Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
In the villages of Ivanovo Oblast, men have been vanishing from their beds and streets for more than a year.
A serving district police chief in Russia’s Ivanovo Oblast, a mostly rural region northeast of Moscow, is now in pre-trial detention over a scheme that investigators say funneled abducted men into military contracts with the Defense Ministry.
Yury Shibaev, head of the Komsomolsky District police department, was remanded to custody until January 2, 2027 by a court on November 12, Mediazona reported.
He is charged with kidnapping as part of an organized group and abuse of official authority, and has denied the charges and declined to testify.
Investigators have identified 14 co-conspirators alongside Shibaev, and at least seven men have been recognized as victims. Co-conspirators face additional charges of fraud and unauthorized access to computer information.
How similar abductions operated
Russian authorities have not yet publicly disclosed the specific details of Shibaev’s alleged role or methods.
However, a March 2025 investigation by the independent outlet Verstka documented how a virtually identical abduction ring operated in the region.
According to Verstka’s reporting, victims were lured with offers of paid repair work or odd jobs, or taken by force from their homes. They were then held in remote locations, beaten and plied with alcohol, and pressured to sign military contracts.
Men who disappeared from villages in Ivanovo Oblast were later traced to military unit 29760 in Luga, in Leningrad Oblast. “They came, took a man from his bed, led him outside, did not even let him get dressed,” one relative told Verstka.
A pattern first documented in 2025
Verstka’s reporting identified at least six men who had gone missing from Ivanovo villages—though authorities have not confirmed whether Shibaev’s group was behind those specific cases.
The targets fit a consistent profile: unemployed men, often with heavy drinking problems, unstable housing, and no steady work.
Similar criminal rings have surfaced elsewhere in Russia. The Moscow Times reported that authorities have uncovered comparable schemes in the Vologda and Sverdlovsk regions, where gangs forced men to sign military contracts and exploited payments and benefits intended for recruits.
