Russia is recruiting women out of prisons to serve as front-line medics. A new investigation documents rape by commanders and criminal cases against the women who report it.

Verstka, an independent Russian outlet, reports that Russia's Defense Ministry has been recruiting women from penal colonies since 2024 into an experimental program called "Choice," assigning them as front-line combat medics. One woman profiled in the investigation, Lyudmila Poltarakova, a former national-level strength-sports competitor serving a fifteen-year drug sentence, says a regiment commander raped her repeatedly beginning in February twenty twenty-five and that fellow soldiers witnessed the assaults. According to Verstka, after she filed a formal rape complaint, no case was opened against the commander, who was instead promoted — while Poltarakova now faces a criminal case for refusing a combat-mission order. A second woman from the same program, Darya Chirukhina, also reported a sexual threat and lost contact around the same time, Verstka says.

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