“I popped out to the bakers and ended up in Mariupol”: forced conscription in the Donbas
Men of Donbas are being sent to fight Ukrainian troops, sometimes regardless of age, without proper training, kit or supplies. The BBC found out how they get to the frontline.
By Anastasia Lotareva and Olga Ivshina, BBCRussian.com
Residents of the unrecognised republics are hiding in their flats to escape general mobilisation. Their mothers want to know why if Russia wants to liberate the Donbas, it has occupied Kherson and bombed Kyiv and Odesa. Young men who are mobilised are thrown into the hottest conflict zones without training, effective weapons and sufficient supplies. Troops are hungry and suffering heavy losses. The authorities of the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR say mass mobilisation was stopped at the end of February. The BBC reports how the residents of Donbas are fighting.
*All the names have been anonymised/changed at their own request to protect the sources’ security and are known to the editors.
© STANISLAV KRASILNIKOV/TASS
“Hey, man, how did you get here?”
On the 6th May, Denis Pushilin, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), and Andrei Turchak, one of the heads of the current Russian party “United Russia”, met in occupied Kherson with the newly appointed authorities’ “head of local administration”, Vladimir Saldo.
At this meeting, in an office under a portrait of Vladimir Putin, a smirking Pushilin, remarked that Donetsk and Luhansk were looking forward to receiving their first consignment of ‘Kherson’s famous watermelons’. Turchak, wearing a paramilitary jacket with “Z” symbols as well as a military vest, assured everyone once again that “Russia [was] here forever”.
Their programme then included a sightseeing tour of the city and laying flowers at the Eternal Flame.
© NIKOLAI TRISHIN/TASS - Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed DPR, and Andrei Turchak, Secretary of the General Council of the United Russia Party (from right to left)
On the same day, Sergei, a 20-year-old from Donetsk, was sitting in the foyer of a Rostov hospital holding a plastic bag containing all of his belongings. He was brought to the hospital from the “first line” near Kherson, after lasting a week of fighting following his hurried mobilisation.
Sergei claims that he never fired a single shot – though but he did sustain a severe shrapnel wound. He doesn’t really remember how he was taken through Crimea to the hospital in Rostov, and no one explained how he might return home following his discharge.
He had no means to contact his own military command and the doctors in the hospital said to him: “you’re here without any documentation, and we don’t understand how to discharge you”.
With just a passport from the unrecognised Donetsk People’s Republic, a push-button phone, and a no money whatsoever, he tried to call his mother. The call to the Ukrainian SIM card did not go through - since the war began, such calls often don’t work. Sergei persuaded a passer-by to give him his smartphone with the VKontakte app, and wrote to aks his mother to must meet him at the border checkpoint from the DPR side.
“I had to ask for money for a bus fare, like a homeless person”, Sergei recalls. “I approached people, my uniform all ragged, the swelling on my face not fully healed, and they avoided me”.
Russian border guards on the border with the self-proclaimed “republic”, as Sergei says, looked at him “like a ghost”. “They asked me: ‘hey, man, how did you get here in the first place?’ I said, ‘you’re asking one of your own’, and when they drove me out, they told me not to ask any questions”.
“What have you been doing for eight years?”
“While our boys are dying on the front line, Pushok (the nickname of Denis Pushilin, often used social media groups in Donetsk) is running around in Mariupol, and in Kherson,” says Sergei’s mother, Liliya. “And the situation in Kherson is nothing like what’s happening in the Donbas.”
For a month and a half Liliya tried to find out something about her son’s fate, with other mothers and wives all writing individually to everyone they could, from the head of the DPR, to President Putin and the Russian blogger Yuri Podolyaka.
“The administration called me at work and told my superiors to shut me up,” he say. “The boss called and said, ‘Lil, I’ll have to fire you if you carry on like this, and I am already short of people.’ A polite response came from the Russian President’s website – you’re in a different state and this is your internal affair.
I coulnd’t understand, is Russia on our side or not?’ she adds. “Are we liberating Donbas or bombing Kyiv?”
© ALEXANDER RYUMIN/TASS - Donetsk. Men standing at the mobilisation point of a military enlistment office.
When mobilisation was announced (in the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR this occurred on 19th February, even before Moscow recognised the “republics’” independence at the start of the war), Sergei had no idea that he would have to fight.
Both Liliya and himself thought that he was completely protected from the mobilisation, as he was a full-time university student, the only son of his mother, himself with documented poor health (a congenital heart condition).
The college where he was studying collated a list of people who were entitled to an “exemption” from mobilisation. The next day people on the list were asked to go to the military enlistment office to “sign some paperwork”. In the military enlistment office, in the absence of a medical committee, Sergei was told that he was fit, they took his phone, signed him up as a volunteer and sent him to go and "study".
According to Sergei, everyone who was on the “exemption” list was taken away without exception, including his classmate with epilepsy.
The military training consisted of three days in a half-abandoned building in a city in the Donetsk region. Sergei says they had to alternate sleep times at night, because there were not enough of the bunks which were hastily put up.
There was no one with military experience in their group. He says, “there were students, people who had been rounded up off the street, an older men who from local factories. Maybe those who fought in 2014 were sent to some separate units, but there were no such people with us.”
© ALEXANDER RYUMIN/TASS: Farewells given to loved ones before being sent to the front
On the first day, the recruits were taught how to fall into line. The following day they were taught how to take machine guns apart and put them back together again. “I’m not a very military kind of person,” Sergei says. “I get stuck, I can’t remember anything – they yell at me, and everything turns blurry before my eyes.”
On the third day, they were told that they would be taken to a shooting range to learn how to handle a machine gun. The recruits were loaded into concealed military trucks. However, after about five hours it became clear that they were actually headed somewhere else.
When they took a short stop to “have a smoke and break”, the commander launched into a speech about “the need to protect our native land from ‘khokhli [slang pejorative word for Ukrainians] and, from NATO countries”. They were told not to ask questions, and they were not told where they were being taken. Sergei and others were eventually dropped off in the Kherson region.
“There were Russians standing there, saying, ‘So lads, you’ve come to help u have you?’ I said – ‘Yes to help, but I don’t know how to do anything’. He laughed and said, ‘Why did you come then? What have you been doing for eight years? What the f*ck do we need you for?’ I replied, ‘Eight years ago I was 12!’”.
“You are here until the end”
Stories from other men who have been forcibly mobilised, and from their families, all follow a similar pattern: rapid forced mobilisation, the registration of “volunteers”, no contact with loved ones, a very short period of military training – and then to the frontline.
“We were dropped off near Mariupol in March, they showed us a building, and the Russian commander says, ‘Storm it’”, says one of the soldiers, 25-year-old Nikolai. “We’d only been shown how to use our weapons two days ago. I don’t f*cking know what it means to ‘storm a building’, the word itself is clear, but how to do it – not at all.”
Nikolai, who in normal time owns two stalls in the market, survived Mariupol despite having even the most basic military experience. But then he caught pneumonia after he and other forced conscripts were made to sleep at nights on bare ground in trenches. He believes that he was very lucky, as consequently, he was removed “from the front”.
When the BBC asks if he shot anyone he falls silent and then says: “Next question”.
© GETTY IMAGES: Armed formations of the self-proclaimed DPR on the streets of Mariupol
Wives and mothers of forced conscripts say their loved ones are also going hungry. “My husband arrived at the ‘front’ at the end in March, but they didn’t start bringing in food for them till mid-April”, says Elena, the wife of another “volunteer” mobilised by a military patrol in Donetsk on the way home from work. “Till that point they just had to eat what they could find. Thank god that some Crimeans were there and gave them some of their dry rations. They took rotten nuts. They ate month-old bread and made cigarettes out of tea and smoked it. My husband lost ten kilograms.”
Recently, Elena’s husband, who is based near Kherson, saw his commander for the first time and asked whether a rotation was planned.
“He responded rudely, swore at them and said that there would be no demobilisation, and they wouldn’t be leaving until it was all over.”
“I understand that since there is a war for Donbas, our soldiers must fight, but it should not be this way, not like this”. She argues, “Why are they being sent to Kherson, why near Izyum if we are talking about liberating Donbas? I just don’t know any more how it helps. The army should be doing the fighting, not people who were given a machine gun a week ago and who they forgot to feed.”
“I haven’t seen a penny in three months”
Officially the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics do not have their own armies. Instead, they have so-called “People’s militias”, which do not include units with armoured vehicles and large-calibre artillery.
Until 2018, the DPR had it’s own a “Ministry of Defence’ based in Donetsk, which managed military units and even had a military school where officers were trained. But all this was then replaced by a “People’s militia”.
The Minsk Agreements of 2015 provided for the withdrawal of all foreign military groups and equipment, as well as the “disarmament of all illegal groups” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, in 2017 the total number of military units of the DPR and LPR was 50 thousand people. It was noted by the Kyiv authorities that these formations essentially acted as army corps subordinate to the command of the Russian Armed Forces’ Southern Military District.
From 2015 to 2022 there was no conscription in the DPR and LPR, yet contract soldiers still served in (the) paramilitary structures. However, when men living in the self-declared “republics” reach the age of 18, they have to undergo a medical examination and register for military service. There then exists the possibility of mobilization and conscription service, due to the laws of the “republics”.
Announcements regarding recruitment into these military units were constantly published officially by the DPR and LPR, as well as in supporter groups of the unrecognised “republics” on social networks. The requirements for signing up were minimal. Previous military experience wasn’t required, and it was enough simply to collect the necessary documents, pass a medical examination, and a check with a psychologist.
After 24th February, Donetsk’s residents began to be bombarded with text messages from various departments, calling them to enlist. According to the residents, the local Federal Penitentiary Service was having to work hard.
© ALEXANDER REKA/TASS: Those mobilised in Luhansk, February 2022.
And it’s not only locals who go and serve in the military structures of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russians have also been actively invited there. In the groups where vacancies for the paramilitary units of the DPR and LPR were published, not just local, but also Russian phone numbers were listed.
The BBC checked two of these numbers which happened to be registered to a telecom operator in the Moscow region. Judging by the messages in social media groups, those who fail to qualify to become a contract soldier in Russia, because they have a criminal record for example, or debts to bailiffs, often try to get a contract with the military in Donetsk and Luhansk instead.
Ukrainian intelligence believes that “the People’s militia of the DPR and LPR” are 40% staffed by those who willingly come from Russia to serve. Another 25% according to Kyiv are Russian military personnel who lead and train units of the self-declared “republics”.
Moscow has always denied direct involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine yet has acknowledged that Russian military advisors are there.
© GETTY IMAGES: Soldier of the self-declared DPR on the streets of Mariupol.
At the beginning of February 2022, an enlisted fighter in the DPR militia was offered a salary of 24 thousand rubbles a month (depending on combat pay, up to 37,000 could be received) and for sergeants – from 28 thousand roubles a month.
In April this year, the wives of two contract soldiers serving in the DPR units wrote that their husbands received more than 70,000 roubles in a single month. At the same time, in the social media group “Army of the DPR. Tips for Volunteers”, there have been many reports of confusion and issues with the payment of salaries.
“I am in a hospital in Rostov following surgery, I caught a bullet in the liver in the Azov steel plant. I was operated on in Donetsk and evacuated to Rostov, and as a Russian, I haven’t seen a single penny in three months”, writes user Konstantin Danchenko. On his social media page on May 7th, a photo of a wounded man in hospital clothes was published, and even earlier, several photos with weapons and himself in military uniform.
Sergei says that he did not receive any money because he signed up as a volunteer, and when he came to the military enlistment office “to find out what’s what”, the only response was to make him “an offer that was not an offer – to sign a contract”.
“They told me ‘you are an experienced person now, everyone counts’. I show my certificate from Rostov hospital and say ‘yes, I am shell-shocked’, and they say ‘– you are all shell-shocked - defend the Motherland”.
Sergei managed to argue himself out of re-mobilisation, changed his SIM card and went to his grandmother‘s house in the countryside. He tries not to leave the house, and Liliya takes care of contact with the outside world. In their Donetsk apartment she does not open the door to calls and does not answer calls from unfamiliar phone numbers.
Liliya says that cases of re-mobilisation are so frequent in their area that she does not intend on letting her son out “until the end of the war”.
Mosin Rifles and Soviet Helmets
The basic units of the DPR and LPR’s “People’s militias” are arranged in the same way as the military units of the Russian army. They have the same structure, identical statutes, practically the same military uniform (symbols and small details only differ slightly).
As one fighter from one of the DPR special forces told the BBC in 2014, Russian generals and colonels “decided everything” when planning and conducting military operations in the unrecognised “republics”.
Even pro-Russian bloggers and the military criticize the “People’s militia”. Well-known blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who himself fought in the “4th LPR Intelligence Brigade” said that “when the corps were organized, it turned out that the emphasis was not on their combat capacity, but the main thing was to restore army order and establish strict discipline. At the same time, preparations for real combat operations were carried out carelessly”.
He said that people with what he calls “a low moral and psychological level” were accepted for service, and people without combat experience were appointed to officer positions.
People who have spoken to the BBC from the occupied Kherson oblast, the city of Izyum and areas in its vicinity where fighting is currently taking place, say that the behaviour of the units of the “People’s militia” differs from the regular troops. Looting and lack of discipline were particularly evident.
“Russian commanders can forbid their troops from doing something. Some of them even talk politely, says one resident from Izyum, who left for Russia through the checkpoints of the unrecognised DPR and Russian-occupied Berdyansk. “But those others [DNR and LNR fighters] behave really badly at checkpoints. They extort money and things from people and talk like animals”
© ALEXANDER REKA/TASS: Those mobilised in Luhansk.
“The state of the troops, especially infantry units, is depressing due to low combat readiness, understaffing, and the poor condition of their military equipment”, Tatarsky summed up earlier in 2021.
Those who enter the service are warned that some of the equipment and uniforms will have to be bought independently. For example, in the “Army of the DPR. Tips for Volunteers” social media chat, someone wrote that “not everything is issued. For example, they will only issue leather boots, but not berets. Thermal underwear will also not be given out. Assault vests are unlikely. You only get one set of summer kit for the whole year and it might not be the right size.”
Photos published recently by the former “DPR’ Minister of Defence” Igor Strelkov with the caption “mobilized infantry of Donbas” show that fighters dressed in uniforms that are the wrong size as well as 1968 model helmets, and on each belt a Soviet pouch from the 1970s.
Photos and videos of people mobilized after February 19th show Mosin rifles of the 1891/44 model of production, and rare 1944 Sudayev submachines guns.
Regarding the armies of the unrecognised “republics”, it has been quite difficult to understand what has really been happening all these years. The work of foreign and independent media stopped here a long time ago, as the local authorities stopped issuing accreditation since 2015-2016. Since 2019, even journalists from Russian state TV channels have begun to complain about the difficulties of working there.
Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent of Russian state television channel Vesti, and other journalists were banned from working on the line of contact. Instead, they were allowed to only film “soldiers in clean and tidy uniforms (only standard camouflage allowed) with shaved heads, clean black berets and speaking in beautiful, memorized phrases, with their helmets buttoned firmly on their chins” said Donetsk documentary film maker Sergei Belous.
At the outbreak of war, the armies of the DPR and LPR were not ready, and so the mobilisation campaign was conducted at any cost.
Military patrols appeared on the streets, and many groups emerged on Telegram, where people exchanged experiences on how not to get caught.
The recruits who were mobilised included teachers and employers of state-owned enterprises. The Luhansk Philharmonic was mobilised and a rapper from Moscow, Husky, even recorded a patriotic clip dedicated to it. There were no such video clips about the Donetsk Philharmonic – just people sharing a message from Ukrainian parliamentary ombudsman Lyudmula Denisova saying the musicians had been tricked into joining up.
Not longer after this came reports that Nikolai Zvyagintsev, a famous jazz musician, laureate of international competitions and pianist with the Donetsk Philharmonic, had been killed near Mariupol.
Locked away
Many residents of Donetsk, have heard too many stories about forced conscription and have gone into hiding from the army and the authorities.
“In the first days after 24th February there was a lot of information, including not only rumours, but also concrete situations with specific acquaintances, who were seized and taken away to war.” says Yevgeny.
For almost two months, he has stayed almost constantly in his apartment on the outskirts of Donetsk, fearing forced mobilisation.
“They were stopping busses and taking off all the men and taking them away, he says. “They were taking people away at crossroads, at shops, at markets - everywhere where there was a crowd of people or a bottleneck situation”, he says.
Evgeny tells us about his acquaintances. In March, when it was still really cold, one of them lived in the middle of a field for weeks with other conscripts. “They slept on wooden pallets in the open air, and weren’t taught anything, they weren’t given weapons and were barely fed.”
He still thinks that these recruits were lucky. “I know people who went out to work in the morning and then found themselves digging trenches near Kherson, jumping out the way of from mines. One of my friends had to bury his son, who was of student age. The boy died near Sumy. When the parents tried to find out how he got there and why he ended up there. there was no answer, other than he crossed over from the territory of the Russian federation.”
After listening to these stories, Yevgeny decided to stay at home for good, and he wasn’t the only one. “Donetsk has turned into a city of women – there have been just women working in factories and enterprises, and driving on the streets. For the first time in my life, I saw a woman who was tinkering around with an elevator”, he says.
Yevgeny changed his SIM card from one of a local operators to one issued to another person. He stocked up on food and agreed with relatives that they would bring him water and sometimes take him somewhere to wash. Since the start of the war there had been no water in his neighbourhood, which is just 10 kilometres from the line of contact.
© MIKHAIL TERESCHENKO/TASS: Donetsk. April 2022.
Evgeny says that, many of his friends lead the same way of life, having settled into their own flats (or at their relatives’, so as to not be found though their residence registration), and having to solve everyday problems differently. For example, one of these friends meets women on dating apps and social media, and persuades them to come to his house: “now not only for the sake of having fun, but also to bring in food.”
Another one of Yevgeny’s friends forged court orders in Photoshop with a relevant date for the military patrols, so as to avoid being mobilised by the army. He shows it each week, carefully correcting the date to a more recent one.
“Over time, I came to understand how some people avoid going out for bread and ending up in Mariupol,” says Yevgeny.
“First of all – it’s about nepotism. If you are a security officer or if you have a brother in the security service, or you move around the city with security of military personnel, then it isn’t very risky. The military are the masters of the city now”.
When travelling around the city by bicycle or car, traffic police do not hand out summonses, and only do document checks. Single pedestrians are also less at risk. "Once I saw a patrol running after a pedestrian, but after 100 metres they got tired and gave up,” he says.
The most dangerous way of travelling, according to Yevgeny, is to travel by minibus. “If the military stops a minibus and orders all the men to get out, then you don’t even have the chance to run – you’re trapped”, he says. They also catch people who are waiting at the stops of infrequently used public transport, Yevgeny also notes.
Yevgeny almost never leaves the house, and only goes by car with relatives. But one day he could no longer stand the monotonous routine of his everyday life. "I broke down and freaked out because of the same food I have every day. I went to the supermarket, a kilometre and a half away. It turned out to be a day of fighting: every thirty seconds columns of military vehicles were driving past me. Another trip included the sounds of sirens, thieves in hijacked land cruiser, the wounded in ambulances, with billboards showing various "heroes who died" like Vladimir Zhoga (a pro-Russian separatist) as well as calls to "defend the Motherland".
He says that there were almost no people in the huge hypermarket he visited, mostly the military, one of them "with a prosthetic limb." He decided not to take such trips anymore.
"It's not that me and others who are hiding are afraid to die," he says. “The fighting in 2014-2015 showed that people aren’t afraid. Even when the windows in the apartment were blown out, not many were running down to the basement. Many do not want to die for the DPR, having to forcefully serve at the gunpoint of the "militia". This is the most ridiculous outcome of life, it seems to me."
Five thousand roubles and casualties
According to the self-proclaimed Donetsk authorities, from January 1st to May 13th 2022, 1,713 armed supporters of the DPR were killed. Among them, only four died before February 24th, the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
In publications from the authorities of the self-declared LPR, the BBC found 30 surnames regarding the posthumous decoration of troops. The "People's Militia of the LPR" does not report anything about losses in its ranks, although until February 23 of this year it regularly reported deaths among its servicemen.
Image: Funeral for the head of the “Volunteer” youth movement, Luhansk.
The total losses of the "People's militia of the DPR and LPR" servicemen clearly exceed the figures announced in Donetsk. At the moment, the BBC has found posts on social networks acknowledging the deaths of 1112 people who fought in the ranks of the "People's militia" since February 24th, 2022. This is only slightly less than the figure announced by the authorities of the self-declared DPR.
Furthermore, the BBC found more than 2,100 messages and posts of people who were looking for their male relatives who ended up in the ranks of the "People's militia" and have not been in touch for a long time. Such messages appear daily in groups of separatist supporters on VKontakte and Telegram.
In March 2022, the authorities of the "republics”, specifically the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, approved a payment of five million roubles for the relatives of deceased servicemen of the "People's militia". But to obtain it, you had to collect a whole set of documents, including a petition with the seal and signature of the commander of the unit, or a notice from the military enlistment office.
Yet the relatives of some of the victims are now unable to receive these documents. The military enlistment offices cite the turmoil of wartime and the fact that many of those mobilized have not yet had time to register or register properly. It is unknown where the unrecognized republics will obtain such money from. Most likely, it will be money which comes from the Russian state budget: in Russia the payouts will be the same.
As a result, volunteers are engaged in helping the widows of the victims, collecting money on social networks to do so. This includes Donetsk resident Yevgeny Skripnik, who has been regularly posting reports on VKontakte for several years now about how he transfers 10 thousand roubles to widows of former military personnel in the DPR and LPR.
Photos of women with sad faces holding bank notes in their hands have recently caused a heated discussion on social media. In his last posts, Skripnik reported that widows were given smaller amounts – 5 thousand roubles.
Meanwhile Yevgeny continues to sit in his apartment. He hopes that "sanctions and all possible non-military measures will be able to undermine the dictator's throne and that Russia will become a liberal country, and everything will change."
So far, he does not have the 100 thousand roubles bribe needed to travel to Russia, which is now the only way to leave the territories of the unrecognized DPR and LPR for men under 55 years old. He says that there are no guarantees that they will really be let through, and not be handed over at the first checkpoint.
Sergei lives in a village with his grandmother, whilst Liliya is looking for the same hundred thousand and the right people to "take our child to Russia." They don't have the relatives and opportunities to get settled there - all their relatives reside in Ukraine.
Liliya says that, after the start of the war, for a week they didn’t know what to say to each other. Then finally, they got in touch. Liliya's cousin remained in Chernihiv, which was severely destroyed during the war.
"I didn't know how to tell her that Sergei was taken away to fight, but she was the one who asked the question. They were more than glad to learn he had been taken in the wrong direction, and kept on asking how he was doing."
Although Liliya’s whole family has always been more pro-Russian in their views, her nephew joined the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces.
When asked how Liliya assesses Russia's actions, she writes: "Two out of ten. I don't understand why it wasn’t possible to simply join Russia like Crimea did. If they wanted to protect us, why Kherson? Why Chernihiv? Why are students and pensioners sitting in the trenches? Why is Donetsk being shelled in such a way it hasn’t seen since the first war, and why is our leadership opening monuments and changing signs to new ones in the destroyed city of Volnovakha? I don't see anything good either now or ahead."
Read this story in Russian here.
Translated by Daniel O'Mahony.