Analysts have confirmed the continuation of the campaign to force the signing of contracts in Chechnya.

Those detained for minor offenses in Chechnya are being forced to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. Their families prefer to remain silent about this in order to use connections or ransom to bring the young men home, human rights activists reported.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," in April, activists reported a new wave of mass detentions in Chechnya. According to them, there could be "hundreds of people in recent days." It was claimed that some of the detainees were being taken to military registration and enlistment offices and forced to sign contracts for transfer to the SVO, while their relatives were being demanded to pay monetary compensation. According to activists, 60-year-old Chechen resident Mimbulatov, who was detained along with his two sons, died in a security agency detention center. In early May, security forces carried out mass arrests of residents of several Chechen villages, and many of those detained were forced to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense, activists reported. A human rights activist attributed the raids and arrests to a shortage of volunteer contract soldiers.

A human rights activist familiar with the situation in Chechnya stated that the trend of forcing young men to sign contracts continues and has become widespread since April of this year.

"It's gotten to the point where they simply come to young men's homes, call them into the yard, and take them to the police station. Then they demand that their relatives either pay a ransom or send them to Ukraine. They come up with all sorts of excuses. And the ransom is growing every day. It has already exceeded a million," he told a Kavkazsky correspondent. "node."

A human rights activist confirmed that there was information that a large number of people were being held in Khankala as "reserves," but that was last year.

"They mostly hold those who have already signed contracts there, and if they somehow manage to escape, it could have consequences. But escaping from there is practically impossible, unless due to the negligence of the guards," he explained.

Svetlana Gannushkina, Chair of the Civic Assistance Committee*, reported that there have been no recent complaints from Chechnya about new detentions and forced conscription, but that "Kadyrov is actively sending his young people," and coercion does occur.

According to the human rights activist, being sent to Khankala does not automatically make someone a service member.

"They've brought people there before, I think. And now they're bringing them for processing without any possible oversight." But this doesn't make people military personnel," Gannushkina* pointed out.

Lawyers have proposed ways to avoid coercion to send Chechen residents to Ukraine

Caucasian Knot reader mathew reported one case of coercion to sign a contract. "My friend's older brother almost fell into this category a few months ago. We were celebrating a colleague's birthday at work with a small group of people. There was drinking. Somehow, the valiant "guardians of order" got wind of this; they burst into the building, arrested everyone there, and took them away to their TOM or TOP (territorial police department). "The detainees, of whom there were several, were forced to sign military service contracts, threatening them with torture and criminal charges," he writes. According to him, the man managed to tell his family that he had been detained. "They used their connections, found out where he was, went to the station, and took him home. A high-ranking police officer, a distant relative, helped." The man was simply lucky, because, according to him (according to the police), a car with soldiers was supposed to pick them up from Khankala to take them to one of the Ministry of Defense's Akhmat vehicles for subsequent enlistment," he writes.

Reports of coercion to sign contracts have previously come from Chechnya

The detainees are being pressured to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense because Chechnya lacks volunteers to be sent to the military operation zone, analysts reported in November 2024. "No matter how many millions [of rubles] they pay, there are no takers. They do this deliberately, because they remember the war with Russia, and they don't want to fight for the Russians. This is not a figure of speech, it's not a play on words, it's really true. "And the authorities are now forcing people to do it under any pretext, because people won't come," Ruslan Kutayev* said, among other things.

16:00 28.03.2026

Human rights activists question the voluntariness of convicts signing contracts in Chechnya

Data on the number of prisoners sent from Chechen colonies to the SVO zone cannot be verified, but the voluntariness of the contracts signed with the Ministry of Defense is questionable, human rights activists noted.

As a reminder, in January 2025, volunteers who arrived in Chechnya to sign a military contract, complained that they are being kept locked up for weeks to be sent to the war zone in place of local residents who have bribed their way out of service. According to human rights activists, forced contracts are practiced in Chechnya, and security forces may create an "exchange fund" from volunteers arriving from other regions who will sign contracts in place of local residents.

Security forces also reported success in sending prisoners from Chechen colonies. 570 people signed military contracts with the Ministry of Defense; Chechnya is "in first place" in terms of recruiting activity in places of detention, the head of the republican department of the Federal Penitentiary Service stated.

In September 2024, it became known that Five Azerbaijani citizens were detained by security forces in Chechnya and are being forced to sign military contracts; after this information was made public, the foreign citizens were released and returned to their homeland.

The Russian Special Forces University, a training center organized by Ramzan Kadyrov in Gudermes, trains volunteers for deployment to war zones and is home to the Akhmat special forces unit, according to the Caucasian Knot report "What They Teach at Putin's Special Forces University in Chechnya".