There is no shortage of videos on social media apparently showing men being taken off the streets of Ukraine—some while walking their dog, or even out with their wife and children—to be forcibly conscripted into the military.
Reports are even making it into Western mainstream media publications, something that may force European leaders to take notice.
Jerome Starkey, defence editor at the British Sun newspaper, has written about “the ruthless side of Ukraine’s recruiting crisis” after he witnessed one of his Ukrainian journalist colleagues being “forcibly press-ganged into his country’s armed forces” at an army checkpoint.
Our team of three was ripped apart. My friend … had his liberty taken away…
The experience has hammered home the depths that Ukraine has plumbed to plug the growing gaps on its front line. It also revealed the rift between those who serve and those who don’t. The army needs warm bodies but it has run out of volunteers. This is existential for Ukraine.
Radio Free Europe also reported on Friday on the death of a man who was “swept off a Kyiv street by conscription officers” and died less than a week later, supposedly after hitting his head while passing out in a recruitment center.
His family and their lawyer doubt it: They suspect the blunt-force trauma listed on a death certificate—along with cerebral hemorrhage, skull fractures, and a closed head injury—was the result of a deliberate act of violence.
In July, there was a particular outcry from Budapest after a 45-year-old ethnic Hungarian in Ukraine was beaten to death with iron bars after being conscripted into the Ukrainian army. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó later quipped:
And in return, they expect our support for their EU membership? They can’t be serious.
For ten years Ukraine has carried out an anti-Hungarian policy. The rights of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia were taken away, a Hungarian man was beaten to death during forced conscription, the oil pipeline essential for Hungary’s secure energy supply was attacked, and…
Relations worsened further still this week when four university students from Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority were detained after visiting a military recruitment office in Berehove to update their personal data as required by law. They were released the following evening after Budapest intervened.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
