Attempts to sign contracts in Chechnya bring some volunteers into dungeon

Volunteers from all over Russia who have arrived in Chechnya to sign military contracts have complained that they are kept locked up for weeks in order to be sent to the combat zone instead of the local residents who had paid their way out of service.

In their video appeal posted in the Telegram channel of the "Astra"* outlet, about a dozen men assert that they are only allowed out to go to the toilet and are not paid any money. According to them, they are being held so that natives of Chechnya, who are forced to sign contracts for their committed "offenses", can send one of the men in their place for bribes. One of the authors of the appeal reports that his friend and another man thus had to go to the special military operation (SMO) zone instead of the residents of Chechnya, who had paid 500,000 roubles to avoid this.

One of the men, Alexei Kondratiev, is a former fighter of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC). His ex-wife has confirmed that he had spent several weeks in a hotel in Chechnya from last November, and then was locked up for a month.

The adoptive mother of another person from the above video, Nikita, said that he was arrested for 10 days and met a Chechen in custody, who offered Nikita to go to Chechnya to sign a contract there and receive 900,000 roubles for it, while remaining in the republic and not going to the SMO zone. Nikita agreed and on November 11 ended up in jail in exchange for a resident of Chechnya, detained for drunk driving. "He didn't even know that he was sold. He received no money," she said.

On November 4, 2024, it became known that law enforcers in Chechnya were conducting house-to-house visits and detaining men, who were offered to be sent to the SMO zone or face criminal prosecution for visiting the Telegram channels of critics of Chechen authorities, human rights defenders have reported.

They demand from the detainees to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD), since Chechnya has not enough volunteers to be send to the SMO zone, analysts have explained.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.