Mobilization in Russia for Dec. 18-21, 2025 CIT Volunteer Summary
Army Recruitment
Starting Jan. 1, 2026, authorities in Russia's Mari El Republic will begin paying 2.1 million rubles [$26,100] for signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense. The republic was one of seven regions in the Volga Federal District that had lowered the sign-up bonus in October to the minimum allowable sum of 400,000 rubles [$4,970]. In Bashkortostan, authorities similarly decreased the payment to 500,000 rubles [$6,210] in early December. Before October, authorities in Mari El paid 2.6 million rubles [$32,300], while federal authorities provided an additional 400,000 rubles [$4,970] upon enlisting.
A court in Saransk declared unlawful the conscription of Maksim Vilyanov, a local resident whose father, a mobilized soldier, died in the war. Vilyanov based his appeal on the Military Conscription and Military Service Act, which prohibits the drafting of brothers and sons of servicemen who were killed while serving as conscripts. Although the draft office argued that this regulation did not apply to Vilyanov, the court ruled that because the father never signed a military service contract, he was legally classified as a draftee, thereby exempting his son from conscription.
Mobilized Soldiers, Contract Soldiers and Conscripts
Based on open sources, Mediazona [independent Russian media outlet] and BBC News Russian, together with volunteers, have verified the names of 156,161 Russian fighters killed in Ukraine, including 16,223 mobilized soldiers. Over the past week, the list has grown by 739 soldiers, 59 of whom were mobilized. Mediazona has reported 2025 as the most deadly year for the Russian army, surpassing 2024 in terms of total verified losses within a year. Meanwhile, the information about soldiers killed in the war continues to come with a delay. According to the data currently available, there are 19,590 verified obituaries for servicemen killed in 2025, 55,354 obituaries for those killed in 2024, 39,184 obituaries for those killed in 2023, and 18,862 obituaries for those killed in 2022. For an additional 22,552 deceased, the year of death remains unknown.
Dmitry Kolesnikov, a national Bolshevik and "veteran of the Donbas militia," has been killed in the war with Ukraine. According to his comrades, he was illegally detained and deployed to the frontline despite serious health issues. In 2014 and 2015, Kolesnikov fought on the side of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). In 2022, he again volunteered for the war as part of the Pyatnashka unit [1st Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade]. He was discharged in August 2022 due to health issues related to a head injury and epilepsy. Allegedly, he was assigned a service fitness category "D" and deemed unfit for military service. However, Kolesnikov was retroactively listed in the ranks of the 87th Regiment, which led to his detention by the military police in Barnaul [Russia's constituent Republic of Altai], in January 2025 on charges of going AWOL. He was deployed as an assault trooper in the 1487th Motorized Rifle Regiment and was killed on Dec. 13 near the town of Myrnohrad in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
The military investigation department of the Investigative Committee has closed the case of going AWOL against volunteer Viktor Kaplan for lack of corpus delicti. Kaplan had been taking part in the war against Ukraine since 2022 without a contract or mobilization—he arrived in Donetsk in November and began serving in the Pyatnashka Brigade. He was registered as a mobilized serviceman and later assigned to the 87th Regiment. At the same time, Kaplan remained on military records in St. Petersburg and never had registration in the "DPR." Kaplan, who served as a UAV operator, is considered the last living witness to the deaths of UAV operators Dmitry Lysakovsky and Sergey Gritsay, who also served in the 87th Regiment. After publicly accusing the command of drug trafficking and extortion, they were transferred from the drone unit to assault infantry and were killed. After their deaths, Kaplan refused to return to the unit. At the end of September 2025 he was detained by military commandant’s office personnel, and in early October he was, according to the Kommersant outlet, sent to the Kursk region as a sapper within an assault detachment. On Dec. 14 he was returned to St. Petersburg. In the end, the case was closed, and the investigator ruled that Kaplan’s mobilization on the territory of the "DPR" had been illegal.
The Idite Lesom! [Flee through the woods/Get lost you all] project published the account of a conscript soldier who served at the Russia-Ukraine border in 2022-2023 and is now in the reserve. According to the young man, he and other conscripts—after accelerated training and pressure to sign contracts—were sent near the city of Belgorod to replace mobilized troops who were being moved to another sector. The conscripts were forced to improve the poorly prepared positions and fortifications left by the mobilized soldiers, while being exposed to shelling and the threat of UAV attacks. At the same time, the conscripts were paid 2,640 rubles [$33] per month, whereas the mobilized men who had been holding the same positions were receiving around 200,000 rubles [$2,480].
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
On Dec. 19, serviceman Aleksey Kostrikin was found dead at a pre-trial detention center in Belgorod. He had been arrested on charges of murdering a resident of the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, raping the man’s wife, carrying out an armed robbery against a woman, and committing another murder after escaping from custody. The Federal Penitentiary Service said Kostrikin died by suicide, adding that an examination of the body found “no signs of violent death.” Kostrikin was detained in late October 2025 but escaped on Oct. 31, after which he allegedly carried out the second murder in the same village. He was re-arrested in early November in the Shebekinsky district and was shot in the leg during his detention. An alleged accomplice, serviceman Maksim Pogodin, was also detained, but no information has been released about his subsequent fate.
In the Irkutsk region, police detained 24-year-old Kirill Putintsev, a participant in the war in Ukraine, on suspicion of murdering his girlfriend. On Dec. 18, authorities reported that the body of a 24-year-old woman was found in the town of Svirsk; she had died from stab wounds. Putintsev, who was in a relationship with the victim, became the prime suspect. The woman is survived by two children, aged five and eight. According to investigators, Putintsev attacked his partner after she had taken a child to school, following a domestic dispute. The Interior Ministry released a video in which Putintsev pleads guilty and says he did not intend to go into hiding. Police, however, say he was hiding in an abandoned building. Putintsev had previously been convicted of car theft and signed a contract with the MoD while serving time in a penal colony. He took part in the war, was captured in June 2024, exchanged in May 2025 and then sent back to the frontline, from which he later returned.
An investigation is also underway into servicemen accused of killing 52-year-old Konstantin Tokmakov in April 2025 in the town of Kovrov in Russia’s Vladimir region. Tokmakov was one of the country’s leading makers of orienteering maps. The case is being investigated on charges of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm by a group of individuals resulting in death. According to Tokmakov’s widow, law enforcement officers searched his home after his death, seized all electronic devices and questioned his mapping partner in an attempt to find evidence that he was allegedly engaged in espionage. Tokmakov was working on mapmaking near military depots when he was detained by a military patrol. He was taken to the commandant’s office in Kovrov, where he was brutally beaten, and after nightfall driven into a forest and abandoned there. Tokmakov managed to send an SOS signal and was found by fellow orienteers, but died before an ambulance arrived.
Denis Shchekin, a platoon commander in the 6th Tank Regiment, has been detained on suspicion of the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Kursk. A criminal case has been initiated under the article concerning rape of a person under the age of 14. According to the Astra Telegram channel, on the afternoon of Dec. 1, the 44-year-old Shchekin sexually assaulted the fifth-grade student, after which he was detained and handed over to the military commandant's office. The serviceman was born in the city of Luhansk, lived in the Rostov region, and previously held the position of deputy group commander of the 22nd Special Forces Brigade.
The Novosibirsk Garrison Military Court has sentenced contract soldier Rifat D. to five years in a penal colony for going AWOL. On Nov. 20, 2024, the serviceman did not return to his unit after leave and remained at home for more than four months. On April 1, 2025, he voluntarily reported to the military investigation department. During the hearings, the court changed the crime category from especially serious to serious, which made it possible to impose the minimum sentence and send him to a penal colony.
A court in the Moscow region has denied war participant Dmitry Smirnov early termination of administrative supervision. In 2015, Smirnov, who had prior convictions for serious offenses, was sentenced to nine years in a maximum security penal colony for murder and theft. The charges stemmed from the July 7, 2014 killing of a woman in her apartment: while intoxicated, Smirnov strangled her during an argument and then stole her mobile phone. After his release, he went to the frontline. At that time, administrative supervision was suspended, and after his discharge from service for health reasons, it was reinstated. In court, Smirnov requested that the supervision be terminated "in connection with his acceptance into contract military service" and his possession of a medal, but the court denied the request.
A so-called court in Donetsk has sentenced 31-year-old British citizen Hayden Davis to 13 years in prison for participating in an armed conflict as a mercenary. According to the prosecution, Davis arrived in Ukraine in August 2024 and joined the International Legion. He was captured in the winter of 2024.
The Supreme Court of Bashkortostan has sentenced a 31-year-old resident of Ufa to 22 years in prison on charges including undergoing training in sabotage activities, attempted sabotage and illegal possession of explosives and drugs. According to investigators, in late 2023 he conducted reconnaissance near a railway bridge in Ufa on instructions from an officer from Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, stored components of an explosive device and planned to blow up railway tracks. During a search of his apartment, authorities said they also found narcotics.
A 17-year-old high school student from Kursk has been sentenced to seven years in a juvenile penal colony in a case related to an attempt on involvement in the activities of a terrorist organization and public justification of terrorism. According to law enforcement officers, the teenager opposed Russia’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as its invasion of Ukraine, and from October 2023 to March 2025 communicated with representatives of the Russian Volunteer Corps. The court said the student intended to join the military formation but was unable to do so because he was underage. He was also charged over two online posts deemed to show "signs of justification" of the Russian Volunteer Corps’ activities.
In Moscow, decolonial activist and representative of the Selkup people—a small Indigenous group of Western Siberia—Daria Egereva was placed in a pre-trial detention center on charges of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization. It is also reported that a Moscow-based human rights defender was detained on similar charges, though his name was not disclosed. Prosecutors accuse Egereva of involvement in the Aborigine Forum, an association of experts representing indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. Egereva had previously represented the Center for the Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North, which was part of the association. Earlier, in a related case, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) conducted mass searches of the homes of 17 human rights defenders in different regions of the country.
The Pervy Otdel [Department One] human rights project has released a study showing that 2025 marked a record year for prosecutions in Russia under articles related to treason and espionage. According to the analysis, 468 people have been convicted since the start of the year on charges including high treason, espionage, "confidential" cooperation with foreigners, and assisting the enemy. At least 420 additional individuals remain under investigation, and case files for 179 more have already been submitted to the courts. No acquittals have been reported. In total, at least 1,627 people have been charged under these provisions, with 88 percent of cases opened after Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine. Of these, 564 defendants—about 35 percent—hold Ukrainian citizenship. The study notes that the youngest defendant in a treason case was 17 at the time of arrest, while the oldest was 80. For the first time, Russian courts also handed down life sentences in such cases, issuing four in 2025.
Assistance
Authorities in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region plan to require organizations with more than 100 employees to reserve 1 percent of their workforce for former participants in the war. Public associations of people with disabilities and companies undergoing bankruptcy proceedings would be exempt from the quota. Employers who fail to comply could face fines under the proposed law.
Longreads
A journalist from the Novaya Vkladka [New Tab] media outlet traveled by train with Russian soldiers and published a report describing her observations.