5 minWorld
Russian Female Prison Recruits Allege Sexual Coercion Inside Military Units
A new investigation describes allegations of sexual abuse against women recruited from penal colonies to serve as medics in Russia’s war. One servicemember says she reported rape to a military prosecutor in June.
Women recruited from Russian penal colonies for military service in the war against Ukraine have described sexual coercion and abuse by commanders, according to an investigation by Verstka. The reporting centers on women who entered the armed forces under contracts that promised pay, injury compensation and a route out of prison, then served as military medics.
Verstka reports that women in the program it investigated were offered one-year contracts and monthly pay starting at 220,000 rubles. They were also promised payments if wounded and relief from the remainder of their prison sentences. Several hundred women were trained and sent to the war as medics, the outlet said.
The investigation describes how military assignment became a source of leverage. One woman said a commander offered to keep recruits at a hospital rather than send them closer to the front if they came to him at night. Some women agreed. The source later said they discovered that he did not in fact have the authority to determine their future postings.
A separate account comes from Lyudmila Poltarakova. She told Verstka that regimental commander Sergey Zhitkov first called her to perform massages and later became aggressive. Poltarakova alleges that Zhitkov raped her in February 2025 and continued sexually abusing her in March. The accusation has not been established in a publicly available court ruling.
Poltarakova also alleges that she was later expected to provide sexual services to another senior military figure. After she confronted the situation, she was transferred to another medical battalion. She says she was required to sign a statement denying that Zhitkov had used violence against her before the transfer. Poltarakova said she signed because she feared consequences for her service.
According to Verstka, Poltarakova filed a formal rape complaint with a military prosecutor in June 2026. Afterward, she said commanders sought to send her to the front and that she feared the order was intended to put her in lethal danger.
Independent reporting supports the fact that Poltarakova was serving in the military and had raised broader complaints about the treatment of former prisoners. A June 30 publication identified her as a contract soldier in the 370th Separate Medical Battalion and published her statement that more than 80 female prisoners had signed Defense Ministry contracts. She described women working in frontline evacuation teams. On July 1, another report quoted her saying she had received an urgent order to go to the front and was afraid she could be killed there.
Verstka later said Poltarakova remained alive and was at the front. It reported that authorities opened a criminal case against her for refusing an order to carry out a combat mission but did not open a criminal case based on her rape complaint. No publicly available prosecution or court documents were found that independently establish those procedural claims, so they remain reported allegations about the status of the cases.
The practice of recruiting women prisoners predates the 2024 phase described in the new investigation. Current Time reported in March 2023 that women from Russian prisons were being recruited and transported in connection with the war, including recruitment by Defense Ministry representatives. RFE/RL later interviewed a woman who said she joined from a Lipetsk-region prison colony in summer 2023 and worked as a nurse in the Donetsk region. She recalled unwanted advances by soldiers and discrepancies between promised and actual conditions.
The allegations place the conduct of individual officers inside a broader question of military accountability. The women were recruited from a population already subject to state custody and then placed in units where commanders controlled dangerous assignments. Poltarakova’s complaint will be a test of whether allegations against that chain of command can be investigated independently while the complainant remains under military authority.
