19-year-old conscript Sergei Chizhikov, who signed the contract and was sent to war in Ukraine, tried to return and refuse the contract, but he was not allowed into Russia. According to Mediazona , after retreating from Izyum, Chizhikov decided to terminate the contract. According to Sergey, before signing the contract, he was promised that he would not get into the war zone, and before the end of military service he would have a three-month probationary period, during which he would be able to terminate the contract and return to his unit. Pretty quickly he was sent to the front line.
Sergei said that he and other soldiers who wanted to return were not allowed to enter Russian territory for about a week until they agreed to continue fighting in Ukraine. The soldiers lived in tents on the border. They did not have any things with them, nor supplies of water and food.
The 19-year-old corporal says that the commanders explained the refusal to let the soldiers back into Russia by some kind of order coming from the head of the Eastern Military District. According to Sergei, moral pressure is exerted on colleagues. Not only the soldiers from his platoon found themselves in such a situation – volunteers who also wanted to terminate their short-term contracts were not allowed to cross the border into Russia.
After Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization, the servicemen were forbidden to leave, and on September 25, Sergei was again sent to the front.