who refuse to sign contracts are allegedly threatened with "30 years in prison" on fabricated charges or with transfer to the 5th Army in Ussuriysk, where they would be "beaten to death." Some conscripts have agreed to sign contracts under pressure and were also forced to sign statements asserting that they were acting voluntarily. They are now challenging their unit in court. Earlier, State Duma deputy from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Fedot Tumusov reported abuses in the 7th Railway Brigade, though it is unclear whether he received a response to his inquiries.
According to Svetlana Semyonova, the human rights ombudsman for the Irkutsk region, at least 3,966 residents of the region have been missing in action since the start of the war, 664 have been captured and 338 have sought help trying to secure demobilization. Over the past year, the total number of appeals to her office nearly doubled, from 2,706 to 5,308, with roughly 70% related to the war. The most common requests involve help locating missing servicemembers, with two-thirds of such appeals filed in 2025. Her office also tracks cases involving denied payments to families of killed soldiers, difficulties terminating military contracts, and situations in which even severely wounded servicemembers are declared AWOL.
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
The Krasnoyarsk Garrison Military Court sentenced Junior Sergeant Vyacheslav Shtal to six years in prison on charges of desertion. According to the court, he had been sent on a temporary assignment to Tatarstan to locate servicemembers who had gone AWOL, but instead traveled to his family in the Krasnoyarsk region and remained absent from duty until September 2025, when he was detained.
The Nalchik Garrison Military Court sentenced a serviceman identified as Gasanov to five and a half years in prison on charges of going AWOL. According to the court, he failed to report to his unit’s temporary deployment site in April 2025 and was detained 20 days later in Gelendzhik. In July of the same year he again left his unit in the Krasnodar region and evaded authorities for more than six months in Kabardino-Balkaria [Russia’s constituent republic] before being detained there in February 2026.
The Russia-installed "Supreme Court of the DPR" sentenced 43-year-old Ukrainian serviceman Dmytro Vorona to 20 years in prison on charges of participating in a terrorist organization and undergoing training for terrorist activities. According to the prosecution, he joined the Azov Brigade in November 2016 and served as a grenade launcher operator. In the spring of 2022, Vorona was taken prisoner by Russian forces.
A court in Saint Petersburg placed a minor citizen of Tajikistan in a pre-trial detention center on charges of committing an act of terror. According to investigators, the teenager set fire to a rail switch heating cabinet at the Parnas station on May 1. The detainee claimed that he had been coerced into carrying out the arson by officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
The Supreme Court reported a 460% increase in convictions for treason over the past two years. While 39 sentences were handed down under this article in 2023, the number rose to 145 in 2024 and reached 219 in 2025. Most of those convicted over the past year—156 individuals—received prison terms of 10 to 15 years. 31 defendants were sentenced to 15 to 20 years in a penal colony, 29 to 5 to 10 years, and two received life sentences. Nearly 90% of those convicted were men. A quarter were young people aged 18 to 24, and another 12 defendants were teenagers between 14 and 17. Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov said the figures published by the Supreme Court’s judicial department are underestimated by at least a factor of two.
The Second Eastern District Military Court has sentenced 54-year-old Barnaul resident and author of the Ice Under the Major’s Feet Telegram channel, Andrey Vitovtov, to 16 years of imprisonment in a case involving treason and justification of terrorism. According to the defense, the sentence was imposed based on the cumulative total of convictions: in October 2024, Vitovtov received six years in a penal colony in a case of justification of terrorism over two posts about the attempted assassination of Zakhar Prilepin [a Russian author, political and social activist] and a drone attack on the Moscow City tower. The man himself claimed that the controversial posts were published by another administrator of the channel residing in Ukraine, but the court refused to take her testimony into account. In the new case, Vitovtov was charged with seven additional counts under the same article and with treason. The specific basis for the treason charge is unknown, but according to Vitovtov’s wife, it may have been related to donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The Moscow regional court has sentenced 21-year-old Krasnoznamensk resident Vladislav Afimin to 12 years of imprisonment in a case involving treason. According to investigators, he established contact via Telegram with a representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and, on his instructions, collected and transmitted photographs of military facilities in the Moscow region, which, according to the FSB, could be used for planning strikes as well as for "carrying out sabotage and terrorist activities." Afimin was placed in a pre-trial detention center on March 5, 2025. Shortly before that, he had been subjected three times in a row to administrative arrests on charges of petty hooliganism, allegedly for using profanity in public places. According to his friends, Afimin initially agreed to make graffiti with links to Ukrainian Telegram channels for fun, and then photographed barracks at a military unit, after which he was detained by FSB officers.
The Russia-established "Kherson Regional Court" has sentenced 31-year-old Valeriy Vakulenko to 18 years of imprisonment in a case involving sabotage resulting in significant property damage, illegal trafficking of explosive devices committed in a group, and theft of explosive devices committed in a group. According to the FSB, in March 2022, he set fire to a T-72B1 tank in the Novotroitske district. As a result of the detonation of the ammunition, the vehicle was destroyed. According to human rights defenders, Vakulenko was officially detained in June 2025.