Ukrainian men are reporting incidents of wrongful draft notices, unprofessional medical commissions and coercive mobilization tactics.

With Ukraine’s military facing mounting deaths and a stalemate on the battlefield, army recruiters have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to replenish the ranks, in some cases pulling men off the streets and whisking them to recruiting centers using intimidation and even physical force.

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff — December 2023

Thomas Gibbons-Neff and other members of The New York Times reported from towns and cities across Ukraine.

Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics. Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media and in local news reports.

The harsh tactics are being aimed not just at draft dodgers but at men who would ordinarily be exempt from service — a sign of the steep challenges Ukraine’s military faces maintaining troop levels in a war with high casualties, and against a much larger enemy.

Lawyers and activists say the aggressive methods go well beyond the scope of recruiters’ authority and in some cases are illegal. They point out that recruiters, unlike law enforcement officers, are not empowered to detain civilians, let alone force them into conscription. Men who receive draft notices are supposed to report to recruitment offices.

The unconventional tactics have led to a number of court cases this fall as men challenge what they claim are wrongful draft notices, unprofessional medical commissions and forced mobilization; in November alone, there were 226 court decisions related to mobilization, according to publicly available records.

Complicating the issue is the fact that Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia invaded in February 2022; some lawyers contend that this has laid the ground for a subjective interpretation — and abuse — of conscription laws.

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Residents and city workers in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, observing a moment of silence to honor those killed in the war.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

“The military feel their impunity,” said Tetiana Fefchak, a lawyer who is the head of a public organization that represents men in conscription cases near the city of Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine. She believes that some of the tactics violated Ukrainian law, she said.

Whatever the resolution of the court challenges, the increasingly aggressive recruiting tactics are a reminder that military manpower is Ukraine’s most vital and limited resource. They are also a measure of the brutalizing effect on the citizenry of nearly 22 months of bloody combat.

After Russia invaded, Ukrainians rushed to enlist and defend their homeland. Now, the government acknowledges, many men are trying to avoid the fight.

Asked about accusations of forced conscription, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement: “Changes to the legislation relating to mobilization and demobilization processes are currently being developed in the Verkhovna Rada,” referring to Ukraine’s Parliament. If they are adopted, the statement went on to say, the ministry “will analyze the approved norms.”

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the Kyiv government prevented men age 18 to 60 from leaving the country and began several waves of troop mobilizations. And in May, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to reduce the conscription age to 25.

Dmytro Yefimenko, 34, a shop owner, is of prime draft age, but he broke his right arm earlier this year and thought he was exempt from service. Then in June, as he was heading to a doctor’s appointment near the small western city of Vyzhnytsia, the police stopped him at a checkpoint.

“Without any explanation, without documents, without reasons, an armed man got into my car and forced me to drive to the military recruiting center,” Mr. Yefimenko said. He said the man did not provide identification.

Mr. Yefimenko said he was given a hasty medical exam and detained at the recruiting center. He managed to escape overnight, and since then he has undergone exams to ensure that he is still medically exempt.

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Mr. Yefimenko with a military document.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

There is no official accounting of forced conscription cases, making exact figures impossible to verify. Lawyers and activists say there are thousands of examples like Mr. Yefimenko’s across Ukraine involving varying degrees of coercion. The New York Times spoke to more than two dozen lawyers, activists, soldiers, conscripts and family members of conscripts, and also reviewed text messages and military and medical documents, for this article.

Text messages complaining about intimidating tactics provide a window into the problem.

“My husband was leaving the night shift in the morning, the recruiting center team blocked his way and he was taken by force to go through the medical commission,” read one message to a Kyiv-based lawyer, viewed by The Times. Another message read: “The situation is such that men in camouflage uniforms came to the institution, took the phones from the guys and took them to the recruiting office, forcing them to sign something.”

These kinds of experiences have increased “massively in the last six months,” said Ms. Fefchak, the lawyer. 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 calls a day about men being forced into service. Other lawyers told of a notable increase in complaints.

The practice of forced conscription can be traced to several issues, activists and lawyers say: vague laws; brutal fighting, including high casualty numbers; and corruption.

Though Ukraine closely guards its casualty figures, U.S. officials estimate them to be well over 150,000. Russian casualty numbers are estimated to be higher, but the military draws from a population roughly three times the size of Ukraine’s.

While some believe that high casualty numbers are partially to blame for aggressive conscription tactics, others point to a different reason: many Ukrainian men have either fled or bribed their way out of the draft, leaving a shrinking pool of conscripts, some of whom are supposed to be exempt from mobilization.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff (https://www.nytimes.com/by/thomas-gibbons-neff)