In another case, several police officers who worked at a Moscow airport are suspected of tipping off taxi drivers about servicemen returning from the front.<\/p>\n
The drivers would offer a reasonable fare, and then, after completing the ride, they would demand up to 15 times more.<\/p>\n
Those who resisted were threatened; some were allegedly drugged or intoxicated while the thieves used their bank cards.<\/p>\n
Investigators believe the gang took at least 1.5m roubles from returning soldiers.<\/p>\n
Sometimes salaries are stolen before the servicemen have even seen the money.<\/p>\n
In October 2024, police arrested three staff members of a recruitment centre in Vladimir region for stealing more than 11m roubles from soldiers.<\/p>\n
The suspects got access to their salary accounts by keeping for themselves the sim cards that had been issued to the new recruits and were tied to the accounts.<\/p>\n
In another case, a local official from Belgorod region is suspected of stealing more than a million roubles from new recruits by linking their bank accounts to his own phone number.<\/p>\n
Sometimes soldiers have been robbed by their own commanders.<\/p>\n
One serviceman told the BBC his unit was denied access to shops and ordered to hand over their bank cards and PIN numbers to a sergeant major.<\/p>\n
The officer allegedly ended up with 50 salary cards, many belonging to soldiers now listed as missing in action.<\/p>\n
According to the soldier we spoke to, he fled with the money . Some cards reportedly had up to 2m roubles on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In another case, several police officers who worked at a Moscow airport are suspected of tipping off taxi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-302599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114939483029677584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}