Parents of Russian conscripts who say they’ve lost communications with their loved ones are pleading with Kremlin officials for answers as to where family members have been sent amid concerns they have been forced to sign contracts to fight as part of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the report.
Olga Larkina, the director of Russia’s Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, spoke to Russian investigative news outlet Meduza, describing how Russian conscripts – those fulfilling military enlistment requirements – had been pressured, or at times even forced to sign contracts to become soldiers for the Russian military.
“Mothers are telling us that their sons have been calling them and saying they’re being forced to sign contracts. We believe it’s wrong to force a conscript to become a contract soldier,” Larkina said, according to the translated article. “The parents who have gotten in touch have told us their sons were just taken by military officers, stamped, and that’s it — now they’re contract soldiers.”
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Russian law is said to dictate that a conscript interested in signing a contract could do so after three months. The process to transfer a soldier from conscripted to contract service reportedly takes months in most cases, but officials are said to be skipping steps.
Those contracted soldiers were then sent to parts of Ukraine as part of the Kremlin’s invasion efforts, and families have since lost communication with them, the report claimed.
Larkina said she did not know how the soldiers were being forced to sign the contracts.
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“I’m panicking — where is my child? I’ve tried calling every phone he’s ever called me from and they’re all turned off. My child said that even the captains’ phones were confiscated,” a mother identified using the alias “Alyona” told Meduza. “I feel awful, I need for the children not to be there, for the children to be [back in] the places where they were drafted, not in this hell.”
Larkina said the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers had since reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Military Prosecutor’s office and military leadership about whether conscripts were forced to sign the contracts. She said they never got a straight answer, according to the report.
“They said we would need to call the commanding officer at the military unit where the situation was occurring, that all responsibility for personnel lies with the unit’s commanding officer, but getting in touch with the commanding officer is impossible,” Larkina said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine after he spent weeks denying that’s what he intended, all the while building up a force of almost 200,000 troops along the countries’ borders.
Putin claimed the West has failed to take seriously Russia’s security concerns about NATO, the Western military alliance that Ukraine aspired to join. But, he also has expressed scorn about Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state.
Putin has not disclosed his ultimate plans for Ukraine, but Western officials said he appeared determined to overthrow Ukraine’s government and replace it with a regime of his own, redrawing the map of Europe and reviving Moscow’s Cold War-era influence.
It was unclear in the fog of war how much territory Russian forces have seized. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said, “the speed of the Russian advance has temporarily slowed likely as a result of acute logistical difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance.”
A senior U.S. defense official said Saturday that more than half of the Russian combat power that was massed along Ukraine’s borders had entered Ukraine, and that Russia has had to commit more fuel supply and other support units inside Ukraine than originally anticipated.
Ukraine’s health minister reported Saturday that 198 people, including three children, had been killed and more than 1,000 others had been wounded during what has become Europe’s largest land war since World War II. It was unclear whether those figures included both military and civilian casualties.
Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
