59-year-old disabled man without a voice was sent directly from the village administration to the war in Penza region. He died less than a month later, and his daughter did not receive payment for her father.
59-year-old Sergey Milkin is disabled has a heart defect. He has no voice (speaks in a hoarse whisper). He is a native of the Murmansk region, but in 2024, together with his common-law wife Elena, he bought a house in the village of Podgornoye in the Bashmakovsky district of the Penza region. On March 3, 2026, the man was called to a “preventive conversation” by the head of the village administration, Elena Malofeeva, because of Sergei’s alcohol abuse.
“This is a drinking family — Elena drinks, and Sergey drank. The head of the village council asked me to invite Sergey, ostensibly for some kind of medical examination or registration. I asked if I needed to come too, and she said no, but they needed Sergei with his documents. I called Sergey and said that he had been asked to come. He went and disappeared. His common-law wife calls, she was in Moscow, on duty, and says that Sergei was taken to some hospital, his phone will be taken away, he asked to look after the animals on the farm. I called the head of the village council back asking where the man had gone. She said she didn’t know anything, but there was a police officer at the interview who took Sergei away to show him where he got vodka. The version is unclear — as if the district policeman does not know who sells vodka. The next day, through friends, they found out that on March 3, at lunch, he was picked up, and on the morning of the 4th, he was given a new military ID card, and he was already on his way to Rostov. The man is 59 years old, he is a pensioner, disabled by heart, and he also has no voice, he cannot speak,” Olga, Sergei’s neighbor, told ASTRA.
After that, the man disappeared, and later it became known that he was sent to fight in Ukraine without his belongings under an allegedly signed contract. He never contacted anyone again, and on March 27, 2026, Sergei Milkin died in the war, his daughter Lyubov said. According to the documents, he had a heart attack, but her father was buried in a closed coffin.
“He was forced to sign a contract. My father was 59 years old, he had no voice, he spoke in a whisper, he had open heart surgery. Because of this operation, he lost his job as a chief machinist in our city. If he had gone to this war himself, he would have brought socks, underpants, pills, glasses, and so on. And they took him away without clothes — he went to the administration and never returned home,” Lyubov said.
She said that her father was detained by district policeman Evgeny Sinev, after which Sergei was sent to the front, although no criminal cases were opened against Milkin, he has never been imprisoned. Lyubov did not receive any money for the death of her father. Sinev did not answer the questions of the ASTRA correspondent.
The head of the village, Elena Malofeeva, confirmed Milkin’s visit to the administration in March due to alcohol abuse. She also said that she knew that he had died in the war, but Malofeeva did not answer the question of how Sergei ended up there.
Milkin’s daughter Lyubov appealed to the Investigative Committee, the prosecutor’s Office and the military prosecutor’s office with a complaint about the illegal sending of her father to the war. The military investigation department replied that there was no pressure on Milkin to sign the contract.
Earlier, Mikhail Protsik, a resident of the Penza region, and his family were shot at from a traumatic weapon after refusing to sign a contract. Now his wife Natalia regularly receives threats.
“We have a lot of such cases in the Penza region. Here in the villages, men are afraid to go out. It lasts about six months. Cars are driving, people are being taken away. Previously, they took away drinkers or those who have no relatives, now they take everyone in. Somewhere a man was pulled off a tractor, someone was taken from the garden, I heard from the neighbors,” said Olga Milkin’s neighbor.
