Russia continues to urge residents of occupied Ukraine: how tens of thousands of people ended up in the Russian army

On June 29, 2026, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded: Russian authorities in the occupied territories continue to forcibly conscript protected persons into the Russian armed forces. In March, the UN separately described the mechanism by which a Russian passport, military registration, and conscription become links in one chain.

I, R.Verter, for NANews — News of Israel compared data from the Ukrainian GUR, Russian figures, the reconstruction by ‘Important Stories’, UN documents, and an investigation into violence within the Russian army. There is no single figure to date. But the sources allow us to see how tens of thousands of people went through this system and what happened to those who tried to leave it.

When searching for “how many Ukrainians Russia mobilized in the occupied territories” or “is mobilization ongoing in 2026”, it is important not to mix data from different years. 55–60 thousand is the estimate of Ukrainian intelligence by mid-2023, more than 73 thousand is the independent reconstruction of the Donetsk and Luhansk corps, 78.9 thousand is the figure of the Russian General Staff cited in the investigation. These are different slices of one process.

73 thousand were seen through army bureaucracy

On June 4, 2025, ‘Important Stories’ published a study based not only on statements from the parties but on leaks of lists of Russian servicemen wanted for unauthorized absence and desertion. Journalists noted personal tags of the ‘AB’ series. Until early 2023, this series was characteristic of military personnel from the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and later it was also used for recruited prisoners from ‘Storm Z’.

By ‘DNR’ and ‘LNR’ here are meant entities created with Russian support in the captured areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. After the full-scale invasion, their armed formations were finally integrated into the Russian military system.

The most important thing in the study is not the letter series itself. The numbers formed sequences. In some blocks, surnames were in alphabetical order, in others — in the order of the unit’s regular list. Journalists found 79 alphabetical sequences and another 13 blocks related to the structure of the units. Additional verification was provided by relatives’ announcements about the missing: the numbers of people not in the leak stood between neighboring surnames. Thus, a minimum estimate appeared — 48.9 thousand people in the Donetsk and 24.1 thousand in the Luhansk formations, totaling more than 73 thousand.

This figure probably does not cover everyone. Almost two thousand people from the leak were included in the Russian army by a secret order on January 1, 2023. According to a source from ‘Important Stories’, the order formalized as Russian servicemen even those who did not sign a report on continuing service and did not conclude a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense. From the initial mobilization to the appearance of a personal number, almost a year could pass. A person who died, went missing, or dropped out earlier might not be counted at all.

That is why there are estimates of 55–60 thousand, 73 thousand, and 78.9 thousand. They relate to different arrays and moments of the war. And taking into account people who already served in these corps before February 24, 2022, the total number of formations, according to researchers, could exceed 100 thousand.

The passport turned out not to be the end of pressure, but the beginning of the next stage

For the Israeli reader, it is important here to distinguish between the usual mobilization of a state of its citizens and the actions of an occupying power. Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the occupying power from forcing protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. Pressure to achieve formally voluntary enlistment is also prohibited. Human Rights Watch in its 2026 report qualifies the Russian forced conscription of Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories as a war crime.

The UN report from March 20, 2026 shows that it does not necessarily start with a summons. After the illegal annexation, Russia began to consider Ukrainians without Russian documents as ‘foreigners’. Access to medicine, pensions, social assistance, work, property, banking services, and insurance was gradually linked to the possession of a Russian passport. At checkpoints, people without it faced enhanced checks, interrogations, and searches.

Then the military part of the system was activated. After imposing Russian citizenship, Ukrainian men 18–30 years old were considered subject to conscription by the Russian authorities. According to the UN, since October 2023, five conscription campaigns have already taken place in the occupied territories. Moscow does not publish separate complete statistics, but documents studied by the UN indicate thousands of illegally conscripted residents.

This report contains details that disappear behind large statistics. A 21-year-old resident of the Zaporizhzhia region told the UN that in 2023 he was forced to obtain a Russian passport to be able to move around. But immediately after receiving the document, he was ordered to undergo military registration. He left the occupied territory to avoid ending up in the Russian army.

Another case is a young man from the Luhansk region. He left a few days before his eighteenth birthday precisely because of the fear of Russian conscription. In these two stories, the chain is clearly visible, which is not conveyed by a single figure: a document is needed for a person for ordinary life, but the same document opens the next stage for the occupation administration — military registration and the possibility of conscription.

What losses and desertion from units say

Already in the first year of the full-scale war, formations from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions suffered huge losses. ‘Important Stories’ cites data on more than 20 thousand killed and wounded, and the estimate used by the BBC Russian Service for those killed from the two occupied regions was 21–23.5 thousand people. These figures cannot simply be subtracted from 73 thousand: sources and methodologies differ. But they show why the number ever mobilized is not equal to the number of people currently in the ranks.

Another significant array is desertion. In the largest blocks of tags, covering two to four thousand servicemen, 8 to 19% of the personnel were wanted for unauthorized absence. Of the 11.5 thousand people with ‘AB’ series tags, at least 2.7 thousand were detained. At the time of the study, 2817 servicemen from these territories were still on the federal wanted list, and for more than 800, the search was discontinued.

This is an important boundary. Among the residents of occupied Ukraine who ended up in the Russian army, there were people who consciously fought on the side of Russia. But mass mobilization, the coercion described by the UN, and thousands who tried to leave the units do not allow automatically considering every person in such units as a volunteer.

Refusal to assault does not mean the possibility of simply leaving

A separate layer of this story is violence already within the Russian army. In October 2025, ‘Verstka’ compiled a card index of 101 servicemen whom colleagues and relatives accused of so-called ‘nullifications’: extrajudicial killings, torture to death, and sending people into assaults from which it is almost impossible to return. Among the reasons in the collected testimonies was the refusal to go on an assault.

One of the described cases concerns servicemen who, according to colleagues, were ordered to move forward through a minefield. After the refusal, two died. In another story, a conscript claimed that those who refused to carry out obviously deadly tasks were shot. These are testimonies, not statistics of the entire Russian army, but they show why the question ‘why didn’t the person just refuse?’ may not have an obvious answer.

Here, too, it is important not to turn the investigation into the slogan ‘refused — will definitely be killed’. Such a universal dependency is not proven by the sources. But another link appears: a person may first fall under the pressure of the occupation administration, then under military registration and conscription, and already within the unit face the threat of punishment for refusing to carry out a deadly order.

And this is not a closed chapter of the first months of the invasion. On June 29, 2026, the UN again recorded the continuation of forced conscription in the occupied territory. And on July 16, Human Rights Watch reported another long-term element: in Russian schools in the captured territories, boys are directed to military registration, simultaneously integrating military training and militarized education into the educational system.

For NANews — News of Israel, this is where the main meaning of this story lies. Occupation changes not only the map and administration. It can first put a person before a choice between Russian documents and normal everyday life, then turn these documents into a basis for military registration, and then demand to serve in an army fighting against his own country.

And therefore, tens of thousands here are not just a figure in military statistics. Behind it is visible a mechanism: the mass recruitment of 2022, military formalization, huge losses, attempts to escape, pressure through documents, and new conscription campaigns. UN documents show that in 2026 this mechanism has not disappeared.