Ukraine's Kursk incursion tests young Russian conscripts' mettle

By Lucy Papachristou, Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev

LONDON (Reuters) - The last time Liana spoke to her husband Husain before he was captured by Ukrainian troops, he said what he always told her: "Everything is fine."

Husain, a 21-year-old conscripted soldier, was dispatched with his Russian army unit in mid-July to a base in the western Kursk region that he said was nine miles (15 km) from the frontier with Ukraine.

When Husain phoned his wife on Aug. 4, he said the situation there seemed calm, Liana told Reuters. The only sign of the war in Ukraine was the buzz of drones overhead, protecting soldiers as they slept.

Two days later, thousands of Ukrainian troops smashed through the border into Kursk in a lightning attack that took Moscow by surprise.

For about three weeks, Liana heard nothing from Husain. Then, on Sunday, he called her from a Moscow hospital and said he had been released with more than 100 other Russian prisoners of war who had been captured in Kursk.

Husain told her his unit had come under heavy Ukrainian shelling, and that he and two other conscripts were the unit's only survivors.

Reuters could not independently verify Husain's account.

"He thought he was going to die," said Liana, 19, who spoke on condition that the couple's surnames not be used for fear of recriminations.

Liana is relieved that Husain, with whom she has an 18-month-old son, is alive. But she fears that her husband, who worked as a builder, will be sent back to fight in Kursk.

"He is still young, he just started to live," she said.

SENSITIVE ISSUE

Russian men are required to complete a year of military service before the age of 30, with about 280,000 called up each year. Ukraine's incursion has reopened public debate about whether raw and untested recruits should be thrown into battle.

Less than two weeks after sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, President Vladimir Putin said: "I emphasise that conscript soldiers are not participating in hostilities and will not participate in them."

The following day, Russia's defence ministry acknowledged some conscripts were fighting in Ukraine. Putin ordered an investigation and promised to punish the officials responsible.

Over two years later, investigations by the BBC Russian Service and independent Russian outlet Important Stories show hundreds of conscripts have been sent to Kursk to defend against Ukraine's advance. Dozens have gone missing or were captured.

Reuters confirmed the deaths of two conscripts from accounts posted by their families on social media.

Artyom Dobrodumsky won medals in children's karate competitions in the southern Rostov region, and graduated from a cadet school. He was 22 when he died in Kursk.

Daniil Rubtsov, who was raised in northwest Russia, received his army notice in December 2023. He hoped to become a police investigator, his mother told Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. He died in the Kursk region on Aug. 7, aged 18.

Russian civil society groups that advise men on how to avoid military service say they are concerned about pressure on conscripts to sign contracts to become professional soldiers.

Alexei Tabalov, founder of legal support group Shkola Priziyvnika (Conscript School), said conscripts, many of them teenagers, are highly susceptible to such coercion.

"It's easy to fool them, manipulate them, blackmail them. You can threaten them and use physical force against them without any real consequences," Tabalov said by telephone.

He said many conscripted soldiers in Kursk had received little military training, and were treated like "service personnel" tasked with maintenance and other low-level tasks.

"Many say they didn't even have access to weapons, which confirms that they weren't considered to be participants in possible hostilities, or defending something," Tabalov said.

In recent days, he said, conscripts from areas including the far east and Bashkortostan near the Ural Mountains have sought his advice, saying they have been told they will be deployed to Kursk or the adjacent border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod.

Reuters was not able to determine how many conscripts have been sent to fight in those regions since Ukraine's incursion.

Asked about media reports that conscripts are being sent to Kursk and pressured to sign military contracts, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Most often such reports are an absolute distortion of reality. We do not consider it necessary to comment".

EVERYONE 'MUST STAND IN FORMATION'

Following the incursion, a Russian military commander in Kursk dismissed parents' concerns that their sons may be too young or inexperienced to see battle.

"We should not turn 18-year-old conscripts, who are men, into children who have to be given a pacifier and sent off to bed," Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya's Akhmat special forces, said in a video message posted on Telegram. "Everyone in our country today, from the smallest to the greatest, must stand in formation."

Russian military analysts say it is unlikely that conscripts fighting in Kursk are prepared to meet battle-tested Ukrainian units.

Some of those captured were drafted in May or June and may have had only the minimum 45 days of training, said Pavel Luzin of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a U.S. think-tank.

"The best thing the Russian conscripts can do is to turn themselves in to the Ukrainians immediately," said Nico Lange, a defence expert at CEPA. "They will not survive this."

(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou, Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev in London, Writing by Lucy Papachristou, Editing by Timothy Heritage)