Passers-by, mostly young men, were filmed climbing on top of a draft officer’s car, battering it, then overturning it. They stripped officers of their uniforms during the brawl, and chanted: “Shame!”
Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen Kyrylo Budanov, the head of his office and one of Ukraine’s most respected military leaders, condemned the rioters’ actions.
Gen Budanov said: “If today you tear the clothes off and beat a serviceman from your own army, consider who will defend you tomorrow from the enemy.”
Yet, as the four-year conflict with Russia has ground on, such clashes have become increasingly frequent. Videos of altercations between military-age men and officers from Ukraine’s reviled territorial recruitment centres have become a fixture of social media. Their tactics have become known as “busification”, after the minibuses used to take away recruits who have been forcibly conscripted.
‘I simply don’t want to die’
For Roman and other men living in hiding, they are a spectre of absolute fear. He said: “Think for a second about what my life looks like. I don’t have a job. I can’t go abroad. I can’t see my friends.”
Still, he insists, his restricted existence does not compare to the horrors of serving on the front line: “I simply don’t want to die. It’s the most basic human instinct.”
It is a sentiment shared by an estimated two million draft dodgers across Ukraine, as well as hundreds of thousands of soldiers listed as “absent without leave” after fleeing the front line.
Heavy-handed tactics have become the norm during Ukraine’s struggle to sustain its fighting force, making draft officers targets of public anger.
Three are known to have been killed, and in April the national police said there had been 611 attacks since the start of the war. The number of violent incidents has climbed year on year, from five in 2022 to almost 120 in the first four months of this year.