First Russian citizen prevented from leaving country after receiving digital conscription notice

A Russian man has described not being allowed to board a plane from Moscow to Turkey due to him having received a digital draft notice, Russian Telegram channel Border Control reported on Friday.

Border Control posted an anonymous message from the 28-year-old man, who did not disclose his identity but provided a redacted copy of the document he was issued by border guards after being denied permission to board his flight. 

The man, who said he had been planning his holiday in Turkey since May, said that he had received a conscription notice digitally on Monday, requiring him to attend his local draft office on 22 October for an examination by a military medical commission. The man said that he had decided to go ahead with his holiday, despite having checked the official draft notice website for his name and finding it there, meaning he was not permitted to leave Russia.

The man said that he was stopped at passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on Thursday, where immigration officers took him aside for a “conversation” during which they informed him that he was banned from leaving the country “and that there was nothing they could do.” The immigration officers also said that the ban was the first of its kind they had dealt with, the man added.

The authenticity of the document has not yet been verified, Alexey Tabalov, founder of NGO Conscript School, which campaigns for an all-professional Russian military, told Novaya Europe, adding that his organisation had not yet received any similiar reports from other men unable to leave the country. 

However, Tabalov said that seeing more cases of individuals being prevented from leaving Russia due to digital conscription notices was inevitable, as new rules restricting freedom of movement for anybody called up to serve in the Russian military come into force.