A resident of Donetsk, 30-year-old Alexander Barlet signed a contract in 2019 and officially served until 2020 in the military unit 42600 (former 08826) of the 116th regiment. However, after the expiration of the contract, he was in the military and in this status he met the beginning of the “SMO”. On March 23, 2023, he fought in Vesely near Avdiivka, received a concussion, and his wife Nadezhda gave birth to her fourth child, so on March 28, Barlet went on an unofficial vacation, which ended with his abduction on May 24.
“Everything was fine, but one night they broke into my parents’ house with a gun, they were looking for me. My parents called me, I arrived the next morning, asked what and how. I went to the military enlistment office, but they said that I had never been there and they had no documents for me,” Barlet told ASTRA.
According to him, after that, some people without documents arrived at the Donetsk military enlistment office on Bukovinskaya Street 2, saying that he would go with them. Barlet refused, after which he was beaten and detained, cut with a knife.
“The guys from the commandant’s office who had come home arrived. They said without documents that I was going with them. A fight broke out on the territory of the military enlistment office, the second crew was called on me, they beat me, cut my hand with a knife. When they broke it, one of them showed up that I tore his jacket and kicked me,” says Barlet.
He was taken to the sixth commandant’s office in Donetsk at 138 Ivan Tkachenko Street. There he was put in the basement, where there were eight more people accused of leaving the unit without permission, although the cell was intended for six. Barlet spent about a week here — he was fed dry rations, he went to the toilet in a bottle, and in the afternoon the officers took him to work. He emphasizes that he did not hide from the service, despite the fact that he did not work under contract and he regularly called the unit during his “vacation” to find out if the army needed him, so he does not understand why he was detained.
After a week in the basement, he was handed over to representatives of a certain 116th unit, about which he knows nothing. These people told him on the way that they were taking him to sign a contract, but the young man asked him to stop by his parents’ house to pick up his things. After going to the toilet, he was able to escape.
“I don’t understand anything. I served, I did not have a contract, but since the beginning of my career I have been almost everywhere, that is, everything is fine, and then for no reason they start looking for me, presenting something, they want to throw me into the storm for it is unclear what and on what grounds,” says Barlet.
While he is in hiding, unidentified undocumented people in civilian clothes, but posing as military police, came to his parents and wife’s house several times. The last time they came was on October 20, and the two who came were filmed by Barlet’s wife Nadezhda.
At the same time, the certificate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, received by Nadezhda, states that no cases have been opened against Barlet and he is not wanted as a deserter. The same was said by the man’s lawyer, who suggests that while Barlet served without a contract, someone else received money for him.
The commandant’s office in Donetsk at 138 Ivan Tkachenko Street is already the 20th place for torture and detention of military personnel in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which was found by ASTRA. Recently, we told how three servicemen from the 1st Slavic brigade escaped from another torture chamber in Makeyevka — from the territory of the mine automation plant. And a native of the Omsk region signed a contract in the “DPR”, faced extortion and was beaten by the command, was locked up in the territory of the former shoe factory in Makeyevka and now cannot return home to Russia.
