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A 31-year-old Russian man, Dmitry S, was sitting on a pavement bench in the Siberian city of Omsk last month, drinking a bottle of beer. A car pulled up and a group of men in civilian clothes piled out. They twisted his arms behind his back and bundled him into the car. They said they were arresting him for drinking in public. They took him to an army recruitment centre, where he was forced to join up.
That story was told by the man’s family to the Omsk Civil Association, a local group that documents such cases. There are many others like it. In Ulyanovsk, a city on the banks of the Volga river, a 52-year-old man was reportedly arrested at the entrance to his apartment building for being drunk. His family told activists he was forced to sign a military contract and ended up in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Another man in Ulyanovsk was allegedly forced to sign despite having lost an eye.
Rolling home tipsy is a risky thing to do for Russian men as Vladimir Putin struggles to find human sacrifices for his “meat grinder” in Ukraine. His vast army may one day achieve something that looks like victory there: sheer weight of numbers is on Russia’s side. But be sceptical of the claims that Putin wants to invade Europe, or is about to.
