Penza

On the 27th of June, the Titan-Barrikady plant in Volgograd was hit, reportedly by a barrage of Flamingo missiles.

Three days after that, the Penza missile plant, or rather the Penza plant, the JSC NIIFI Research Institute, which produces components for missile launchers, was hit.

And days after that, on the 3rd of July, the Belgorod Energy Factory, run or known as Energomash, which makes equipment for Russian power plants, power stations, was hit in Belgorod.

That's just north of Kharkiv province.

It's rare for anything interesting to be flying around in the middle of the day, but there is some activity today.

Deeper inside Russia over Saratov and Penza Oblast.

Several groups were also present over Bryansk and Rostov Oblast.

There's also separate activity near Krasnodar Krai.

Then, this morning, 22nd of September, the independent Russian outlet Mediazona published a file of case histories.

Men in Penza, Kirov and Petrozavodsk snatched off the streets.

No, that's not 2022, that is 2026, sent to the front within days.

Well, here is the argument of tonight's episode, and it may shock you, even after nearly five years of Russia's genocidal assault on Europe.

His last call home was on 23rd July, four days late.

His wife was told he was missing in action.

Alexander Stepanov, 33, in Penza, walking out of a shop in shorts and flip-flops in August.

In his mother's account of that day, strangers put handcuffs on him and bundled him into a car.

It was the slow, methodical way he was being stripped of the very possibility of return.

After six months, Sasha was deported even farther away to Penza in Russia to a facility with the ominous name New Shores.

For nearly two years in Penza, he was told the same thing again and again, "No one in Ukraine is waiting for you.

There is nowhere to return to.

Here you will have a new life." For me, this was not just another case.