Before going to this center, we did not consult with anyone, we simply made a collective decision with other relatives. We need to do something, we need to get the children out of there and stop lawlessness. If we are the first, then others will start. I don't know exactly how many of us there are, but I know there are many. There are so many parents, porridge.

I didn't talk to him [my relative]. One of the guys said that there is one here. I called the command, in his unit. At first they told me that they didn't know at all. I called them every day and said that the relative did not get in touch. I said: I had received information that he was almost being tortured, forcing him to agree to go to the front line. I didn’t see him [the interlocutor from the command], of course, but I felt on the phone that his eyes widened: “What do you mean, he is fighting, but I will find out everything.” Then he calls me back and says that everything is so, from such and such a date the relative is in the status of an objector. The information has been confirmed. At the same time, they say that there is nothing illegal in the fact that they are kept here. They say that they are refuseniks and therefore they are dealt with here, and specifically it was even said that they were criminals.

I tell them: "My relative was seconded by your unit, is in military service in your unit, and you are responsible for him." They answer me: “No, they are already under the command of another beginning. Within 10 days he will be there, conversations are being held with him, the investigation is underway, they will figure out who is the criminal and who is not. Nothing illegal is being done, nothing is being repaired over them.”

I say again that it is lawlessness that they are being kept under guard - not even by the Russian army. They answer me: “No, there is nothing illegal in this. The investigation is being conducted by Russian servicemen and they are having conversations with them. And he is no longer under their command, but under the command of the unit in which he is located on the territory of the LPR.”

Everything is very bad - they are used force, they are taken into these pits in turn and forced to sign an agreement to go to the front line. I told this to the command, he told me that this was nonsense, that he did not believe the refusenik soldiers, that they would now come up with anything to be taken home.

Watch the details of this story in today's (25.07) The Insider news stream at 15:00 (Moscow time).

On July 21, it became known that the Russian military who refused to fight in Ukraine were sent to a special center for “refuseniks” in Bryanka, Luhansk region. The Insider spoke to one of them who arrived in Bryanka on July 22. Ivan (name changed) wrote a report about his refusal to participate in the war due to moral unpreparedness. Before being in Bryanka, he spent three months in the war. In Bryanka, the military is told that they need to go through two conversations - with a psychologist and with commanders who will decide what to do with the “refusenik”.

Another interlocutor of The Insider - the father of one of the "refuseniks" - said that after three months of service, Russian contract soldiers were promised a vacation and the opportunity to refuse to participate in hostilities. However, when they decided to leave Ukraine, having written refusals, they were detained and taken to Bryanka, where they have been kept in custody for more than a month. He said that contractors are kept in terrible conditions: “Some kind of pits, torture and the like. This is what the people who come from there say.”