Women Recruited From Russian Prisons Allege Sexual Abuse by Commanders
An investigation describes women leaving prison for military contracts, then facing coercion inside the chain of command. Medic Lyudmila Poltarakova says a regimental commander raped her and that she later reported him to a military prosecutor.
Women recruited from Russian prisons to serve in the war against Ukraine say military commanders exploited their unusually dependent status to demand sex and, in one case, commit rape, according to an investigation by the Russian outlet Verstka.
The investigation describes a recruitment stream in which incarcerated women were offered one-year military contracts, monthly pay starting at 220,000 rubles, compensation for injuries and release from the remainder of their sentences. Several hundred women were sent to the war after training, Verstka reported, largely as military medics.
For the recruits, the bargain meant exchanging prison custody for military discipline. Their safety, assignment and future freedom depended on commanders, while the prospect of being sent closer to the front created another source of pressure. One woman told Verstka that a commander offered to keep recruits at a hospital rather than send them forward if they visited him at night. Some women agreed. The source later learned, she said, that the man did not actually control their assignments.
The most detailed account comes from Lyudmila Poltarakova, a medic who says regimental commander Sergey Zhitkov initially summoned her to give massages and later became aggressive. Poltarakova told Verstka that Zhitkov raped her in February 2025 and that the sexual violence continued in March. Those are Poltarakova’s allegations; no publicly available court ruling establishes Zhitkov’s guilt.
Poltarakova also said she was later expected to provide sexual services to another high-ranking serviceman. After she protested, she was transferred to a different medical unit. Before the transfer, she says, she was forced to sign a statement saying Zhitkov had not abused her. She told the outlet she signed because she feared what would happen to her military service if she refused.
In June 2026, according to Verstka, Poltarakova formally reported the alleged rape to a military prosecutor. Soon afterward she began saying that commanders were trying to send her to the front and that she feared the assignment could be used to get rid of her.
Separate reporting supports important parts of her military history. A June 30 publication identified Poltarakova as a contract servicemember in the 370th Separate Medical Battalion and published an appeal in which she said more than 80 women prisoners had signed Defense Ministry contracts. She described women serving in frontline evacuation teams and pulling wounded and dead soldiers from combat areas. On July 1, the same outlet reported another appeal in which Poltarakova said she had received an urgent order to go to the front and feared for her life.
Verstka later reported that Poltarakova was alive and at the front. It also said a criminal case had been opened against her for refusing an order to go on a combat mission, while no criminal case had been opened over her rape complaint. Publicly available court or prosecution records independently establishing the status of those two proceedings were not found, so those legal details remain attributed to the investigation.
The recruitment of female prisoners did not begin in 2024 in the broader sense. Current Time reported in March 2023 that Russian military recruiters were already taking women from penal colonies. RFE/RL later interviewed a woman who said she signed up from a prison in the summer of 2023 and worked as a nurse in the Donetsk region. She also described fending off soldiers’ unwanted advances and said the real terms of service differed from what recruiters had promised.
That history makes the new allegations more than a single dispute between one medic and one commander. The recruitment system placed women with criminal sentences inside another hierarchy that controlled their location, safety and hoped-for release. Poltarakova’s complaint will now test whether that system provides any meaningful protection when the person accused of abuse is inside the same chain of command.
