However, both of the young men's fathers felt that their son had a manly duty to serve. One son returned home. The other returned badly beaten and died of his wounds shortly after, leaving his father, Nikolai Lagiev, with heartbreaking unanswered questions.
Lagiev, who lives in an industrial town in the North Karelia region, has never opposed the war. He only believed that others should fight him, not his only son, Andrei, 19, who was supposed to be protected from actual combat.
Despite Putin's promise, Andrei was deployed to occupied Crimea, near the front, and died after being severely beaten, apparently by members of his unit, in what his father suspects was a case of violent military harassment.
Askabali Alebkov, a former paratrooper and father of four who lives far south, in the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk near Ukraine, could not be more different from the soft-spoken Lagiev. Alebkov is a brash and fast-talking anti-Putin activist and video blogger who has always opposed the war and was imprisoned for his anti-war posts.
Alebkov's son, Mikhail, 21, was also serving his mandatory service and, like Andrei, was not supposed to be sent to Ukraine. Alebkov believes his son is alive today because he refused to sign the contract, although soldiers who do not sign often face humiliation or beatings, activists say.
“I knew they would take him hostage because of my activism,” Alebkov said, referring to his graphic posts against Putin and the war. “And I told him, 'You're not going there. You'd better go to prison.' And he listened to me.”
Lagiev also convinced his son not to sign. But instead of relief, he now only has questions. How was his son killed, not in combat, but by the Russians? who is in Charge? How was he betrayed by Russian power?
Lazev, a steam turbine operator in Pitkiaranta, an industrial town on Lake Ladoga near Finland, is a patriot, hates to challenge authority and is proud that Andrei graduated from the local technical college as an open pit mining operator, driving tractors and bulldozers.
His father said Andre was a quiet, introverted “ordinary guy” who did not excel in exams, hated sports, and preferred books and history. Andrei meekly began his compulsory military service on June 26. Unlike many others, especially members of the wealthy elite, he did not run away to evade service.
“We would never have violated this law,” Lagiev said in an interview. “His attitude towards it was completely normal. He expected it. It was routine.”
On August 26, two months after being drafted, Andre told his parents to pressure him to sign the contract.
I said to him: Son, you do not need this. you are too little. You don't have a family. “You don’t have children,” Lagiev said. “I think mature people, who have families, who have served, can sign contracts, but not him.”
Last month, Putin ordered an increase in the size of the army by 170,000 soldiers, amid heavy losses in Ukraine, estimated by US intelligence at about 300,000 wounded or killed. Last year, he signed a law allowing the Army to register recruits, including teenagers, as contract soldiers.
Days before the usual October conscription round, prominent Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov praised the upside-down official logic that war “is life.”
“The truth is that man was born for war, not for peace,” Solovyov said on state television’s “Nashi” or “Our” program, where one of the guests was wearing a black mask. He continued: “War reveals so much about people that you can find out who they are.” “Men are always at war.”
But families of soldiers or recruits who were pressured to sign contracts see it differently. Wives, fathers and groups struggling to rescue men from war are attacked as traitors, labeled foreign agents and put on most wanted lists.
A week after Andrei spoke of being pressured to sign a contract, his unit moved to the Crimean Peninsula in occupied Ukraine and he stopped communicating. Three weeks later, a recruit told his father that Andre was in the hospital. A week later, the unit moved to Armyansk, near the occupied Kherson region.
On October 15, a fellow soldier called Nikolai Lagiev from the 1472 Naval Military Hospital in Sevastopol to tell him that Andrei was in serious condition. He sent pictures of Andre in a wheelchair looking unfocused.
The father contacted military prosecutors and regional Russian officials to no avail. The unit commander refused to reveal Andrei's whereabouts. Doctors “could not diagnose his condition or perhaps did not reveal the diagnosis,” Lagiev said. “But the men who were with him said they saw marks of beatings on his body.”
“The doctors kept saying he was fine, but they refused his requests to visit,” Lagiev said. He finally managed to talk to Andre on the phone and was shocked by his thick, cracking voice. “By this time, he couldn’t see,” the father said. “He lost his sight. He could barely walk. He lost 40 kilograms.”
On October 23, Andrei was transferred to a secure psychiatric unit. Lazev spoke to a doctor there, who did not give his name but described signs of the repeated beatings that Andrei had been subjected to. “He was probably hit on the head,” Lagiev said. He added that the commander and officers “may have been trying to cover up their crime.”
Andrei's condition deteriorated sharply at the end of October, so his parents bought tickets to Sevastopol. Lazev called the hospital from the airport early on November 2 and learned of Andrei's death. He was told to go home.
The coroner's report concluded that Andre died of swelling and bleeding on the brain, but his parents had no answers about what happened. “We did not get information from the military commanders, the military unit or anyone,” Lagiev said.
Alibekov was in prison for his anti-war activity while his son was in the army. But as a former nationalist commander who fought for Russia against Chechen separatists, the elder Alebkov viewed compulsory service as “the duty of all men.”
“Enormous psychological pressure”
However, he is sure that the officers will try to intimidate the recruits to force them to join. Alebkov said Mikhail was under “enormous psychological pressure” to sign.
“There were many conscripts, and almost all of them were forced to sign contracts,” Alibekov said. “Outside his unit, only he and three other men refused to register. They were terribly insulted. The commanders said: 'Look at the cowards! They do not want to die for the motherland!'
Alebkov was still in prison when his son returned from the army, but he was singing and dancing in his solitary cell. When he was released in November after more than a year in prison, his son was waiting at the gate, a wide smile on his face.
Alebkov returned live to his YouTube blog and condemned the war. To avoid arrest, he is on the run at an undisclosed location, desperate to escape Russia with his family.
Sergei Krivenko, part of the human rights organization Citizen, Army, Law, which advocates for conscripts and soldiers, said the Russian military was pressuring teenage conscripts to sign contracts, with the aim of using them as cannon fodder.
“They were deceived,” Krivenko said. “They are told: Sign a contract and you will be paid immediately.” But they were not told that it would be impossible to withdraw from the contract or terminate their military service. “They find themselves in this military environment surrounded by their leaders without any clear idea of what to do.”
Lazev buried his son at the end of November, but his questions and anger remain.
He added: “Only God knows what happened.” “But as long as I live, I will devote my whole life to trying to solve this case.”
