Russia's oil pipeline monopoly Transneft sent hundreds of its employees to fight in Ukraine last summer as the Kremlin struggled to recruit soldiers for its war, according to an investigation by the independent news website IStories. Journalists said that, in the months before President Vladimir Putin announced a "partial” mobilization in September 2022, Transneft was sending and equipping its employees from across Russia's regions to join a volunteer military battalion called BARS-20. Among them was Alexei Saispaev, a Transneft security guard from the Tomsk region who joined the volunteer battalion after the company “announced that they were looking for people,” one of his relatives told the outlet.