Mobilization in Russia for Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary

Authorities and Legislation

Putin has increased the authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces by 15,500 personnel, bringing the total to 2,441,630 people, of whom 1,550,500 are military personnel. The increase affected only the number of military personnel. This is already the fourth expansion (1, 2, 3) of the authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces since the beginning of this year and the seventh (1, 2) since the start of the full-scale war. At the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the total authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces, established by a 2017 decree, stood at 1,902,758 people, of whom 1,013,628 were military personnel. Thus, since 2022, the authorized strength of military personnel alone has increased by 536,872.

Army Recruitment

In the town of Ust-Kut in the Irkutsk region, police officers attempted to force a local resident to sign a contract, but his wife rescued him. On the evening of Sept. 20, the intoxicated 54-year-old man was taken from an apartment where he was visiting, allegedly to establish his identity. The police took his passport and phone, then held him for about a day at the police station and draft office, without allowing him to contact his family. During the night, police officers gave him and three other detainees vodka to drink, and in the morning took them to the draft office. There, he was forced to sign a statement saying that he wanted to go to war. The man was then taken to a hospital for a medical examination, after which he was returned to the police station. Throughout this time, he remained under police supervision, including being escorted to the toilet. After the man underwent the medical examination and signed the documents, he asked for permission to go outside for a cigarette, at which point his wife put him in her car and drove him home.

A father of three from Stary Oskol was abducted from his apartment and sent to take part in an assault three days later. On Sept. 19, two unidentified women who introduced themselves as social services employees came to the apartment where 25-year-old Sergey Kurakulov lives with his wife, Alina, and their three minor sons. They determined the man’s whereabouts, after which he stopped responding to calls. It later emerged that he had been taken to Belgorod, where he was forced to sign a contract under threats against his family. According to his wife, his signature on the contract was forged. Kurakulov was subsequently listed as a recruit at one of the city’s military recruitment centers, and on Sept. 21 he was sent to a training unit in Voronezh. His contract with the Ministry of Defense is also dated Sept. 21. Three days after signing the contract, he was sent to the Luhansk region to take part in an assault. The Pepel [Ashes] Telegram channel says that similar cases in Stary Oskol are not isolated.

A resident of Izhevsk was taken to the draft office and forced to sign a contract. On the morning of Sept. 15, a 26-year-old man named Aleksandr was returning home from a store. On the street, an unidentified man stopped him, claiming that he was wanted by the draft office. He asked Aleksandr to come over to a car parked around the corner. The men inside took his passport and phone, then drove him to the draft office. That evening, Aleksandr called his sister and said that he had been forced to sign a contract under threat of imprisonment. He was then put on a bus to be taken out of Izhevsk. His relatives tried to intercept the bus, but those inside refused to open the door. The following day, Aleksandr reported that he was in Samara but could not provide the number of his military unit. He then remained out of contact for eight days before contacting his family from someone else’s phone and saying that he was at a training ground in the Rostov region and that he was "doing fine."

According to the Udmurtia Against Corruption project, a group of unidentified individuals operating in Izhevsk has been using an organized scheme to abduct men and coerce them into signing military contracts. The group, which poses as local administration employees," consists of at least four people. They find potential victims through job listings or take them by force, hold them at a house outside the city, beat them and force them to sign contracts. Before sending the men off, the group takes out loans worth more than 1 million rubles in the victims' names, opens bank cards through associates and links online banking to their own phones, giving them access to the payments deposited into those accounts. The group allegedly has ties to draft offices in Izhevsk, Votkinsk and Sarapul. For each man handed over to the military, the group receives 400,000 rubles [$4,790].

One victim is a local resident named Nikolay, who is raising three daughters on his own, one of whom has had a disability since childhood. In search of a new job, he went to a meeting about a potential job, where three men asked to see his documents and then led him to a car where a fourth member of the group was waiting. Nikolay was beaten, his phone was seized and he was forced into the car, then driven to a house outside the city, where he was held in a basement for four days and beaten until he agreed to sign a contract. He was then taken to the Samara region. A loan was taken out in his name on the way. In Samara, he was brought to a military enlistment office and forced to sign a contract. The men accompanying him collected 400,000 rubles [$4,790], and withdrew the money deposited onto the bank card opened in his name.

Suspected members of a group that forcibly took men to draft offices to sign contracts with the MoD have been arrested in Penza, according to a relative of one of the victims, Aleksandr Glebov, a 63-year-old confectioner. She said that a criminal case has been opened against the people who abducted Glebov on Sept. 19 and took him to the draft office. There has been no official confirmation of this information yet. Glebov's relatives previously said that he had been detained by unidentified people in civilian clothing, who assaulted him and gave him water to drink, after which he partially lost his memory. He was then forced to sign a contract and sent to war.

Nikita Sergeyev, a 27-year-old resident of Petrozavodsk who has service fitness category "D" (unfit for military service), was forced to sign a contract with the MoD and is being prepared for deployment to the frontline, the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, a human rights organization supporting those who refuse to perform military service, reports. According to the organization, Sergeyev can barely see because of a retinal burn and was classified at the draft office as "unfit for military service," a designation that was entered in his military ID. On Sept. 24, Sergeyev went to the draft office in Petrozavodsk, thinking he would undergo a medical examination as part of the employment process, but he was not allowed to leave the building, was forced into a car and was then flown to Blagoveshchensk. There, his military ID was confiscated, and he was forcibly sent for a second medical examination, which disregarded his medical condition. Sergeyev was then forced to sign a contract and taken by force to a military unit. He was due to be sent to war on the morning of Oct. 2.

Valery Martsen, a 59-year-old resident of the Krasnodar region, ended up on the frontline after responding to a job ad in annexed Crimea, according to a relative. He was offered a job on a rotational basis at the Kamyshburunstroy plant in Kerch but was first sent to Samara, supposedly to sign paperwork. There, he went before a medical evaluation board and was then taken to a draft office to "register his employment contract," because the work was in the occupied territories. He was handed several documents to sign; hidden among them was a contract with the MoD. Martsen read only the first page in the stack and then signed everything. His belongings were confiscated, and he was sent to a training range in Ukraine. Martsen repeatedly tried to file a request to terminate his contract but was not allowed to do so. He is now serving with the 439th Regiment near the town of Pokrovsk and has already been wounded in the arm, but he is being prepared for deployment to forward positions.

In Tomsk, a man with outstanding loan debt was summoned by bailiffs to discuss signing a military service contract. The notice, received via the Gosuslugi public services portal, offered him military service in rear units or unmanned systems units, along with free UAV operator training and "guaranteed employment." He was warned that he could face legal liability if he failed to appear.

Notaries have begun refusing to draw up powers of attorney to represent conscripts' interests at draft offices and draft boards, human rights advocates from Shkola Prizyvnika [Conscript School] and the Movement of Conscientious Objectors report. So far, the advocates have learned of three cases. In Moscow, a man sought a power of attorney authorizing his mother to represent him, but the notary refused, citing the fact that he was of conscription age and had not served in the military. The notary demanded proof that the relevant register listed no draft notices for him and said that notaries must now notify draft offices when they provide services to conscripts. In Samara, several notaries refused to draw up a power of attorney authorizing the mother of an 18-year-old conscript and demanded an extract from the Draft Register. After it was provided, they refused to include the authority to request the young man's removal from the military rolls and to represent him at medical examinations. Another conscript from the Samara region visited four notaries seeking a power of attorney to request his removal from the military rolls. Three requested an extract from the Unified Military Register, and the fourth agreed to draw up the document only for filing applications with a draft office, without the authority to request his removal. The human rights advocates consider such refusals illegal and recommend requesting a written decision on the refusal in order to appeal it.

According to The Sunday Times, notaries across Russia were sent a letter requiring them to check military registration documents when handling real estate transactions and business registrations. The letter is dated Sept. 15 and signed by the president of the Federal Notary Chamber. It says citizens may face "temporary measures" intended to "ensure they report to the draft office when summoned." So far, journalists have confirmed receipt of the letter only in Kaliningrad.

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 266,032 Russian servicemen killed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including 20,650 mobilized soldiers. Since the last update, the list has grown by 7,043 soldiers. Journalists have analyzed 10,000 cases of soldiers whose remains were recovered by evacuation teams in 2025-2026 and found that, on average, the remains were recovered 150 days after death, while the deaths were documented in the National Probate Registry an average of 236 days after death. For comparison, the average interval between the death of a Russian serviceman and its documentation was 36 days in 2022, and 25 days in 2023.

The head of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff, Yevgeny Burdinsky, said ahead of the start of the fall deployment period that 120,000 people are planned to be drafted into the army during this period. The deployment of conscripts to their places of service will begin on Oct. 10. The fall conscription campaign itself will run from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31. Burdinsky also once again assured that conscripts will not be sent to the "special military operation zone." In total, 261,000 people were planned to be drafted into the army in 2026; it was not reported how many of them were sent to the troops during the spring campaign. It is worth noting that medical examinations, psychological screening and draft board sessions are conducted throughout the year, from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31.

Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents

The Judicial Department under the Supreme Court has completely removed from Russia's criminal conviction statistics data on crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order and state security — including espionage, rebellion, extremism, divulgence of state secrets and other offenses — as well as data on convicted military personnel and law enforcement officers. It has also stopped publishing information on the termination of criminal cases and releases from punishment in connection with signing a contract or mobilization. Information that made it possible to estimate the number of lawsuits seeking to have people declared deceased or missing has also stopped being published.

Five of the eight defendants in a criminal case involving the murder of people who were in a helpless condition, committed in a group with particular cruelty in order to conceal another crime, as well as abuse of office involving torture and desecration of the bodies of the dead, have returned to the war. Two servicemen had previously been convicted under a special procedure: Col. Yevgeny Malyshko was sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security penal colony, while Senior Sgt. Roman Timonin was sentenced to 18 years. The trial of the remaining defendants is ongoing, but only three of the eight defendants remain on trial, including Maj. Gen. Marat Ospanov, who investigators believe orchestrated the crime as well as the destruction of evidence. Ospanov, commander of the 6th Motorized Rifle Division, sent at least 19 servicemen to a basement in the summer of 2023 after they recorded a video complaining about poor service conditions and saying they were being turned into "cannon fodder." They were repeatedly beaten and tortured. Later, some of the men were released because an inspection commission had arrived, while the command decided to kill the others and dispose of their bodies in order to conceal their unlawful detention and torture. Seven of the men were taken out of the basement and transported to the village of Bakhmutske in the Donetsk region. There, they were taken into the basement of an empty house, where they had grenades thrown at them, and the survivors were finished off with a pistol. The bodies of those killed were burned along with the vehicle in which they had been transported to the basement.

In the town of Novocheboksarsk, 28-year-old war participant Vladimir Grachyov, who had come home on leave, killed his 29-year-old childhood friend, Ksenia Chulaykina. According to the victim’s brother, on Sept. 25, Grachyov asked the woman to help him find some documents he had lost, after which she disappeared. The following day, her relatives found her body themselves in an abandoned building. According to the death certificate, the woman died of strangulation, while her brother said that before killing her, Grachyov repeatedly hit her in the face. According to relatives, Grachyov was detained on Sept. 29. One of them also said that he had had drug problems even before taking part in the war.

The Ulan-Ude Garrison Military Court sentenced serviceman Vasily Isanyurin to 19 years in prison for going AWOL, murder, and theft. According to investigators, in May 2025, Isanyurin failed to return to his unit from the hospital. In November, while intoxicated, he struck a woman in the head with a log at least three times, killing her. The motive for the attack was not specified. After the murder, he stole 8,000 rubles [$96] and a mobile phone belonging to the victim. Isanyurin was detained on Dec. 10, 2025.

The Kursk Garrison Military Court sentenced four military police officers to between four and five years for abuse of authority involving torture. Vladimir Soldatov and Vladimir Belyaev were each sentenced to five years in prison, Danila Sharipov to four years, while Ivan Kotkov received a five-year suspended sentence. According to investigators, in January 2025, at a medical company in the Kursk region, the military police officers extorted one million rubles from their 36-year-old fellow soldier, Aleksandr Khustochka—money he was entitled to receive for his wound. When Khustochka refused to hand over the money, he was transferred to assault troops, assaulted, accused of stealing an iPhone, thrown into a pit, and chained to a 24-kilogram weight. He was forced to move around the camp with the weight for several days. Medics found multiple bruises, hematomas, and fractures on his body.

In the Saratov region, the regional death gratuity for families of soldiers killed in the war will be cut tenfold starting Nov. 1, from 1 million rubles [$12,000] to 100,000 rubles [$1,200]. The payment is divided equally among family members, who must apply within six months of the servicemember’s death being officially registered. Earlier, regional death gratuities for families of fallen soldiers were reduced in Bashkortostan [Russia's constituent republic], Kirov, Kemerovo, Omsk and Ulyanovsk regions. The Orenburg region, Khakassia [Russia’s constituent republic] and the Zabaykalsky region [Russia's federal subject] have abolished them altogether.

Several mobile phone plans have been launched in the Murmansk region, with part of the proceeds going to support participants in the war. Two plans, costing 300 rubles [$3.59] and 350 rubles [$4.19], are available with SIM cards purchased at a local People's Front office. The amount allocated to aid war participants and the name of the mobile operator have not been disclosed.

The Arkhangelsk regional government has redirected 63.1 million rubles [$755,800] earmarked for social support for residents to sign-up bonuses for participants in the war against Ukraine and payments to families of fallen soldiers. Of that amount, 40.28 million rubles [$482,400] was taken from funding for foster parents' wages, 19.73 million rubles [$236,300] from support for large families and families with three or more children, and another 3.08 million rubles [$36,900] from spending on government social assistance provided through social contracts. Earlier, authorities in the Tula region redirected 54.2 million rubles [$649,200], also earmarked for social spending, to payments for military personnel and their families.

Children and Militarization

The draft federal budget for 2027-2029 allocates more than 60 billion rubles [$719 million] each year for propaganda in schools and among young people. A total of 4.26 billion rubles [$51.02 million] is earmarked for the Young Army [pro-Kremlin youth organization], while 62 billion rubles [$743 million] is allocated to the Movement of the First [state-led youth movement].