Earlier this year, a person who had filed a complaint with the Russian government’s human rights ombudsman went online to check its status.
The person accidentally typed the wrong complaint number and, instead of receiving an error message, was shown an entirely different person’s complaint, according to Maxim Kurnikov, a Russian journalist in Berlin.
The mistyped number, he said, led to a stunning revelation: Thousands of complaints, including by Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, had been made publicly available on the ombudsman’s website.
The information made public was extraordinarily sensitive, including medical records, passport details and contact information. It was also of great public interest — in particular, its accounts of abuse and coercion within the Russian military.
The person who discovered the apparent oversight alerted Mr. Kurnikov, according to the journalist’s account. Mr. Kurnikov, who fled Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and now runs the news outlet Echo from Berlin, worked with his team to compile the publicly accessible complaints.
The earliest visible complaints were dated April 2025, just after the ombudsman, Tatyana N. Moskalkova, announced that her office had updated its I.T. systems. The complaints ceased being available in September, when the office apparently realized that it was inadvertently posting complaints openly online. In total, Mr. Kurnikov and his team gathered more than 9,000 complaints from the five-month period. It is unknown how many others may have viewed the database during the time it was public.
Mr. Kurnikov published several articles about the allegations in the complaints. He also shared the entire set of documents with The New York Times.
A team of Times journalists spent about two months independently analyzing and categorizing the complaints, confirming their authenticity and following up with many of the complainants.
The files included contact information, medical and legal records, and images of passports and other personal documents. In hundreds of cases examined by The Times, email addresses, phone numbers and other personal data matched information that could be found on social media and elsewhere online.
The Times took steps to maintain the confidentiality of personal information and keep that information secure.
The Times used computer software to narrow down the complaints to more than 6,000 that appeared related to the war in Ukraine. About half of those complaints seemed to be missing-person inquiries — loved ones searching for information about lost soldiers.
The Times focused on the remaining 3,000, reading and categorizing each of them. More than 1,500 included allegations of war-related wrongdoing. While most of the complaints were submitted by soldiers’ families, more than 300, The Times found, were filed by Russian soldiers themselves.
The team then contacted more than 240 of the complainants and, in some cases, multiple people mentioned in the same complaint. The Times focused on reaching out to people who had made the most detailed allegations in several key categories that the team identified, such as extrajudicial punishment and cases in which men unfit for service were forced to fight.
The team sought, first, to ascertain that the complaints had in fact been filed. Second, The Times worked to learn as much as possible about the individual allegations of abuse.
While most of those contacted did not respond or refused to talk, 75 confirmed that they had filed a petition. Dozens gave additional details. Some had already gone public with parts of their story, including with videos posted to social media.
Many of the complaints included corroborating evidence of abuses: videos, photographs, voice memos and text messages from the front, as well as medical reports, court files and internal military documents.
In some cases, people reached by The Times shared further evidence. In others, The Times was unable to corroborate the claims within the filings.
The ombudsman who received the complaints, Ms. Moskalkova, reports to President Vladimir V. Putin and is empowered to inquire about abuses or miscarriages of justice by parts of the Russian government, including the military. Russians often turn to the office as a place of last resort. The office has also been coordinating prisoner exchanges throughout the war.
Ms. Moskalkova’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Mr. Kurnikov said the complaints undercut the notion, propagated by the Kremlin, that Russian society was coping easily with the war and in a sense did not even feel its effects.
“The appeals we saw immediately overturned my understanding, including my understanding of what war means for Russians,” he said. “How unhappy our society is, how many people have lost their brothers, fathers, husbands, how much they suffer from this, and how much they face indifference from the state and government officials in their attempts to find or bring back their relatives.”
Anton Troianovski writes about American foreign policy and national security for The Times from Washington. He was previously a foreign correspondent based in Moscow and Berlin.
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