On June 22, military personnel of military unit 72162, Sergeant Sergei Zozulenko and second Lieutenant Kamil Zainulin, were allegedly sent by their commanders to Kursk “to be awarded,” the men’s wives told ASTRA. However, instead, the sergeant and the second lieutenant ended up in an illegal basement for soldiers who refused to fight and in Zaitsevo, Luhansk region of Ukraine, the women say.

“They were allegedly invited to Kursk on Sunday for an award ceremony. They didn’t get in touch after that, the phones were turned off. They’re gone. On Wednesday, they got in touch and said they were handcuffed, held in a pit, and then brought to Zaitsevo. Since then, there has been no contact with them,” the sergeant’s wife told ASTRA.

The wife of Second Lieutenant Zainulin also contacted ASTRA. She claims that in order to lure her husband out of the front line and detain him, the commanders deliberately made up a fake order about the need to arrive at the award ceremony in Kursk.

“I have established that the signatures of the lieutenant colonel and the captain in the document do not match the signatures in other documents. In other words, the signatures are fake. Well, that’s how it turned out: Kamil and Sergey are tied up, they are not fed, they are barely allowed a call. My husband managed to say that their hands and feet were tied during transportation and that besides them, “many more servicemen” were taken to Zaitsevo,” Alla Astra said.

She believes that the reason for her husband’s detention was that he was “against lawlessness in the unit.”

The women have written appeals to the military prosecutor’s office and other departments and demand that their relatives be released from prison.

The basement in Zaitsevo is an illegal place to hold “refuseniks” and “delinquent” military personnel. There, Russian soldiers are persuaded to return to the front, held in inhumane conditions, and sometimes tortured. We published exclusive video from this camp. In total, ASTRA has already found 23 similar locations.