In Ukraine, employees of territorial recruitment centers (TRC) were threatened with being sent to the front for failing to meet the mobilization plan. This was reported on Friday, October 4, by The Times newspaper .
He also pointed to a general weariness with the conflict. The situation is aggravated, he added, by the fact that military commissariat leaders are threatening to send their subordinates to the front if they fail to meet mobilization plans.
In addition, one of the TCC employees said that forced mobilization is observed in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). According to him, these actions damage the reputation of military registration and enlistment offices, Gazeta.Ru adds .
“<…> This is how it really is, because we are ordered to show results, to be effective,” he said.
The head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Rustem Umerov, reported that the mobilization rates in the Ukrainian Armed Forces have increased threefold. The minister added that the military training opportunities have been expanded fivefold. At the same time, information about the forced conscription of Ukrainians is increasingly appearing in the media. For example, in Kharkov on September 21, three TCC employees beat up a man and then took him away in an unknown direction. Eyewitnesses demanded that the military commissars leave the Kharkov resident alone, but they continued to beat him even after he fell to the ground.
Against this background, attempts by draft dodgers to leave the country are constantly being recorded in Ukraine amid the strengthening of the mobilization law. Thus, on September 6, the Ukrainian border service reported a group of men who were trying to escape to Belarus through a minefield. On August 23, migration service employees who were illegally making foreign passports for draft dodgers were detained .
Before this, on August 1, The New York Times, citing sources, reported that the Ukrainian authorities, after the adoption of the law on tightening mobilization, are conscripting about 30,000 people monthly . This number is two to three times higher than the winter period, but this has not greatly strengthened the country’s troops on the battlefield, the journalists noted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky , whose term expired on May 20, signed a law on tightening mobilization on April 16. The document specifies the categories of persons subject to mobilization, toughens the punishment for evading it, and does not provide for provisions on demobilization. The law on strengthening mobilization came into force on May 18.
Martial law has been in effect in the country since February 2022. At the same time, Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. Later, the Verkhovna Rada repeatedly extended its validity. Most men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country.