Vasyl Krupych survived the eastern front, machine gun in hand, praying and crying through Russian onslaughts in the Donbas. But it was his own countrymen who nearly killed him.
Last December, while searching for draft dodgers, the veteran soldier was beaten with a crowbar after two men ignored demands to show documents and fled. He spent six weeks in hospital. “He broke my rib, I was lying there and couldn't breathe,” Krupych recalled. “What did we fight for, if soldiers can now get beaten?”
“Over 600 attacks on Ukraine recruitment officers as conscription violence escalates.”
Such attacks have become “regular” and “a major problem”, according to Ukraine’s military ombudswoman, as the country struggles to mobilise men in the fifth year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The National Police Service now reports more than 600 assaults on recruitment officers, warning the aggression has become “increasingly threatening”.
The first big alert came in April when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally. Then this month in Lviv, some 200 protesters surrounded officers attempting to detain a suspected draft dodger, smashing and overturning their car. The riot made headlines as President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned violence against serving soldiers.
His controversial decision to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – over a clash of character and vision with Ukraine’s commander-in-chief – means attempts to address the conscription crisis will stall. But the anger that just exploded in Lviv suggests the need is urgent.
The reasons range from plain fear of the front line – now everyone knows someone injured or killed – to reluctance to sign up for a war with no end in sight. The only surge of enthusiasm since the initial rush was in late 2023, when Ukraine launched a counter-offensive. That’s when the “brutal mobilisation” phase began, according to opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko. “These officers are hunting for people on the streets and sometimes using quite violent methods,” he said. “Violence leads to violence. It's a huge problem and it's going to get worse.”
Ukraine’s high command has been forced to use “busification” – a term for rounding up men on buses – to tackle a lack of manpower on the battlefield, according to Ivan Stupak, an adviser. Yet the assaults on recruiters show a society increasingly turning on its own defenders, raising the question of how much longer the conscription system can hold.
