Mobilization in Russia for Dec. 25-28, 2025 CIT Volunteer Summary
Army Recruitment
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, announced that approximately 417,000 people signed contracts with the Russian Armed Forces this year, and more than 36,000 joined "volunteer units." Separately, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov previously reported that the military recruited nearly 410,000 personnel for contract military service in 2025. Infographics presented at a board meeting of the Ministry of Defense set the annual plan at 403,000 and the "benchmark" at 420,000. For comparison, federal budget data indicate that between 374,200 and 407,200 individuals signed contracts in 2024, up from 345,400 in 2023.
Moscow’s Presnensky District Court suspended a criminal fraud case against Roman Khitrun, a 34-year-old former soccer player, on Dec. 26 after he signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense. While the specific allegations remain unclear, authorities prosecuted Mr. Khitrun for fraud at least six times between 2023 and 2025, with courts sentencing him to mandatory labor twice in 2023 and handing down suspended sentences or correctional labor in subsequent years.
Nikolay Vavilov, a 39-year-old war veteran in the Krasnoyarsk region, plans to return to the front lines to escape punishment after threatening to kill a local official. On the afternoon of Dec. 19, an intoxicated Mr. Vavilov entered a village council building and pressed a pistol against the official’s head, claiming he would face no repercussions for killing him. The official managed to knock the gun from Mr. Vavilov’s hands, leading to the assailant's detention. Law enforcement officers subsequently offered him a military contract, which he accepted. A former fighter with the Wagner Group, Mr. Vavilov holds a criminal record involving theft, drug offenses, death threats and violence against a government representative.
Courts at all levels have supported a draft board's refusal to replace compulsory military service with alternative civilian service, citing the lack of evidence indicating that the conscript in question possesses unwavering and established pacifist beliefs. A young man applied for alternative civilian service, stating that military service contradicted his beliefs. The draft board declined, stating that the conscript had not proven the existence of unwavering and established beliefs. The position of the board was initially upheld by courts at all levels, and then by the Constitutional Court, which stated in its decision that a mere unwillingness to perform military service or a negative attitude towards it does not automatically entitle a person to alternative civilian service. Therefore, the conscript is obliged to prove that military service contradicts his beliefs or religion, and the draft board has the right to assess the presented documents, arguments and witness testimonies. According to the judges, the contested norms do not violate the Constitution and are applied as a mechanism for verifying the authenticity of beliefs, rather than as a formal obstacle to the exercise of the right to alternative civilian service.
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 158,143 Russian fighters killed in Ukraine, including 16,281 mobilized soldiers. Over the past week, the list has grown by 1,982 soldiers, 58 of whom were mobilized. Journalists have noted that the number of obituaries published in 2025 increased by 40 percent compared to the previous year. Additionally, the number of verified deceased who were not connected with the army at the time of the outset of the invasion of Ukraine, including volunteer fighters, mobilized soldiers and convicted persons, reached 55 percent of all verified killed in the war. The actual number of losses on the Russian side may range from 243,300 to 351,400 servicemen and from 264,300 to 374,900 servicemen, if including the fighters of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR).
A serviceman from the 25th Motorized Rifle Brigade was sent back to the front despite severe injuries and was killed. In April 2024, 27-year-old Moscow resident Pavel signed a contract, and as early as May 4 he sustained serious injuries. Despite six months of treatment, he was moving on crutches, could not put weight on his left leg, and his right arm was nonfunctional. In September, doctors declared him temporarily unfit for service and granted him a 30-day leave. When he arrived at his unit in November to undergo a military medical board examination, his commander sent him to forward positions. On Nov. 27, 2024, the serviceman went missing, and in September 2025 he was officially declared dead.
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
A man has been detained in Donetsk after opening fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in a mall on the evening of Dec. 25. No visitors were injured.
In the Kaluga region, serviceman Aleksey Aulov was sentenced to 10 years in a penal colony on murder charges. According to the verdict, Aulov fatally stabbed a woman he knew at least 42 times while intoxicated during a conflict with her. He was detained by police some time later. A medical examination concluded that Aulov has an "emotionally unstable personality disorder," attributed to the consequences of his participation in combat operations. The court treated Aulov’s participation in the war as a mitigating factor. He had previously been repeatedly prosecuted under misdemeanor charges.
The Baltic Garrison Military Court sentenced serviceman Vasily Yarmolich to 10 years and six months in a maximum security penal colony on charges of attempted murder, robbery and going AWOL. According to investigators, the 40-year-old Yarmolich failed to return to duty after leave and was absent for almost two months. During that time, he robbed a taxi driver, stabbing him 18 times. Yarmolich had previously been convicted three times. In 2018, he was sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony for strangling an elderly woman with a wire and striking her daughter on the head with a hammer; the daughter survived. It is likely that Yarmolich was recruited for the war directly from the penal colony.
The Abakan Garrison Military Court sentenced 53-year-old serviceman Mikhail Kazantsev to 12 years in a special-regime penal colony on charges of torture, intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm, unlawful deprivation of liberty, and three counts of intentional infliction of moderate bodily harm. According to the court, in November 2024, Kazantsev met with his former girlfriend and, after drinking alcohol together, accused her of infidelity. Over the course of five days, he held the victim naked in his apartment, beating her, breaking her arm, urinating on her several times, forcing her to stand on a balcony for at least an hour in temperatures of around minus 20 degrees Celsius, and subjecting her to sexualized violence. He also poured boiling water from a kettle on her, extinguished a cigarette on her eyelid, and shaved her head. On the sixth day, the woman managed to escape and report the crime to police. According to the victim, Kazantsev had recently returned from the war and had begun drinking heavily. The court did not consider his participation in the war as a mitigating factor. Kazantsev has multiple previous convictions. In 2008, he was sentenced to five years in prison for armed robbery but was released on parole. In 2011, he received a nine-and-a-half-year sentence in a maximum security penal colony for inflicting grievous bodily harm that resulted in the victim’s death. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 200 hours of compulsory labor for violating the terms of administrative supervision, which was in effect until 2027. In June of the same year, he was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and attempted murder and was sentenced to seven years in prison. It appears that after that conviction, Kazantsev signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense while incarcerated and went to war.
In the city of Stavropol, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained an 18-year-old woman on suspicion of attempting to blow up a MoD officer. According to the security service, in December of this year, the suspect "fell under the influence of phone scammers," who allegedly coerced her, under the false threat of criminal prosecution, into committing a terrorist attack. She reportedly received explosives equivalent to 400 grams of TNT, which she planned to attach to a car parked near a local military unit. Criminal charges have been filed against the suspect for attempted terrorist attack and for the illegal possession and manufacture of explosives.
A court in Saint Petersburg ordered local resident Dmitry Zaytsev into pre‑trial detention on charges of attempted terrorist attack and two episodes of acts of terror. According to investigators, in the early hours of Dec. 24, 2025, Zaytsev tried to set fire to a relay cabinet on the railway line between Sortirovochnaya and Slavyankastations. An electromechanic noticed the attempt, but Zaytsev escaped. Later that morning, he allegedly set fire to a battery cabinet between Sortirovochnaya and Rybatskoye station. Authorities also accuse him of attempting to set fire to four police cars parked outside police stations in the early hours of Dec. 25, before he was detained.
In Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, authorities arrested three members of the same family, two brothers and a sister, from the village of Verkhneye Dubrovo on suspicion of preparing an act of terror in a group. They were placed in pre‑trial detention. On Dec. 25, the three individuals—identified as 44-year-old Aleksey Nazarov, 41-year-old Artyom Nazarov, and their 51-year-old sister—were added to the list maintained by the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring). The specific charges against them have not been disclosed.
In Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, the FSB officers detained a 52‑year‑old locomotive driver’s assistant on charges of high treason. Investigators allege that the railway worker, a resident of the village of Fershampenuaz, repeatedly transferred small amounts of cryptocurrency—no more than 10,000 rubles [$130]—to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The FSB reported it had detained three men it described as Ukrainian spies who, according to the agency, tried to leave the town of Pokrovsk while posing as civilians. The FSB said the men, Valery Yarovoy, Oleh Burkin and Anton Yarysh, had previously been mobilized and were later placed under the authority of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine. According to Russian authorities, the men were instructed to remain in the city, pretending to be civilians, until the Russian Armed Forces entered the area. They were then allegedly expected to travel to Donetsk under their assumed identities, undergo so-called filtration checks, obtain Russian citizenship and wait for further instructions to carry out what officials described as intelligence and sabotage activities.
A Russian military court sentenced Danila Likhanov, a resident of the Novosibirsk region, to 14 years in a maximum security penal colony on charges of treason, financing terrorism and publicly calling for terrorist activity. According to law enforcement, in 2023 Likhanov contacted a member of the Russian Volunteer Corps via the Telegram messaging app and later sent cryptocurrency donations to support the group. In April 2024, authorities allege, he also posted a comment in a Telegram channel linked to the group urging Russians to provide financial support to fighters aligned with Ukraine.
In Karelia [Russia’s constituent republic], a local supreme court sentenced 33-year-old Vladimir Koklovsky to 18 years in prison on charges of treason, preparing an act of sabotage and attempted sabotage. Prosecutors allege that Koklovsky began cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence services in the spring of 2024 in exchange for money. According to the indictment, he traveled to the regional capital, Petrozavodsk, where he gathered information about security at a nearby airfield. Acting on instructions from his handlers, authorities say, Koklovsky was tasked with setting fire to military aircraft and two railway relay cabinets in the Murmansk region. He was detained near the Besovets airfield in May 2024. Court records indicate that Koklovsky had previously been convicted on arson-related charges.
A court in the Pskov region sentenced Andrevush Shchur, a 58-year-old native of Murmansk, to 18 years in a maximum security penal colony on charges of treason. According to a video released by the FSB, the man was accused of cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence services and passing along information about a polling station ahead of the presidential election in March 2024. The specific location of the polling station was not disclosed. He was also charged with transferring data about an unnamed MoD facility and the Shilskaya hydroelectric power station in the Pskov region.
The Kaluga Regional Court sentenced 38-year-old local resident Anatoly Bakhtinov to 13 years in a maximum-security penal colony on charges of treason. According to law enforcement officials, in 2023 he began corresponding with a person acting in the interests of Ukrainian intelligence. Bakhtinov allegedly sent to this individual videos and coordinates of air defense units in the Kaluga region on two occasions, as well as information about the presence of defensive fortifications. The FSB reported the arrest in May, identifying him as a man born in 1997. At the time, the agency claimed that, on instructions from his handlers, he had also purchased power banks, field rations and energy drinks intended for sabotage groups.
A court in Ryazan sentenced Gordey Nikitin, a 32-year-old employee of the Ryazan oil refinery, to 17 years in a maximum security penal colony on charges of treason. After the start of full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Nikitin posted several antiwar comments on Telegram. Three years later, the FSB contacted him in connection with those posts. Shortly thereafter, an individual who introduced himself in a messaging app as a Ukrainian intelligence officer began communicating with Nikitin; this interaction became the basis for the treason charges. The exact date of the verdict was not disclosed. According to his lawyer, Nikitin refused to testify and did not appeal the ruling.
The Moscow City Court sentenced Arseny Konovalov, a former employee of Russia’s Consulate General in the United States, to 12 years in a penal colony on charges of treason. Konovalov worked in the United States from 2014 to 2017 as second secretary at the Russian Consulate General in Houston. According to the FSB, he was recruited by the CIA during that posting and, in exchange for payment, passed classified information to US intelligence. The specific information allegedly transferred was not disclosed. Konovalov was detained by the FSB on March 28, 2024. Reports of the arrest of a man with the surname Konovalov appeared in early April of that year.
Longreads
The Sibir.Realii [part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty] online media outlet tells the story of Novosibirsk activist Yury Izmailov, who has been charged with terrorism and treason.