Yevgeny Chavelyuk recalls receiving a phone call in October telling him to report for duty in Cherepovets, north of Moscow, where he was working at steelmaker Severstal. Within days he was transferred to a military base in Nizhny Novgorod, east of the capital, where he said training mainly consisted of standing for hours on the parade grounds and learning to make a bed. Soon after, he said, his unit was on its way to what they were told would be further training in the Belgorod region near Ukraine, but he said he knew he had already crossed the border when he got out of his transport vehicle for a cigarette break.

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