Russian man reported missing at front after being beaten and forced to sign army contract, mother says

A 42-year-old man from the Russian city of Omsk has been reported missing near the front line in Ukraine, three months after his mother says he was seized on the street, beaten at a military recruitment center and made to sign a contract with the Defence Ministry.

The man, Ivan Isaikhin, left his home on 10 July to buy cigarettes when unidentified men detained him, his mother told the Telegram channel Astra. They told him they were taking him to the bailiffs’ office in Omsk’s Kirovsky district over unpaid child support, she said. Instead, they drove him to a recruitment centre.

“They took him to this [recruitment centre], where they beat him badly. Almost to death,” she said. “They sent him off to the army, bloodied and half naked, along with others.”

The Russian military notified the family that Isaikhin went missing on 18 October near Sofiivka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to his mother. The notice came after she filed an inquiry with the local military enlistment office.

After the beating, Isaikhin spent about six weeks in military hospitals in Bryansk, Tula and Moscow, his mother said. Medical records show he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, a brain contusion and hemorrhage, hemotomas and broken ribs.

In August, he reported to a military assembly point in Yekaterinburg and was then assigned to Millerovo, in Russia’s Rostov region, she said. There he was granted 45 days of sick leave, she said, but instead of being allowed to recover, he was sent to the front.

She last spoke to her son on 3 October, when he was in the Donetsk region. He told her that commanders had driven him to a bank to withdraw 450,000 rubles (€4,900) in exchange for being kept out of an assault, she said. Three days later, he was sent on a combat mission anyway.

“They simply realised he was already on the assault troops’ list and just conned him out of the money,” she said. “There are no limits to what they’ll do. It’s a real blood business. In the end, they took the money and sent my son to the meat grinder.”

Relatives of other men in Omsk have made similar complaints, saying their loved ones were picked up off the streets, beaten and pressured to sign contracts with the Defence Ministry.