This jackpot, which can represent up to 600 % of the average national salary in the country, encourages many Russians from poor regions to enlist in the army, despite the obvious risk of not returning from fighting.
But it also attracts malicious people. On their return to Russia, many soldiers were victims of different scams.
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Various techniques, but systemic extortion
After an argument with his wife, a soldier named Khursa, explains to the BBC that she had left the home with his pay in a plastic bag and had been arrested by the police. When they asked him for a bribes, he explained to come back from Ukraine. But that was not enough to coax them.
“Let’s not do that, he just comes back from war,” said a police officer. But the second agent would have replied: “Shut up, you know how much it does?”, Designating the money in the bag. They would then stole 2.66 million rubles, or around 28,000 euros.
This story is far from an isolated case. Affairs of this kind have multiplied in recent months in Russia.
Another example? Moscow airport police worked hand in hand with Moscow taxi drivers, warning them from the return of the soldiers. The drivers then offered a race to the military for a ridiculous price, before requiring a sum up to 15 times higher on arrival. Those who refused payment were threatened or even drug addicts, while their bank cards were steep and used fraudulently. This gang would have stolen at least 1.5 million rubles, or around 15,840 euros.
Some soldiers have even been stolen directly by employees in the recruitment centers. In the Vladimir region, three of them are accused of having stolen more than 11 million rubles (more than 115,000 euros) by subtilizing the SIM cards of new recruits, linked to their bank account.
A similar case took place in Belgorod, where a recruitment agent attached the bank accounts of new arrivals to his own telephone number.
Finally, a hierarchical superior was also accused of having forced his soldiers to give him their balance cards, recovering more than 50, some of whom belonged to missing soldiers, before fleeing with more than 2 million rubles, or more than 20,000 euros.
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Total impunity
In the case of Khursa, the two police officers who extorted his balance for him were charged. Only, there is a problem: they enlisted in the army, direction Ukraine. Thanks to a new law, the soldiers who are committed can escape the proceedings by joining the front. Khursa has never reviewed the color of her money.
Touched by bursts of buses, he awaits the decision of a military doctor, and could have returned to the front, because the soldiers under contract are mobilized until the end of the war, except medical decision. Now separated from his wife, he does not see himself regaining his civil life.
“If I am not there, I will end up on the street. Only the army saves you, gives you a roof above the head,” he concludes with our British colleagues.
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