Summary: Many Ukrainian men have either fled or evaded conscription through bribery, leading to a declining number of conscripts. Of those who remain, many come from impoverished settings. A lawyer in Kyiv said: "This is a war of the poor. ”
Text Observer.com Wang Shichun] The US media "New York Times" reported in a special report on December 15 that with the increase in ** and the stalemate on the battlefield, the Ukrainian authorities have stepped up "forced conscription": the Ukrainian authorities have taken men from the street and taken them to recruitment centers with intimidation and even force.
According to a Ukrainian lawyer who had been subjected to coercion, the conscripts confiscated (their) passports and deprived them of their jobs. In social media ** and local news reports, there are more and more Ukrainian soldiers pushing citizens into cars and forcibly detaining people in recruitment centers**.
At the same time, ** and evasion of conscription are ubiquitous on the territory of Ukraine, further sparking discontent. The lack of manpower has led the Ukrainian army to indiscriminately recruit people who are unfit to fight, and according to the New York Times, Ukrainian recruiters have tried to send at least one mentally disabled person for military training.
The head of Ukrainian intelligence, Budanov, said on the 15th that in the first six months of the conflict, all those who wanted to fight joined the Ukrainian army. Now that there are few people left who want to fight, and the newly drafted ones are "unable to fight", Ukraine faces a "motivation problem". The New York Times commented that this shows the serious challenges faced by the Ukrainian army in maintaining its strength in the midst of a terrible war.
Western Ukraine, a conscription poster Source: Social**.
Dmytro Yefimenko, 34, a shopkeeper who is of age for military service, thought he could be exempted from military service after breaking his right arm earlier this year. In June, when he was on his way to see a doctor near the small western town of Vizhnica, recruiters stopped him at a checkpoint.
Yefimenko said the man did not provide identification, "without any explanation, without documents, without any reason, an armed man got into my car and forced me to drive to the recruitment center." Yefimenko said he was rushed to a medical examination and detained in a recruitment center, after which he managed to escape at night.
There are no official statistics on cases of forced conscription, so it is not possible to verify the exact figures. Lawyers and activists in Ukraine say there are thousands of instances of people like Yefimenko being coerced to varying degrees across Ukraine. For this article, The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen lawyers, activists, soldiers, conscripts and their families, and reviewed text messages, military and medical documents to shed light on Ukraine's conscription chaos.
Images of conscription in upscale bars circulated on Ukrainian tikitok.
Forced draftees sometimes choose to prosecute, claiming they received false conscription notices and challenging unprofessional medical boards and forced mobilization. According to public records, in November alone, there were 226 court decisions related to conscription mobilization.
Ukrainian lawyers and others note that, unlike law enforcement officers, conscripts do not have the right to detain civilians, let alone force them into the army. Men who have been notified of conscription should report to the enlistment office. But today's radical methods (of conscription**) go far beyond the purview of recruiters and are in some cases illegal.
To further complicate matters, Ukraine has been under martial law since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February last year; Some lawyers believe that this sets the stage for subjective interpretation and abuse of conscription laws.
A public organization near the city of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine provides legal services to men in conscription cases, said the head of the organization, lawyer Tetiana Fevchak"The military feels they can get away with it," she said, adding that she believes some tactics violate Ukrainian law.
Text messages complaining about conscription intimidation provide a window into the full picture. The New York Times saw a message sent to a lawyer in Kiev that read: "My husband got off the night shift in the morning when someone from the enlistment center blocked his way, he was forcibly taken through the medical board, and it was like this, people in camouflage uniforms came to the medical board, snatched the ** of these people, and took them to the enlistment office and forced them to sign something. ”
The increasingly aggressive conscription strategy is a reminder that military manpower is Ukraine's most important and most limited resource. It also illustrates the brutal impact of nearly 22 months of bloody fighting on the Ukrainian population. When the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out, Kyiv prevented men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country and began several waves of army mobilization. In May of this year, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine voted to lower the age of conscription from 27 to 25 years old.
Faced with the dilemma of conscription, Ukraine** also admits that there are fewer and fewer voluntary conscripts.
Lawyer Fivchak said complaints about forced call-ups had "increased substantially." At the beginning of the war, she said, there was no shortage of volunteer fighters. But in recent months, she has sometimes received 30 to 40 ** a day, saying men are forced to serve. Other lawyers also said there had been a marked increase in complaints.
As for the reasons for Ukraine's increased forced conscription, lawyers say it can be traced back to several factors: legal ambiguity, brutal fighting, an increase in numbers, and corruption.
Although Ukraine closely guards its numbers, the United States estimated in August that the number was well over 150,000, including 70,000 deaths. Even if the US side believes that Russia has a higher number of people, it also acknowledges that Russia can mobilize about three times as many people as Ukraine.
Some argue that the high number is part of the reason for the radical conscription strategy, but others point to another reason: many Ukrainian men either run away or evade conscription through bribery, resulting in a dwindling number of conscripts, while many of those who remain, many come from impoverished circumstances.
This is a war for the poor," said a lawyer in Kiev, who asked for anonymity so as not to publicly criticize the military.
In the face of popular dissatisfaction, Ukrainian Zelensky recently said that he would change the conscription system, but he did not provide specific details. In August of this year, Zelensky fired 24 regional recruiters because of a bribery scandal**.
But lawyers and activists interviewed argued that this did not solve the problem, as most of the ** under those regional recruiters remained in office. "Nothing has changed - on the contrary, because their task is to send a certain number of people to the front, and they have captured everyone who can be caught," said lawyer Fevchak. ”
Andrei Semaka is now a soldier and worked in the Vizhnica recruitment center at the beginning of the war. About a quarter of those draftees, he said, would bribe his superiors to offer about $1,000 to avoid being drafted into the military. Since then, this ** has only gone up, not down. "It's a buyout of death — you pay for it, and no one touches you anymore," he said. ”
He said a doctor at a nearby hospital would falsify medical board documents after receiving a letter from a recruiting center. The head of the enlistment who has received the money will call the doctor and say, "Write that he is not suitable (to enlist) and, on the other hand, write that he is healthy." "He has been pulled to the front line since June this year.
The local ** said in August that it had opened more than 100 cases involving corruption in military recruitment. But residents of the area have recently said that men can buy ways not to serve, and this is public.
On the one hand, there is the problem of widespread corruption, and on the other hand, Ukraine ** conscripts into the army disabled people who are not suitable for joining the army.
One of Fivchak's clients, 36-year-old Hrihori Harasim, suffers from mental disability and is taking medication for depression. Military documents reviewed by The New York Times show that he was allowed to serve in the military, albeit with limited capacity, and was subsequently summoned for enlistment.
Fivchak prevented him from being drafted into the army by confronting the recruiters and accusing them of lawlessness. "They put one officially diagnosed from a young age'Mental disability'of people gathered to the army. In a brief interview with The New York Times, Mr. Harasim said nothing about his experience. When Fevchak reminded him to avoid conscription ** and call her if anything happens, he started sobbing.
And for communities that have never been occupied by Russian forces, the death of forced conscription and conscription has left a deep impact on these communities.
Bolkhov, who was conscripted into the army last winter, was killed in fighting in southern Ukraine in July, sending chills through the town and heightening the fear of being taken from the streets and killed in battle.
Borkhov's widow said that Porkhov had been trying to evade a nearby recruiter, but that he was eventually taken away while he was working"They didn't let him go for a long time, and they didn't let him go until the evening. The recruiter didn't want to let him go at all."
According to Ukraine's **15**, the head of Ukrainian intelligence, Budanov, said on the same day that in the first six months of the conflict, all those who wanted to fight joined the Ukrainian army. Now there are very few people left who want to fight, and the newly drafted ones are "unable to fight".
"At the moment there are more than 1 million servicemen in the Armed Forces of Ukraine," Budanov said. No recruitment campaign can meet such needs, only mobilization. But many people don't feel like it's their own 'war'. This is a very deep-rooted problem, money cannot solve it, and in the context of mobilization, the question of motivation arises. ”
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer.com, and it is not allowed to be unauthorized and shall not be allowed.