On July 23, men in civilian clothes showed up at security company employee Sergei Teplyakov's home and ordered him to produce his "internal passport," the main identification document in Russia."One of them introduced himself as the new district police officer and demanded his passport," said Oksana, one of several fellow residents of Bashmakovo, a town in the Penza region, who told RFE/RL about the incident.When Teplyakov called the actual local police, she said, the men got angry, grabbed him and tried to bundle him into their vehicle. But they released Teplyakov after neighbors began filming the incident.The following day, residents of the town of about 9,000 people said two men grabbed Aleksei Denisenko while he was cutting grass as part of court-ordered community service for drunk driving.They told him it would be "worse" if he refused to go to the district administration, according to Artyom, a resident, who said a district administration employee was sitting in the vehicle and they drove away.Denisenko's sister eventually intercepted the vehicle on the road toward the regional capital, forced it to a stop, and got him out, Artyom said. His real name and those of others who spoke to RFE/RL have been withheld for safety reasons.
Aggressive Recruiters Are Rounding Up Russians For The War. In One Town, They're Pushing Back
Volunteers in the Penza region town of Bashmakovo have formed patrols to prevent military recruiters from taking local men to fight in Ukraine, an unusual grassroots response to the Russian state’s increasingly aggressive efforts to find troops for the war
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