Russian IT specialist killed in Ukraine despite being entitled to draft deferment, 21 October 2022

Timur Izmailov, a former IT specialist for Raiffeisen Bank who was conscripted despite the Russian authorities promising draft deferments for bank IT employees, has been killed by mortar fire in Ukraine, his lawyer, Konstantin Yerokhin, reported...

Izmailov, who worked with Russia’s Mir payment system, was 33 years old when he died. He was conscripted on September 23, sent into combat on October 7, and killed on October 13.

“We filed more than seven complaints. We filed a lawsuit. We submitted requests to all of the hotlines. Media reports, etc. And this is the outcome,” Yerokhin wrote on Telegram.

According to Yerokhin, as an IT worker at a systemically important bank, Ismailov was entitled to a draft deferment. On September 23, the Russian Defense Ministry declared that employees in the IT, communications, media, and banking sectors would not be subject to mobilization. Yerokhin claims that the Russian Central Bank sent a list of people who should receive deferments to the military’s General Staff on September 28, but that the military commissariat still hasn’t received it. The Defense Ministry and the Russian military prosecutor’s office told Yerokhin that they don’t have any information about Yerokhin...