The day before, at least 500 people were taken out of the military village of Kamenka near St. Petersburg, where the 138th separate motorized rifle brigade is based and where several hundred men who refused to fight were held. Their relatives told ASTRA about this.

At the same time, criminal cases had already been opened against some of the refuseniks about leaving the unit, they were under investigation, and another part was awaiting their military commission. Among those under arrest are men with health problems, both physical and mental: “They took away a man with category “D” [not fit for duty], plus a man under the age of 70 who can barely walk, another man without an eye …”.

According to relatives, yesterday at about 6 pm they received a message from the men who were there that they were suddenly called to the formation, and then, without explaining anything, they were put into KAMAZ trucks and taken away under guard to a military airfield. The first “batch” — about 300 people — was sent to an unknown destination. The second part — about 150 people — turned out 7 km from Kursk in the morning at a military training ground. “They took them, grabbed them like a parcel, put them in jail and took them away,” their wives and mothers say.

Wives are afraid that they “will be thrown on the first line like meat, because they don’t register anything, they don’t say anything, everything is quiet.”

“In the morning, my son wrote that now they are dressing us, they will give us a machine gun and most likely send into battle,” says one of the interlocutors, whose mobilized son is being monitored by a psychiatrist after participating in the war. “If, God forbid, he has an explosion in his head and he shoots someone, who will be to blame for this?”