Ukraine keeps snatching men off the streets to send them to the front

The abduction of men in Ukraine: the forced mobilization nobody wants to see

A video captured on a busy street in a Ukrainian city shows a burly man being forcibly shoved into a van by several uniformed men. This is not street crime: it is compulsory military conscription in the middle of a war. And it is not an isolated case. Social media and the testimonies of Ukrainians who manage to flee or go into hiding reveal a systematic practice of abducting men of military age, even fathers of three or four children, to send them to the front. The international reaction, however, is a murmur drowned out by political correctness.

Abductions in broad daylight
The videos circulating show recruitment operations that look like raids: agents from the ТЦК (recruitment centers) intercept men in the street, overpower them and load them into vans. In one of them, a woman tries to intervene without success. The public response is tepid: nobody rushes at the soldiers, even though the footage spreads. "They have had to raise the penalties for those who refuse," one analysis notes. In fact, a first desertion is still "free" (no incivil punishment), which suggests the state prefers not to fully deter those who flee, but to capture them again.

Attacks on recruitment centers: resistance is growing
It is not just street abductions. The Ukrainian authorities themselves acknowledge an increase in attacks against the ТЦК. Violence does not solve the problem: some of those conscripted end up in documented beatings and kidnappings that feed Russian propaganda. Even voices that have backed Ukraine from the start criticize the method, defending conscientious objection. "This barbarity will end," they write, but in the meantime the conscripts' bodies come home in bags: one case mentions four months between capture and the return of the corpse.

The hunt extends beyond the borders
The pressure on Ukrainians does not stop at the defense lines. In Europe, the extradition of male refugees has become a real threat. Cases are reported in Ireland, where a young man was handed over for having left the country before martial law, and in Spain, where a fiber-optic installer with more than a decade of residence was expelled. The EU's new Entry/Exit System (EES), a biometric system that will record fingerprints and photos of non-EU citizens, could make it easier to identify and eventually hand over Ukrainians of fighting age. Those holding a Ukrainian passport and living abroad antiestéticar their data will end up at Kyiv's disposal.

Genocide or military necessity?
Positions are polarizing. Some believe Ukraine is committing genocide against its own male population, using recruitment methods typical of a dictatorship. Others see it as an inevitable evil in an existential war, though they criticize the abuses. Meanwhile, videos of elderly or disabled soldiers being cut down by drones — their terrified faces shown uncensored — fuel the outrage. The question hanging in the air: how long can a state sustain itself by abducting its own citizens to fill the ranks?

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