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Videos flood the web of Ukrainian men kidnapped off the streets as Zelensky’s war machine ramps up mobilization

Ukraine is unable to hide the severity of its situation anymore as more and more videos surface of mobilization agents using brutal tactics to seize more conscripts

By Remix News Staff
7 Min Read

Videos of the Ukrainian military’s aggressive efforts to draft more and more men – in many cases directly off the streets – into its military have been circulating online for some time. In recent weeks, however, the scenes witnessed in such videos have come to be particularly shocking, suggesting an increasingly desperate situation.

The number of casualties suffered by Russia and Ukraine in their current conflict remains a hotly-debated subject, given that there is no way to verify the official statistics released by either side. Even the most conservative estimates place the number of dead and wounded Ukrainians in the hundreds of thousands, however.

According to the Hungarian news site Magyar Nemzet, some Ukrainian men have locked themselves in their homes for years in order to avoid being spotted by agents of the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCR), the institution responsible for military mobilization.

Ukraine has been under martial law since February 2022, and all of its main roads are now dotted with checkpoints at which the military’s mobilization agents look for conscripts. If a vehicle is carrying many passengers, such as a bus, the vehicle is held and traffic is blocked until all aboard have been checked.

Magyar Nemzet reports that, once a potential conscript has been brought to a recruitment center, he is first offered the opportunity to get out of military service by paying a bribe. If he can’t, the front lines await him.

Recognizing the danger that Ukraine might eventually run out of manpower to continue throwing at the much larger Russian army, the Biden administration unsuccessfully lobbied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to lower his country’s draft age from 25 to 18 during its final months in office. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been pressuring Zelensky to simply call a ceasefire to end the slaughter between both sides – pressure that the Ukrainian regime has so far been resisting, as was quite theatrically demonstrated during Zelensky’s combative visit to the White House last week.

It is becoming more and more difficult for Ukraine to hide their increasingly untenable situation, however. Videos capturing the mobilization agents’ efforts in Ukraine that have been posted in recent weeks show situations that look more like kidnapping than recruiting efforts.  

One such video was made in Volyn County, in an area of Ukraine that is only a few kilometers from the Polish border. A man who can be seen walking his dog is suddenly brutally kidnapped and dragged into a waiting vehicle, kicking and screaming.

In another video, an elderly man is literally pulled out of his car for no apparent reason by agents wearing masks who want to check his documents and is then thrown to the ground. The man asks the agents, “Where are the world’s defenders of human rights?”

A popular place for the military’s manhunters is schools, as they can check the identities of family members as they are coming to pick up their children. The following video was taken at a school in Lviv.

One Ukrainian man was dragged away by “recruiters” from a government office in Kamenskoye after going there to re-register his car. His wife can be heard screaming in shock.

A surveillance camera in Uzhhorod, in southwestern Ukraine recorded a man on a bicycle being chased by conscription agents.

In Kharkiv, another cyclist was literally knocked off of a moving bicycle by a recruitment agent.

Some Ukrainians go to extraordinary lengths to avoid forced conscription. In one video, a man in Lviv fled while being questioned on the street by mobilization agents and ran into moving traffic, where he was hit by an oncoming car.

The world is beginning to take notice of these horrible scenes, however. Donald Trump Jr., the American president’s son, has taken to X to bring attention to the issue of the questionable tactics being used by Ukraine’s recruitment agents. He showcased a thread featuring numerous videos of young men brazenly grabbed off the streets and forced into the Ukrainian army.

Even the Ukrainian media have acknowledged that the military’s recruiters have been facing an increasing number of violent altercations with potential conscripts in recent weeks. In one particularly extreme incident, the Kyiv Independent, which has received funds from both USAID and the Canadian government, reported that one recruitment officer was shot and killed last month by a man who was trying to prevent a friend from being conscripted.

Such tragic scenes will unfortunately continue to be commonplace across Ukraine until the fighting is brought to an end.

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