BREAKING NEWS: Russia has begun blocking conscripts from traveling abroad by decision of military enlistment offices, – media

From August 18 to 31 alone, 73 Russian conscripts contacted human rights activists.

Russia has recorded the first case of a conscript from the reserve being denied permission to leave the country due to a decision by the military registration and enlistment office. This was reported by the human rights project “Walk in the Forest”, writes The Moscow Times .

This is a 24-year-old resident of the Rostov region, who completed his military service in 2024 and was enlisted in the reserve after his discharge. In particular, on September 2, the man tried to fly abroad from Krasnodar, but during passport control he was detained for additional verification. As a result, he was handed an official notice of temporary restriction of the right to leave Russia.

As it turned out, the relevant decision was made by the military enlistment office, where the man was registered for military service.

According to media reports, the reason for the travel restriction was the situation with the summons. In November 2025, the man arrived at the military registration and enlistment office with a summons to clarify his military registration data. During this visit, a mobilization order was pasted on him. However, it later turned out that in the electronic register the corresponding summons had the status “Citizen did not appear”. On this basis, the military registration and enlistment office made a decision to restrict the right to travel.

Before the planned trip, the man did not see any notice in the register about a ban on leaving the country, the media reports. He only learned about the imposed restriction directly while passing through border control.

Human rights activists previously assumed that electronic summonses for citizens in the reserves should not automatically lead to restrictions on the right to travel abroad. Now, the first confirmed case has emerged where a reservist was actually not allowed to leave Russia based on a decision by the military registration and enlistment office.

At the same time, the “Walk Through the Forest” project emphasized that one such appeal is not enough to argue for the introduction of similar restrictions for all military conscripts from the reserve.

Russians complain about exit restrictions

The problems with crossing the border began to be widely discussed after the full launch of the electronic summons register in March. Since then, Russians have been reporting to human rights activists about cases where they were blocked from leaving Russia. According to the “Walk Through the Forest” project, from August 18 to 31 alone, 73 conscripts who were trying to leave Russia contacted it. Fifty of them managed to cross the border, while 23 were refused. In some cases, the ban on leaving appeared directly during border control.

Attempts to leave Russia through Belarus were not always successful. Of the 11 conscripts who contacted the human rights project after attempting to cross the Belarusian border, four were able to leave the country, while seven were unable to.

The tightening of travel restrictions comes amid rumors of a possible new mobilization in Russia after the September State Duma elections.

The possibility of new mobilization measures has not been ruled out by Western intelligence officials and some European officials who spoke to The Washington Post. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also spoke about such a scenario. One of the reasons for the potential new mobilization could be the significant losses of the Russian army in the war against Ukraine.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Russian troops have lost at least 1.4 million people in Ukraine, killed and seriously wounded, who are no longer able to return to combat.

(C)UNIAN 2026