Mobilization in Russia for Oct. 25-Nov. 1, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary

Authorities and Legislation

Lawmakers have submitted a bill to the State Duma [lower house of Russia's Federal Assembly] that would count military service toward municipal service seniority. The explanatory note links the need for these new guarantees to the Time of Heroes personnel program and similar regional projects. The authors argue that people who have taken part in combat operations need more help finding work, including positions in government bodies.

Lawmakers also introduced a bill that would ban citizens who evaded compulsory military service from serving as heads of regions or municipalities (including mayors and heads of districts and settlements). The restriction would be imposed on the basis of a certificate issued by a draft office. It would not apply to citizens who are legally exempt from service or who have completed military service under a contract. Civil servants already face a similar 10-year ban.

Men of conscription age may have their applications for international passports rejected if they lack a military ID, TASS [Russian state-owned news agency] reports, citing Interior Ministry documents. It is unclear whether this is a change to the current rules or an interpretation of existing requirements, but as Timofey Vaskin, a lawyer with the human rights organization Shkola Prizyvnika [Conscript School], notes, under the Interior Ministry's current regulations, officials may require a military ID only if the applicant has one. Otherwise, Interior Ministry employees must request the necessary information themselves. Such refusals are common in practice, but they are illegal and can be appealed, the Voyennye Advokaty [Military Lawyers] Telegram channel notes. At the same time, the Interior Ministry has not officially announced a change to the rules, and the legal status of the documents TASS cites remains unknown. Officials already follow a similar practice when issuing internal passports. When a citizen turns 20, they must provide the Interior Ministry with military registration documents; otherwise, officials may refuse to issue an internal passport.

Army Recruitment

In the city of Omsk, relatives of local residents have been posting numerous complaints in the 2GIS app about the forced recruitment of men to fight in the war through the Sirius-55 military recruitment center. According to reviews left on the center’s page, men are detained right on the streets, taken to the recruitment center, and forced to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense, with violence used in some cases. One woman claims that her father-in-law was beaten so severely that he had to be hospitalized. Another reported that her brother, who had come to Omsk to find work, disappeared after going out to a store and was registered for military service the very next day, without his documents or phone. Human rights defenders have received similar complaints. According to them, the number of reports has been growing month by month. The reviews indicate that men have been rounded up on the streets since at least March. Human rights defenders say Sirius-55 operates on a "one-stop shop" basis, allowing a person to be put through virtually the entire enlistment process, including a medical examination and the preparation of new documents and bank cards. According to their information, it is one of the first centers of this scale and specialization, and can accommodate up to 150 people at a time. Following media reports on the matter, most of the reviews were deleted, while some were hidden.

An IT developer from the city of Chelyabinsk signed a contract with the MoD to serve in the Unmanned Systems Forces, but was ultimately sent on an assault mission and subsequently went missing. According to his wife, in the summer of 2026, her husband decided he wanted to become a UAV operator so he could "contribute to society." He signed a contract and was supposed to serve as a UAV operator. He was assigned to the 1437th Motorized Rifle Regiment, part of the 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade. He spent several months there doing menial work and received no training. He later began working in the unit’s headquarters, handling paperwork. In conversations with his wife, he said that commanders severely punished subordinates for disciplinary violations, either locking them in pits or sending them on assault missions. He also complained about extortion by his superiors. In September, he told her he was being sent on a combat mission. He has been out of contact since Sept. 10. Several weeks later, his wife received an official notice from the command stating that he had gone missing on Sept. 28 "while carrying out assigned tasks." His wife also discovered that while he was on the mission, five gaming laptops had been purchased in his name and at his expense. She believes one of the commanders made the purchases.

In the settlement of Kavalerovo in the Primorsky region [Russia’s federal subject], unidentified men abducted 35-year-old local resident Sergey Kopylash off the street, tricked him into signing a contract with the MoD, and sent him to war. According to his mother, on Oct. 1, strangers offered to drive him home but instead drove him around the settlement with the doors locked. Suspecting something was wrong, Kopylash managed to escape, but the men found him again and abducted him after a scuffle that was caught on a surveillance camera. He was then tricked into signing a contract with the MoD after being told he was signing paperwork for a medical evaluation. He was taken to a military unit in the village of Sergeevka and then sent to the area near Donetsk. His mother says her son’s passport has not been returned and that he may soon be sent on a combat mission. She is demanding an investigation into the circumstances of his abduction.

In the Irkutsk region, a 47-year-old man was forced to sign a contract and sent to war. On Sept. 21, police detained him on the street in Ust-Kut while he was intoxicated. They continued to ply him with alcohol at the police station and the draft office, then forced him to sign a contract at a military recruitment center in Shelekhov. Within days, he was taken to a training range in the Luhansk region, despite having left behind his bedridden mother, who has a disability and whom he had been caring for. On Oct. 27, his relatives received official notification that he was listed as missing in action.

Amid numerous reports of forced recruitment for the war, pro-government media outlets have begun publishing videos in which men previously reported to have been abducted say they voluntarily signed contracts with the MoD. Such videos have been released featuring rapper Yevgeny Anyamov, known as Bizzo, and Elmir Mulyukov, a resident of Bashkortostan [Russia’s constituent republic]. Their relatives had previously complained that they were coerced into signing contracts. The circumstances in which the videos were recorded remain unknown, and Mulyukov’s relatives suspect that he may have been intimidated.

Daniil Zalozny, a 20-year-old resident of Saint Petersburg, was threatened into signing a contract with the MoD and then sent to the Luhansk region. According to his mother, Zalozny was detained on suspicion of drug possession and distribution. At the police station, he was beaten as officers tried to extract false testimony. He was denied access to a lawyer, which she believes was the police officers' way of preventing the beatings from being documented. On Oct. 23, a court sent Zalozny to a pre-trial detention center. There, another inmate first tried to persuade Zalozny to sign a contract, promising him money, and after Zalozny refused, began threatening him with violence. On the afternoon of Oct. 29, Zalozny was taken to a draft office, where he was signed up for military service overnight without his going before a medical evaluation board. By Oct. 30, he was already at a military unit, from which he called his mother to say he was being readied for deployment to the frontline. The young man is now in Belovodsk, in the occupied territories of the Luhansk region.

In the first half of 2026, bailiffs suspended 1,379 criminal cases over failure to pay child support because the defendants had been drafted into military service or had signed a contract with the MoD, according to statistics from Russia’s Federal Bailiff Service. In all, the Federal Bailiff Service opened proceedings in approximately 30,400 criminal cases over unpaid child support for minors in the first half of 2026, although not all of the cases suspended during that period are included in that figure. Over the same period, bailiffs and courts terminated 99 cases over unpaid support payments in connection with military service. Another 675 cases previously suspended on those grounds were reopened.

A court in the Arkhangelsk region has suspended proceedings in the murder case against Maksim Fisun, a 32-year-old former Wagner Group mercenary accused of killing a 62-year-old woman, after he signed a contract with the MoD. According to investigators, on Aug. 11, Fisun agreed to give the woman a ride, but after an altercation, inflicted 24 stab wounds, which proved fatal. Fisun had several prior convictions. Most recently, in 2019, he was sentenced to 14 years and three months in a penal colony for the murder of another woman. However, he was released as early as 2022 after enlisting with the Wagner Group to fight in the war.

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 285,023 Russian servicemen killed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including 20,901 mobilized soldiers. In the week since the last update, 2,090 names have been added to the list.

An 18-year-old Kirill Babkinov from the Irkutsk region has been killed in the war against Ukraine, having spent less than a month on the frontline. The young man was born in 2008 and was studying at a teacher training college, but decided to drop out in May 2026. According to his social media accounts, he went to war on Aug. 13 and was killed on Sept. 2.

For the first time in at least 18 years, the MoD has proposed postponing December military pay to military personnel until January, according to a draft departmental order. Under the current regulations, the payments must be made by Dec. 25. The draft order proposes instead transferring the money between Jan. 11 and 21. The changes would not apply to servicemen in the joint military grouping participating in the invasion of Ukraine. If adopted, the order would take effect in 2026. The document does not specify the reasons for the proposed delay.

Reservists from the BARS-NN unit in the Nizhny Novgorod region have complained about delayed payments from the MoD and regional authorities for August and September. According to one serviceman, at least 13 people have not received their money despite raising the issue with their commanders. Reservists are entitled to monthly payments from the MoD of at least 20,000 rubles [$250], as well as regional supplements of 50,000 rubles [$620]. The regional government attributed the delay to technical discrepancies in the processing of documents and promised that the money would be transferred shortly. The MoD did not comment on the situation.

Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents

The Saint Petersburg Garrison Military Court sentenced Konstantin Frolov, a lieutenant colonel and former head of the special operations group of the 83rd Air Assault Brigade, to 21 years in a penal colony for organizing fraud involving payments for combat injuries, accepting bribes and illegal dealings in weapons and explosives. Frolov was also stripped of his lieutenant colonel rank, four Orders of Courage and other decorations. According to investigators, the officer organized a group of more than 30 servicemen who staged attacks and combat injuries, shooting one another and recording staged videos of their supposed exploits to obtain government payments and awards. In total, members of the scheme illegally received more than 200 million rubles [$2.49 million]. Some of the staged reports were broadcast on national television channels and circulated by the MoD. The group was also involved in acquiring captured weapons and munitions. Some of the weapons were used as gifts for high-ranking officials.

In the settlement of Druzhnaya Gorka near Saint Petersburg, Dmitry Nakaryakov, a 40-year-old physical education and mathematics teacher who had participated in the war, was detained on suspicion of murdering his two-year-old son and the boy's 58-year-old grandmother. A court ordered him held in a pre-trial detention center. The victims' bodies were found in an apartment, with the child's body inside a refrigerator. The boy's mother, 32-year-old teacher Anastasia Kycheva, was found near the building with serious injuries and taken to a hospital. According to journalists, Nakaryakov had served in a mobile fire team in the Kursk region and returned from there in August, after which he separated from Kycheva. On Oct. 26, he went to her home. Finding Kycheva absent, he killed her mother and their son with a hammer during a confrontation. When Kycheva returned, he told her the child was asleep before attacking her as well. After regaining consciousness, she managed to escape through a window and call for help. In a note he left behind and in his testimony, Nakaryakov attributed his actions to jealousy, doubts about his paternity and dissatisfaction with his role as a "Sunday dad."

In Novosibirsk, a 48-year-old man who took part in the war and was previously convicted of murder was fined on an administrative charge of petty hooliganism after beating his wife as she held their young child. The wife, Ksenia, 32, says her husband joined the Wagner Group from a penal colony about six months ago, where he was serving time for a 2011 involuntary manslaughter conviction. He suffered a blast injury while deployed to the frontline. On Oct. 19, while drunk, the man attacked his wife and their 1-year-7-month-old child during an argument. Ksenia was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and a brain contusion with hemorrhage. The man was detained but released three days later with a fine for petty hooliganism. Although Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, demanded a report on the incident, no criminal case has been opened, according to the victim. Fearing for her safety, she moved with the child to her parents' home.

Aleksandr Kondratov, 52, the production designer of the TV series "Liquidation," who was arrested on a high treason charge, has died. Kondratov had lived in Kyiv since 2012 and came to Russia in the spring of 2026 to renew his foreign passport. He was detained at border control at Vnukovo airport. In August, a court ordered him held in a pre-trial detention center after 70 days of rolling arrests that began May 7. The criminal case stemmed from six online posts. On Oct. 23, he was taken from the detention center to Botkin Hospital, where he died. Authorities have not disclosed the cause of death. He is at least the 11th person facing political charges in Russia to die since the start of 2026. According to a tally by Memorial Human Rights Defense Center, at least 69 people have died as a result of political repression since the start of the full-scale war. At least 29 died in custody from illness and lack of timely medical care, 20 from torture and physical violence, and 10 in apparent suicides or similar circumstances.

Aleksandr Kondratov, 52, the production designer of the TV series "Liquidation," who was arrested on a high treason charge, has died. Kondratov had lived in Kyiv since 2012 and came to Russia in the spring of 2026 to replace his international passport. He was detained at border control at Vnukovo airport. In August, a court ordered him held in a pre-trial detention center after 70 days of consecutive short-term arrests that began on May 7. The criminal case stemmed from six online posts. On Oct. 23, he was taken from the detention center to Botkin Hospital, where he died. The cause of death has not been disclosed. He is at least the 11th person facing political charges in Russia to die since the start of 2026. According to a tally by Memorial Human Rights Defense Center, at least 69 people have died as a result of political repression since the start of the full-scale war. At least 29 died in custody from illness and lack of timely medical care, 20 from torture and physical violence, and another 10 in suspected suicides or similar circumstances.

Assistance

In the Belgorod region, payments to the families of those killed in the war were cut by two-thirds, from 3 million rubles [$37,300] to 1 million rubles [$12,400]. The authorities did not publicly disclose the change, concealing the relevant decree issued by Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev. According to Pepel, the cut is linked to a budget deficit and applies to applications submitted by relatives after Oct. 19.

Authorities in the Tomsk region cut spending on compulsory health insurance for non-employed residents by 700 million rubles [$8.71 million]. Half of that amount was redirected to payments for war participants, wounded servicemen, and the families of those killed. The remaining funds were allocated to other social measures.

In the Novosibirsk region, spending on support for war participants and their families in 2026 could reach 28.2 billion rubles [$351 million], 8 billion rubles more than in 2025. According to preliminary estimates, this would amount to more than 8 percent of the region’s expenditures, excluding federal transfers.

In the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region [Russia's federal subject], war participants and their relatives will lose access to certain types of free legal aid if a service member is convicted of going AWOL or desertion. The restrictions will also affect assistance with handling inheritance matters, obtaining benefits and compensation, and having service members legally declared missing or dead.

Longreads

The Sever.Realii [part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty] online media outlet reports on cases of men being abducted in Russian regions and coerced into signing contracts with the MoD through deception, beatings and threats of criminal prosecution.

The Sibir.Realii [part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty] online media outlet published a report on the coercion of Russian conscripts into signing military service contracts, affecting both new conscripts and those with just two weeks left before discharge. Commanders threaten conscripts with criminal prosecution and confinement in military guardhouses, beat them and deprive them of sleep.