‘He can barely walk’: Russians tell how vulnerable men are being targeted and coerced into signing up

“They put him in the car and forced him to sign a contract…”

“Now he’s listed as missing… I haven’t fully accepted that he is most likely already dead.”

“It’s a paralyzing fear.”

All of these are quotes from people who say they have personal experience of forced military recruitment in Russia.

Their stories, told directly to CNN and backed up by human rights groups and a growing body of accounts from individuals and social media, paint a picture of a quiet shift underway in Russia’s war recruitment machine, now in its fifth year. We are obscuring their identities over their fear of reprisals.

Since a mass mobilization drive in 2022, which sparked a panicked exodus across its borders, Russia has relied mostly on large financial incentives to lure soldiers to fight. Evidence suggests that is now slowly giving way to coercion and deception.

Russia has repeatedly dismissed Ukrainian claims it is planning a new wave of mass mobilization, despite rising frontline casualties and falling recruitment numbers. And yet, as Russia escalates attacks, this “creeping mobilization” – as some are calling it – threatens to erode public acceptance of the war, just as the Kremlin needs it most.

“I have (or rather I had) an uncle,” reads the message to CNN. “He is an old sick man, he has vascular problems and alcoholism, he can barely walk.”

In July, the person said, their uncle, an employee at a state defense company in his late 50s, was approached outside his apartment block by several men in civilian clothes and taken away in a car. They didn’t know where he was taken, but said that day “they slipped him a document to sign, supposedly a ‘notification that they were there.’ It turned out to be a contract (to join the military).”

The story, from a town in western Russia, fits an all-too-familiar pattern, said Artem Klyga, a Russian military lawyer based in Berlin, who advises Russians on their rights when it comes to military service. Since the start of the summer, he said, he has seen a surge in people reaching out to him about this kind of incident. “Now it’s a day-to-day practice,” he told CNN. Most cases he sees involve vulnerable men, often in debt or with health or alcohol problems. “They simply do not have a chance to say no, simply do not know their rights.”

“Call to Conscience,” a coalition of lawyers helping conscripts and reservists in Russia with advice around conscientious objection, told CNN they had seen a surge in reports of forced recruitment in July and August, with tactics “getting harsher by the day.”

In this case, after signing the document, the uncle returned home, his relative said, but a week later he disappeared. A few days after that he called to say he was at a training ground in Luhansk, in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine. In late September came the news he was missing in action.

“I have trouble falling asleep, sometimes I have nightmares that they catch me,” the relative told CNN.

Another Russian who contacted CNN via a human-rights group said their brother was “detained” in mid-July “in a state of alcoholic intoxication, by unknown employees” – the relative’s assumption being that they worked for the local military recruitment office.

In this case, CNN has seen the military contract the brother ended up signing, as well as a video of what appears to be his last goodbye to his tearful mother before he gets into a white van. The relative also shared the written response from the local military prosecutor’s office to the family’s petition for the man to be released. It concludes he appeared at the recruitment office “of his own free will, without any coercion,” adding that “the contrary has neither been proven nor documented.”

Less than a month later came the news that he, too, was missing in action.

“He had a very difficult life, problems with alcohol,” the relative told CNN.

In June, Russia’s Penza region, about 375 miles south of Moscow, emerged as a particular hotspot for forced recruitment, according to social media accounts and human rights groups. Videos and accounts surfaced online of individuals being forcefully recruited off the streets.

In one video from June which CNN has geolocated to a military recruitment center in Penza, women crowd around a bus demanding the men inside be released. One woman points inside the bus: “What do you think, did they sign voluntarily or not?” she shouts at the camera. One of the men inside the bus seems to shake his head. “They forced you, they beat you,” shouts another woman. The Russian Ministry of Defense dismissed the reports of forced mobilization in Penza as fake.

Reports of violence in cases of forced recruitment are common, as is a disregard for medical exemptions. “The contract was signed under physical and moral pressure,” wrote one relative, who told CNN their uncle was taken in August. At the time he had a broken rib, they said.

Another common feature of many of these stories: the individuals taking men on the street are not clearly identified, and are often in civilian clothes. This has raised concerns that they could be ordinary people trying to cash in on another type of military bonus – paid to anyone helping recruit new soldiers. One relative described them as “bounty hunters.”

CNN has not been able to verify this in specific cases, but regional authorities are making no attempt to hide the fact these payments exist.

“We will encourage those who provide assistance in attracting citizens to sign contracts,” announced Pavel Malkov, the governor of Russia’s Ryazan region, last August in a session of the regional parliament.

“We will provide a financial payment for each contract soldier. The bonus sum will vary from 50,000 to 300,000 rubles ($590 to $3,500), this is after tax.”

CNN has found evidence of these official payments in multiple regions, as well as dozens of job ads offering recruiters large sums for each candidate who signs a military contract, with payouts varying by region.

“It’s literally a ‘bring a friend’ kind of promotion, where you just find someone – anyone, in any state; in other words, it could be a drunk, a homeless person, or just about anyone – you drag them to the enlistment office, force them to sign a contract, and get your money,” said the founders of New Alternative Route, an anti-war organization set up this spring.

Founded by Russian IT professionals in self-exile, it works to collate information on forced mobilization practices and advise people trying to leave Russia. Its representatives also spoke anonymously to CNN, out of fear for their families still in Russia.

Russia has for years tried to differentiate itself from Ukraine, where conscription is mandatory from the age of 25 to 60 for men who are fit, and where reports have surfaced of incidents of press-ganging: violent or coercive mobilization.

“We see every day on the television and on the internet how in Ukraine they catch people, like homeless dogs, and drag them forcefully to the front, said Russian President Vladimir Putin in early September. “Here people go voluntarily, as you know, and sign contracts.”

With Russia’s military recruitment managed at a regional level via quotas, this rise in coercive tactics is unlikely to be directed by the Kremlin, said Janis Kluge, head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division at the German Institute for International and Security affairs, and yet it may be seen as a convenient solution to Russia’s manpower problem.

“The system where essentially the recruiters are doing the dirty work… is at least tolerated,” by those at the top, he told CNN. “It could be, in the eyes of the authorities, part of the solution.” Russia’s Ministry of Defense has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

And yet, in the eyes of some Russians, it’s a tipping point. Rights groups told CNN that inquiries about how to emigrate are rising.

Igor, a 21-year-old from central Russia for whom CNN is using a pseudonym over fears for his family’s safety, left the country three months ago, after years of planning to escape what he calls the “totalitarian madness.”

In the year before he left, he said he had been pressured twice to sign military contracts – once by his university, and then on a visit to his local military recruitment office to update his medical exemption. “I panicked a bit,” he told CNN. “I worried that someone might sign on my behalf. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.”

The fear of a new wave of mass mobilization also brought urgent practical concerns. “I was afraid they’d close the border and I’d never be able to leave,” he told CNN.

“I don’t think we’re going to see a scenario where we suddenly recruit 300,000 people tomorrow,” the founders of the New Alternative Route told CNN.

Instead, they predict “a quiet, creeping mobilization driven by coercive measures. In other words, what happened in Penza… it’s all preparation.”