Struggle to recruit soldiers in Ukraine turns violent

Vasyl Krupych knows what it means to fight for Ukraine.

It describes horrific scenes from battles in the eastern Donbas region, where the machine gunner somehow survived an attack by Russian troops, sometimes by praying, sometimes by crying.

But last December, Krupych, who was serving in the rear at the time, was attacked by his own compatriots while searching for draft dodgers.

He said the two men ignored his requests to show their documents and ran away. When his patrol followed him, Krupych was badly beaten with a crowbar. He spent six weeks in the hospital.

“He broke my rib, I was laying there and couldn’t breathe,” the veteran actor recalled in a recent interview.

“What did we fight for if soldiers can now be beaten?”

increase in violence

Ukraine’s military ombudsman said such attacks were now “regular” and a “major problem” as the country struggled to mobilize men to fight in the fifth and grueling year of Russia’s all-out invasion.

This isn’t a topic that people who are wary of feeding Russian propaganda care to discuss much here.

But the National Police Agency’s latest report recorded more than 600 attacks on recruiters to date and warned that aggression was becoming “increasingly threatening”.

The first major warning came in April, when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally. Then this month in Lviv, about 200 protesters surrounded police officers trying to detain a suspected draft dodger and smashed and overturned their car.

The uprising made headlines when President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned violence against serving soldiers.

The controversial decision has since Will dismiss Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov It means that attempts to find a solution to the conscription crisis – due to a clash of character and vision with Ukraine’s commander-in-chief – will stall.

But the anger that has just erupted in Lviv shows that the need is urgent.

‘Operationalization’

The reasons seem to range from fear of the front line (everyone knows someone who has been injured or killed now) to reluctance to sign up for a war with no end in sight.

The only wave of excitement since the initial assault on the front came in late 2023, when Ukraine launched a counteroffensive to retake territory in the southeast.

It didn’t take long.

That’s when the phase of “brutal mobilization” began, according to opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko.

He blames this for the reactions.

“These police officers hunt people on the streets and sometimes resort to quite violent methods,” the MP says.

“Violence begets violence. This is a huge problem and it’s going to get worse.”

Military analyst Ivan Stupak agrees.

“We began to experience a lack of manpower and constant losses on the battlefield,” he recalls. “Ukraine’s high command had to compensate for these losses, so they started busing.”

That’s the Ukrainian term for the mobile patrols that pack men into buses and send them into service.

“When they need 5,000 extra men they start taking them over and if they refuse it turns into fighting in the street.”

The professor’s story

So for every story of a soldier being attacked, there are also incidents of violence perpetrated by recruiters themselves.

The Commissioner for Human Rights of Ukraine recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year; This is twice the figure in 2024. These include allegations of abuse and illegal detention, as well as poor conditions in recruitment centres.

Kyrylo Ogdansky still gets upset when talking about what happened to him in Dnipro last November.

A man in civilian clothes approached the university professor, who was exempt from military service, on the street to check his call status.

There are rules regarding such patrols, including the presence of police officers, so Ogdansky objected.

He was then attacked.

“One of them knocked the phone out of my hand and two of them pushed me into the bus from behind. When I asked what happened, one of them started hitting my head. He hit my nose several times,” Ogdansky said.

He remembers the threat to send him straight to the front line. “He said, ‘I can call the commander and you can go to Pokrovsk.'”

Instead, the professor spent two weeks in hospital with a suspected neck injury and large purple-black bruises under his eyes.

He made official complaints but was hesitant to speak publicly because he was aware that such things looked bad for Ukraine in the midst of war.

Ogdansky explains his decision as follows: “Russian propaganda uses such things very actively. But there is such a problem.”

“If everyone is silent, why stop? I understand the issue of conscription, but no official has the right to act like this.”

Vasyl’s story

It is clear that Vasyl Krupych experienced horror in the war.

He initially volunteered and survived some of the most brutal battles.

Krupych is proud of his service – the tattoo on his neck says “Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine” – but he suffers from nightmares.

He was seriously injured when an FPV drone crashed into his vehicle, but he managed to drag a friend to safety. He saw two other people burn to death.

Now, when we discuss the increasing number of attacks against soldiers, his words are painful.

This is not just about his own suffering: this case is still pending in the courts. This is also the gap between what he endured and those who did everything possible to avoid the same thing.

“We are doing our duty. We fought, we defended our people, and now they are attacking us.”

I wonder what he thinks might motivate people to serve instead of pushing them, and he talks about increasing wages.

But then he shrugs.

“It can’t be done differently, it can’t be changed. Our children need to be changed. But no one volunteers,” he says.

“Everyone is afraid of dying.”

What should we do?

During his six-month tenure as defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov began implementing reforms to deal with the growing crisis.

It started with moves aimed at making military service more attractive: fixed-term contracts for new recruits, more options to defer service and better salaries, especially for the riskiest roles.

But this was still work in its infancy, and overhauling compulsory military service was still on the to-do list when he was dismissed.

The proposals include turning enlisted patrols over to police, who are less personally invested in the mission. Proper training and psychological screening for officers is also mentioned.

Ukraine openly admits that it has a new problem.

But now there is only one defense minister and there is still no solution.