“We were sold to PMCs. We will keep the road in Bakhmut. I do not know what to do".
Anastasia Chumakova, ASTRA
April 11, 2023
More than 100 Russian mobilized disappeared in the Lugansk region after refusing to sign contracts with PMCs. First, they were reprimanded by the former "President of South Ossetia" Lieutenant General Anatoly Bibilov, then the mobilized were closed at the carriage building plant in Stakhanov. After that, the Russians were taken to a training ground in the Luhansk region. Since then, they have not been touched.
ASTRA spoke with 15 relatives of the soldiers and found out everything that is known at the moment about what happened.
Message mobilized to relatives, April 6, 2023.
“They don't give a fuck. They will [kill] us now and throw us into the field. And that's all."
“We don't have a choice. Who exactly said “no” - they have already been taken away, I don't know what is happening to them now. This "Wagner" arrived. You see, they don't give a fuck, they'll (kill) us now and throw us into the field and that's it, ”
- this is part of the transcript of only one of dozens of calls (available to the ASTRA editors) mobilized to their relatives from the territory of the Stakhanov Carriage Works in the Luhansk region, made on April 6 and 7, 2023.
Native soldiers told ASTRA that on April 5, 2023, about 500 mobilized from different regions of Russia (mainly Moscow, Voronezh and Tver regions) were sent by cargo planes from Kursk to Rostov-on-Don. Allegedly for training and transfer to submission to a local military unit. However, the men were taken from there at night to the Luhansk region.
Message mobilized relatives
“My husband and his colleagues, consisting of 500 mobilized by order, were redirected to Rostov-on-Don to a field camp on a military cargo board IL-76MD. They were sent on 3 boards, 170 people on each board. There was no one accompanied by the commanders. They were met by buses, military police and officers. They took the 27th brigade to the unit of the 150th division, collected military tickets. They were accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Fedorov Vladislav Yurievich. The mobilized were loaded into the "Urals" and taken to the "polygon". They crossed the border at night,” a relative of one of the missing Russians tells ASTRA.
Call closed at the plant in Stakhanov mobilized relatives
In this text, we talk about the fate of those mobilized from one aircraft, who were sent to the plant in Stakhanov. Nothing is known about the fate of the other two groups of Russians ASTRA.
Message mobilized relatives
“They were informed that they would be attached to the territorial defense and distributed to the places of new deployment. On April 6, they got in touch and reported that they were taken by a roundabout way to the Luhansk region to Stakhanov, to the Stakhanov Carriage Repair Plant, ”one of the wives of the mobilized tells ASTRA.
Message to the mobilized wife
The mobilized were forced to sign contracts by employees of the Wagner PMC, about which the mobilized unit itself was planned to be called the Wolves PMC.
Message mobilized relatives
“They are already driving us under automatic weapons, that's all, pressure has begun here. Representatives of PMC "Wagner" arrived with weapons, about 30 of them. Now they will simply twist and turn (us), they want to take us to some kind of landfill, they began to exert direct pressure. We ask: “where are our soldiers ?!”, and they say: “f*ck do you need them?”. We were depersonalized, there are no soldiers, people with weapons were brought in, and phones, as I understand it, will be taken away and we will not be able to get in touch, ”one of the Russian soldiers said in a telephone conversation relatives.
Call closed at the plant in Stakhanov mobilized by relatives
As it turned out, the former so-called “president of South Ossetia (territory of Georgia occupied by the Russian Federation), Lieutenant General Anatoly Bibilov, personally came to “push” those mobilized to the plant in Stakhanov.
Bibilov at the plant in Stakhanov
A video of him threatening Russian scripts went viral last week. However, it was not reported where and under what circumstances it was filmed. Even then, the soldiers were locked up at the carriage building plant in Stakhanov.
Bibilov at the plant in Stakhanov
“Where are we going to which PMC? Why were we taken at night? the soldiers asked Bibilov in the video.
"And what? You are soldiers! As they carry you, they carry you! Not a PMC, but you are at the disposal of the third army corps! And the instructors, yes, from PMCs, because they are experienced fighters, ”he answered The processing of the military lasted more than 10 minutes, during the conversation Bibilov told the mobilized that they were “cowards”, persuaded them to “defend their homeland”, and so on and so forth.
Full conversation of General Bibilov with Russian mobilized
At the same time, according to the soldiers, Bibilov "hit" Lieutenant Colonel Vladislav Fedotov, who accompanied the military from Rostov to the "LNR", for saying that "the mobilized should not be here." The Russians themselves, in conversations with their relatives, said that they were "sold to PMCs."
“There are 150 of us here, locked up at the car repair plant, we were stupidly sold, but we did not agree with this. <…> But these issues are not solved so easily. Take 150 people “for a sucker” and pull them to the Southern Military District with the words that “there you will be transferred to a military unit and will be trained, and then you will perform the function of territorial defense. And we, it turns out, are already “behind the tape” and without documents, “one of the mobilized told the mother in a telephone conversation. (The recording is at the disposal of the editors)
Call closed at the plant in Stakhanov Russian mobilized home
57 people out of 170 agreed to sign contracts with PMCs and left in an unknown direction, relatives of the soldiers say to ASTRA.
“The military prosecutor's office stated (our husbands contacted her) that the mobilized are there illegally, and on the morning of April 7, cars will come for them and escort them to the Rostov field camp. One of the mobilized was taken to the military prosecutor's office to write a statement, after which they returned him back. But in the morning no one came for them. The husbands called the military prosecutor's office again, to which they initially said that “there is no required number of cars in the Southern District,” and later that “they can't help,” says the wife of another missing Russian to ASTRA.
Message to the mobilized wife
“As a result, 113 people were loaded into cars and taken to the landfill. Upon arrival, they received SMS from their husbands that the phones were being confiscated.