In October 2025, ASTRA wrote about Anton Simonenko, a 41-year-old resident of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, who, without passing the military medical commission, went to war in Ukraine and ended up in military unit 42600 of the Donetsk region. At the same time, the man suffers from widespread vulgar psoriasis, due to complications he is forced to move with a cane, but he was threatened with being sent into battle.
After the publication of ASTRA, Simonenko was sent to the 2nd reserve and admitted to a hospital in Donetsk. On January 14, he underwent a medical examination by the military medical commission of the 51st Army of the Southern Military District, which concluded that the man needed inpatient treatment.
Despite this, on January 15, Simonenko and about 20 other military personnel who were waiting for the Air Force and the ambulance train were loaded into a car and sent to the location of the 98th regiment in the “Storm Z”. This was reported to ASTRA by Simonenko’s lawyer.
Olga Vladimirovna, deputy political officer of military unit 42600 (surname unknown), as well as medical instructor Sergey Belov insisted on sending the man into battle. They claim that the conclusion of the military commission on Simonenko is a “fake”, so he can be sent to a combat position, like other military personnel who were awaiting medical examinations.
Earlier, ASTRA published an investigation into the torture of Russian military commanders 5th and 110th brigades. According to the interlocutors of the editorial office, the commanders set up a real “concentration camp” on the territory of the abandoned Petrovsky mine in Donetsk. It was there that the military from the 5th Brigade tortured the American “military commander” Russell Bentley before his death. ASTRA published the first and only video from the premises of this mine. Men who refused to fight were tortured there, and then they were forced to go on deadly assaults. As reported by ASTRA,the organizer of the torture in an abandoned mine in the “DNR” was posthumously given a Hero of Russia.
