Alcoholics Are Being Sent To The Russian Army En Masse
- 21.04.2026, 9:15
They sign contracts through "black recruiters".
The Ministry of Defense has proposed simplifying the procedure for testing servicemen for alcohol consumption after reports of mass recruitment of people with alcohol addiction. The ministry has drafted amendments to the law "On the Status of Military Personnel," which allow for such an examination to be conducted on site, for example, in a unit. The government commission for legislative activity approved the initiative on April 20, sources in the Cabinet of Ministers told "Izvestia".
According to the current procedure, if a soldier or officer is suspected of being intoxicated, he should be sent for medical examination to a drug dispensary, regional, regional or district hospital. However, as the Defense Ministry noted, it is sometimes difficult to quickly and safely transport a serviceman to the checkup, and the military police units involved in escorting the serviceman are distracted from their work for a long time. Instead, the agency proposes that military personnel be tested for alcohol on the spot using special means. Responsible for such tests will be authorized officials, the list of which will be prescribed in the general military regulations. Grounds for the test will be the presence of the smell of alcohol, unsteady posture, speech disorders, reddening of the face, inadequate behavior. The examination will be conducted in the presence of two understandable or with the use of video recording.
The performance of military service duties in a state of intoxication, as well as the refusal to undergo medical examination are gross disciplinary offenses, recalled the chairman of the board of the Association of Lawyers Vladimir Gruzdev. According to him, if a serviceman refuses to be checked on the spot, he will be obligatorily sent to a medical institution for examination. The same procedure will be followed if the person does not agree with the results of the on-the-spot check or if the breathalyzer shows a negative result and the inspectors have sufficient grounds to believe that the serviceman is still drunk.
The amendments are necessary in the conditions of the war against Ukraine, since the requirement to take the serviceman to a medical facility is often impossible to fulfill, military expert Viktor Litovkin said. "It is fundamentally important for a commander to be able to promptly assess the condition of a subordinate. In case of a positive result of the express test, the serviceman should be immediately suspended from performing combat tasks or working with weapons," the expert said.
Earlier, Z-propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova reported on the recruitment of people with alcohol addiction into the Russian army. According to her, they sign contracts through "black recruiters." Such intermediaries send people with addictions and serious illnesses, including HIV and hepatitis, sometimes in a state of alcohol intoxication, to the front, after which they appropriate the payments due to them, Kashevarova explained. She also connected what is happening with the established plans for the recruitment of contract workers in the regions, which are carried out at the expense of "all in a row".
At the same time, state statistics recorded a sharp increase in alcohol sales in the occupied regions of Ukraine. Thus, in January-February 2026, "DNR", "LNR", Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions accounted for about 2.7% of all sales of vodka on the Russian market (299.78 thousand decaliters), 3.6% - cognac (73.38 thousand dal) and 1.26% - liqueur products (41.14 thousand dal).