On the territory of the Russian-occupied “LPR”, about 20 mobilized Russians are kept in the basement because of their refusal to take part in the war with Ukraine and go to the front line without preparation. This is reported by the Astra Telegram channel with reference to relatives and friends of those mobilized from the Lipetsk and Bryansk regions, publishing a video from the premises where some of the men are forcibly kept.
“This is how we go to the toilet,” the man in the video said as he opened an iron bucket in the common room. He also showed that the men slept on the same floor next to each other and ate there. The ceiling in the room is leaking, water is dripping on them.
Relatives said that the mobilized were civilians who had not been trained, but they were immediately thrown to the front line. There they came under mortar fire, after which they returned to a unit in the Lugansk region. According to the interlocutors of the channel, the mobilized found the loss of all personal belongings in the unit. They wanted to send those mobilized without combat experience back to the front lines who came under fire.
“Realizing that they were sent there without a clearly defined task, without the necessary set of things to perform incomprehensible tasks, they refused. After that, their weapons were taken away from the men and they were put in the basement, which was absolutely unsuitable for accommodating personnel,” says a friend of one of the men.
Also, a friend claims that while the mobilized were sitting in the basement, the command refused them. Then the men went to the military commandant's office in Rubizhne, Luhansk region, but there they were put in a cell with similar conditions. According to a friend of one of the men, after 10 days in the cell, prosecutors came to them and confronted them with a choice: go to the front line or receive a criminal punishment and 10 years of strict regime.
The wife of another mobilized person specified that now about 20 men, including her husband, have been transported to the premises of a former prison in the Perevalsky district of the Lugansk region. She says that all of them did not desert and did not leave their positions, but only refused to return again under fire without command and support of heavy equipment. The woman also stated that the command abandoned them.
Even before the announcement of “partial” mobilization in Russia, servicemen complained about similar cases in the “LPR”. So, on July 26, it became known that the Russian military, who refused to fight in Ukraine, were being held in custody in Bryanka, Luhansk region, beaten and forced to return to the front. Several military men who managed to get out of prison told The Insider that people are being “broken” by Wagner PMC fighters and representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry – Colonel Nechiporenko and Lieutenant Colonel Tumanov. The Russian military leadership denied any involvement in what is happening in Bryanka, stating that the contract soldiers are being held by the Luhansk military.
At least 130 people were kept in the "special center", people were taken back to the front and new "refuseniks" were brought in. The Insider published information about 17 of them. The father of one of the contractors told the publication that after three months of service they were promised a vacation and the opportunity to refuse further participation in hostilities. When the contractors wrote refusals, they were detained and taken to the same Bryanka in the Lugansk region. The father of one of the “refuseniks” said that all the soldiers from Bryanka were taken to a colony in Perevalsk, after which his son disappeared. It was from Perevalsk that the servicemen began to be hospitalized in a hospital in Luhansk and evacuated to Russia.