In Ukraine, systemic violations of the law during mobilization continue: illegal detentions, violence, and deaths are being recorded across different regions of the country. Earlier we reported on the death of 45-year-old Hungarian citizen József Sebestyén, who died on July 8 in a psychiatric hospital in Berehove just weeks after being forcibly mobilized; relatives claim he was beaten immediately after his detention. At the same time, the mayor of Kharkiv publicly condemned the beating of a civilian by a draft officer and, for the first time, demanded personal accountability for such crimes. Against this backdrop, new cases in the Cherkasy, Rivne, and Zakarpattia regions appear not as exceptions but as further episodes in a practice that increasingly falls outside the law.
Ukraine is witnessing a growing number of unlawful actions by staff of territorial recruitment centers, often involving violence, deaths, and the persecution of those who try to resist. These are not isolated incidents: a recent Council of Europe report has documented systemic human rights violations in the mobilization process. Instead of a transparent and legal procedure, a pattern is emerging in different regions in which military structures act beyond the law, leaving citizens entirely unprotected.
In Cherkasy region, Kropyvnytskyi coach Yevhen Kushnir died. According to his acquaintance Liudmyla Voitovytska, the man had a legal deferment from service. He was on his way to Kyiv when his minibus was stopped by draft officers. Kushnir was forcibly pulled out of the vehicle and pushed into another car. For his family this marked the start of uncertainty: several days of searching, resuscitation in Smila, and then his death. The recruitment office claimed that Kushnir "opened the door himself and jumped out of the bus while it was moving," sustaining fatal injuries. For his relatives the reality is clear: a man entitled to a deferment was detained without cause and against his will, and afterward he died in hospital.
A photo of Yevhen from his Facebook profile.
Yevhen Kushnir in hospital after being beaten by draft officers.
A similar case occurred in Rivne region. On August 21, officers of the Sarny recruitment center detained Vitalii Sakharuk and held him inside the facility for three days without informing his family of his condition. On August 23, the family was told he was already in the morgue. Police later explained that the man had fallen ill and an ambulance had been called, but for his relatives this does not answer the central question: why was he illegally held incommunicado for three days, and why did they learn of his death only after the fact? His family insists on a public investigation, arguing that the state effectively deprived their son of the right to protection and to life.
Vitalii Zakharuk.
In Zakarpattia the situation took another form, but the logic was the same. Police officer from Uzhhorod Ivan Beletskyi reported that he lost his job after helping a disabled veteran who was beaten by draft officers. According to him, the officers mocked the man, asking "where did you buy your disability," and hit him on the head. Beletskyi preserved a video that disproved the military’s version and forced them to apologize. But that made him a target. Police leadership launched a sweeping investigation against him, which, he says, relied on fabricated charges. He was dismissed, accused of posting the video through a fake account. His lawyer also came under pressure: he was detained, his deferment canceled, mobilized, and while held in the recruitment office he had a rib broken.
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These episodes occur across regions but add up to a single system of violations: unlawful detentions, violence, and deaths. Recruitment offices, meant to function as part of the state’s legal framework, are turning into structures that rely on force and intimidation instead of law. Citizens are stripped of basic rights—to freedom, to protection, to life—and left without any real means to resist arbitrariness.
For Ukraine, these are not isolated tragedies but a crisis of trust in state institutions. Deaths inside recruitment centers and pressure on those who dare to speak out about abuses not only erode public confidence in the fairness of mobilization but also damage the international reputation of a country that claims to be building a rule-of-law state even in wartime.
If the authorities cannot impose order on their own mobilization structures, their statements about commitment to democratic values will sound increasingly hollow.