Former military commissar of Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region, Vladimir Pichugin, was sentenced in May to 10 years in a strict regime colony and fined 7 million rubles on bribery charges. He was detained by FSB and military counterintelligence officers at the end of June 2023 with a bag full of money.
At the start of mobilization, in the fall of 2022, Pichugin helped conscripts avoid the front, as the investigation claimed, "while extorting money from some." According to the channel "Epaulettes and Ties," the Ozersk military commissariat (one of the three closed administrative-territorial formations of Rosatom in the Chelyabinsk region) became the only one in the region that did not fulfill the mobilization plan.
After the verdict, former lieutenant colonel Pichugin signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense and went to fight in Ukraine as a private.
In September, employees of the Arkhangelsk university were detained on charges of illegal admission to graduate school to save students from mobilization, wrote the publication "7×7"*. According to the investigation, in 2022, after the end of the admission campaign, they enrolled several people in the SAFU graduate school without entrance exams. "The purpose of the scheme, which was implemented in 2022, was to provide a deferment from conscription for military service under partial mobilization," the university's social media commented on the criminal case. At the same time, the investigation does not disclose the motives of the university staff.
* Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent."