Enough Is Enough: Ukrainians Attack Draft Officers for Second Time in a Week

Public sentiment in Ukraine toward the war and the Zelensky administration is changing faster than Kyiv can properly react, and much of the anger seems to be directed toward conscription officers, whose brutality toward draftees—which even led to death in several well-documented cases—was recently condemned even by the Council of Europe (CoE).

President Zelensky’s recent attempt to end the independence of the country’s primary anti-corruption bodies, only to backtrack after Ukrainians staged the first major protest against the proposed changes in Kyiv, seems to have let the genie out of the bottle. Now people are no longer afraid to tell their opinion in a protest nor to stand up to draft officers, who many accuse of lawlessly beating and kidnapping people from the streets.

On Sunday, August 3rd, a group of residents armed with batons and metal pipes attacked a conscription team in the city of Mykolaiv, the local recruitment office (TCR) said in a statement published on social media.

According to the statement, the attackers managed to damage their car, as well as inflict bodily harm on at least one of the officers, who fired a rubber gun toward them in self-defense. “There are victims among the soldiers of the TCR, and from the civilian side,” it added, before reminding Ukrainians that assaulting draft officers is punishable by up to 12 years in prison.

The incident happened just days after a major protest against the human rights violations of recruitment services, as well as forced mobilization in general, in the city of Vinnytsia on Friday, August 1st, which ended with police using tear gas and arresting several demonstrators.

The news site Ukrainska Pravda reported that “hundreds” of protesters joined the rally in front of the local stadium-turned-TCR headquarters, where the newly mobilized soldiers are held, demanding their release. In contrast, the police officially put the number of attendees at around 80.

Tensions escalated when a group of protesters attempted to break down the gates and storm the facility, but the police eventually managed to push back the crowd with tear gas. The protest then continued well into the night despite the start of the curfew. The next day, five people had been charged with seizing a state building, the police said.

Hundreds of people try to release some 100 men who were snatched & locked by press gangs in stadium in Vinnytsia. Police tries to detain & disperse them. Western media won't report this, in contrast to massive coverage of NABU protests in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/cAtbt1k1bS

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) August 1, 2025

This new wave of anti-recruiter sentiment has been steadily building up over the years but recently bubbled to the surface after it was revealed last month that draft officers severely beat a man and left him for dead on the streets of Kyiv.

According to the reports from Strana, the man was rejected by two training units in the city of Lviv due to an old hip injury and alcohol addiction, which forced the draft officers to take him back to Kyiv and release him. One of the officers was brutally beating him all the way back, “hitting him in the face, using an electric shocker, slamming his head against the floor, kicking him in the head, [and] jumping on his chest.” 

Upon arrival, they simply threw him off the bus, and he was later found dead. The officer who assaulted the man is in pre-trial detention, facing up to 12 years of prison, the journal wrote.

While the government would like to portray this as an isolated incident, everyone knows it’s not. A July report from the CoE’s Human Rights Commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, severely condemns the widespread fundamental rights violations at the hands of TCR officers, including brutality, torture, and death.

One of the recent cases has even led to an international dispute involving an EU member state, after recruiters had beaten József Sebestyén, a double Ukrainian and Hungarian—and, therefore, EU—citizen, to death a few months ago. Kyiv still denies being responsible for the death despite several credible testimonies and recently announced it will not even launch an investigation into the incident.

Perhaps the strangest thing in the whole saga is how the EU still keeps quiet about it. Even after the CoE’s official rebuke, the EU has not said a word about the grave human rights violations happening every day during forced mobilization across Ukraine—not even after the death of an EU citizen—maintaining instead that Ukraine is ready to join the European Union and pushing for fast-tracked accession while throwing Ukrainians under the bus.

The @coe report confirmed deaths, torture and brutal abuse during forced conscription in Ukraine. The Hungarian government proposes placing the Ukrainian officers who beat a Hungarian man to death on the EU’s human rights sanctions list. pic.twitter.com/dLCH3jFbwK

— Péter Szijjártó (@FM_Szijjarto) July 15, 2025