Mobilization in Russia for June 11-14, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary

Authorities and Legislation

Vladimir Putin signed a decree increasing the authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces to 2,399,130, including 1,510,000 military personnel. This is the second such expansion in recent months. In March 2026, Putin set the authorized strength at 2,391,770, of which 1,502,640 were military personnel. The latest decree mandates an increase of 7,360 military personnel.

Vladimir Putin signed a decree expanding the mandate of the Defenders of the Fatherland Fund, headed by Anna Tsivilyova, his first cousin once removed. The fund can now support not only participants in the war against Ukraine and their families, but also veterans who sustained disabilities as a result of "repelling an armed invasion of Russian territory" and "armed provocations in border regions." Furthermore, the fund can assist veterans deemed unfit or of limited fitness for service by medical boards but who chose to remain in the military in positions compatible with their health conditions.

Army Recruitment

According to the Groza student media outlet, universities, colleges and draft offices have organized at least ten video-link events since the beginning of June connecting students with active soldiers who are serving in the Unmanned Systems Forces. The first outlet to highlight this shift in the Ministry of Defense's recruitment strategy was Vot Tak [Like This]. During these events, servicemen spoke to students about military service and encouraged them to sign contracts with the MoD to join the Unmanned Systems Forces. In some cases, the recruitment effort also involved students who had previously signed military contracts themselves. According to Groza, advertisements and promotional events for service in drone units have been documented at least 269 universities and colleges since January 2026.

The Ukrainian Hochu Zhit [I Want to Live] project has published a second list of students who signed contracts with the Russian MoD while still enrolled in educational institutions. The new list contains 262 individuals born between 2000 and 2008, including students from the occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as from the annexed Crimea. Combined with a previously published list containing 1,059 names, the project says it has now identified 1,321 students who signed contracts with the Russian military.

A resident of Tyumen claims that her son was coerced into signing a contract with the MoD and has already been sent to the war. According to her, Konstantin Terentyev left home on the morning of May 7 and spent the day drinking with two friends. Later that day, one of his friends called her and said that Konstantin and another man were at a draft office. The woman believes that her son and his friends may have been detained for some minor offense and then taken to the draft office. Terentyev has three children and was recently diagnosed with a fractured facial bone beneath his eye and a ruptured eardrum. His mother doubts that he voluntarily decided to join the military, especially since he did not have either his passport or military ID with him. Nevertheless, he reportedly signed a contract and was sent to Yekaterinburg on May 9 and later to Rostov for training. Earlier, another Tyumen resident reported a similar case involving her brother, who has a heart defect and significant speech and mobility impairments but nevertheless ended up at war.

In the Sverdlovsk region, people with mental illnesses are increasingly being sent to fight in the war against Ukraine, according to regional human rights ombudsman Tatyana Merzlyakova. She said that "unscrupulous recruiters" have appeared in the region, including one who brought a local resident with a documented mental health condition to a recruitment center. Despite his diagnosis, the young man was sent to the front line. According to Merzlyakova, such cases are becoming "more and more common."

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 226,055 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 1,036 names. More than half of all confirmed fatalities (56%) are volunteers, mobilized soldiers and convicted prisoners who went to war from penal colonies.

Additionally, BBC journalists have discovered the first obituary of a Russian citizen born in 2008 who was killed in the war. Alisher Svirin, 18, from the Moscow region, signed a contract to serve with the 123rd Motorized Rifle Brigade. He was killed on May 1, 2026, and was buried in the town of Pavlovsky Posad on May 28. The exact timing of Svirin's deployment to the frontline remains unknown, but considering his age, it is likely that he served for no more than three months. Since 2022, at least 200 Russian soldiers aged 18 have been killed.

Another death of a student who was recruited into Russia's Unmanned Systems Forces and deployed to the frontline has been reported. Ilya Ulyanov, 20, from Russia's constituent Republic of Buryatia signed a contract with the MoD on May 23, 2025, while studying in his final year at the Zakamensk Agro-Industrial Technical School. He served as a UAV operator in the communications battalion of the 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade and was killed on May 27, 2026, near the Solodke village in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, which is now directly on the line of contact. This is the second known death of a student who was recruited into the UAV forces. The death of 23-year-old student Valery Averin from the Buryat Republican College of Construction and Industrial Technologies was previously reported. According to his relatives, Averin was killed two weeks after completing UAV operator training.

Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents

In Russian-occupied Crimea, Russian law enforcement officers detained a resident of Kerch who filmed a military fuel truck disguised as a civilian timber truck passing along a highway. Pro-Russian Telegram channels accused the video's author of having "exposed the work methods to the enemy in order to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine organize a fuel blockade of the peninsula." Crimean blogger and informant Aleksandr Talipov, who collaborates with law enforcement, published a post asking subscribers who recognized the man's voice to report him. According to preliminary reports, the Kerch resident could face criminal charges for aiding sabotage activities.

A court in the Leningrad region placed a 17-year-old under house arrest on charges of damaging property through arson. According to investigators, in the early hours of June 10, acting on instructions from scammers who contacted him via Telegram, he set fire to two gas stations in the village of Veligonty. The blaze damaged the stations' metal exterior cladding.

The Northern Fleet Military Court sentenced three schoolboys from Apatity to prison terms of six, seven and a half, and eight years, while a fourth defendant, who had reached adulthood by the time of sentencing, was sentenced to six years in a penal colony on charges of terrorist attack. According to investigators, on April 14, 2025, two of the teenagers, acting on instructions from an unidentified Telegram contact, set fire to a communications hub operated by the company Zircon. The facility was used, among other purposes, to alert residents to emergencies and UAV attacks. One of the teenagers received about 25,000 rubles [$350] for carrying out the task. The arson caused significant damage, and the communications hub remained disrupted until June 2025. Three days later, all four teenagers set fire to two rail shunting locomotives at the Apatity station on instructions from the same contact. The damage to the Russian Railways [Russian fully state-owned railway company] exceeded 260,000 rubles [$3,590].

The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow ordered IT specialist Andrey Kharlamov held in a pre-trial detention center on charges of treason. As Mediazona reported, Kharlamov was sentenced to 15 days of administrative detention in October 2025 on a charge of petty hooliganism. No records of any subsequent administrative arrests have been reported. No other details of the treason case have been disclosed.

Children and Militarization

School No. 6 in the Belgorod region town of Gubkin reported holding a "lesson of courage" for students at its Solnyshko summer camp program, with former Wagner Group mercenaries among the invited guests. One of the speakers was Sergey Rakityansky, a war veteran who lost both legs during the assault on Bakhmut. After returning from the front, Rakityansky went into the funeral wreath business. Other mercenaries also addressed the elementary school students.

The militarization of Russian summer camps continues. In the Primorsky region, a military-patriotic camp for teenagers called Shturmovik [Assault Trooper] has opened. Children follow a military-style daily schedule, attend classes in basic military training and drone operation, meet with participants in the war against Ukraine, and visit an air force base for career guidance. Organizers describe all of this as part of programs for physical development, health promotion, labor and patriotic education. A summer camp in Perm is offering children aged 8 to 17 a program under the same name, Shturmovik, where they will be taught weapons handling, first aid, casualty evacuation and tactical training in both urban and open-terrain environments. In the Zabaykalsky region, Russia's federal subject, the Energetik camp held drills as part of a Safety Day event, running two scenarios: "armed attack" and "air raid alert."

Longreads

The Insider [independent Russian investigative media outlet] published an investigation into two Brazilian nationals who recruited their fellow Brazilians for contract military service in the Russian army and then pocketed the payments owed to them.