Mobilization Without Rules

Territorial recruitment centers do not have the authority to detain, arrest or hold citizens on their own. Those powers belong to the police. In practice, however, men are grabbed on streets, outside apartment entrances, at checkpoints and in the courtyards of private homes, forced into minibuses and taken away without the immediate possibility of contacting relatives or a lawyer. Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets called the use of force, balaclavas, beatings and deaths inside recruitment-center premises a “shameful practice.” According to him, the ombudsman’s office received more than 6,000 complaints about violations during mobilization.

The official statistics reflect only cases in which victims or their relatives were able to appeal to the state. Numerous videos of forceful detentions and relatives’ accounts do not become formal complaints and are not recorded. The 340-fold rise in complaints therefore speaks not only to the scale of the problem, but also to how incomplete its documented part remains.

The word “busification” emerged to describe a practice in which a man is surrounded by people in uniform, force is used against him and he is delivered to a recruitment center in a minibus. Often, members of such groups hide their faces, have no identifying marks and do not explain the grounds for detention. Lubinets separately noted that the inability to identify employees is itself a violation.

In Kyiv, about five recruitment-center employees twisted a man’s arms, while a police officer nearby turned away her body camera and stopped recording the detention. In another case, 15 patrol-police crews arrived in the Desnianskyi district to mobilize one person, after which local residents staged a mass protest against “busification”.

In Odesa, recruitment-center employees, according to eyewitnesses, rammed a car and forcibly took the driver away; the vehicles used by the notification group allegedly had other people’s license plates. In Kyiv, representatives of a recruitment center blocked a car, tried to smash its windows and opened fire after the driver who had left—all of this in the presence of police.

Forceful groups also enter private property. In the village of Ratne in Volyn region, recruitment-center employees burst into the courtyard of a house and, according to eyewitnesses, beat a man. The recruitment center denied using force and said the injured man had no complaints.

The gravest episodes end in hospital or the morgue. In Dnipro, 55-year-old Oleh went out to walk his dog and did not return. An examination established that he died of a head injury. Police found a car with traces of blood and established the involvement of three recruitment-center servicemen. All three were detained and remanded in custody in the case over the man’s death.

Another Dnipro resident, Serhii, ended up in a coma with a severe traumatic brain injury after encountering people in balaclavas. His wife and witnesses say he was beaten, forced into a bus and later handed over to medics unconscious. The regional recruitment center’s version is that the man fell by himself in the dark while running away from the notification group. Twenty-two days after the incident, he remained in a coma. His wife said that the investigation was being prepared for closure, video recordings had been degraded and important materials were not being added to the case file.

In Dnipropetrovsk region, 43-year-old architect Yevhen Lahunov died six days after being mobilized. He was taken to hospital with a brain contusion, fractures and other serious injuries. Police opened proceedings under the article on intentional murder. The recruitment center said he had suffered an epileptic seizure, but the dead man’s mother said her son had not had epilepsy. Medical documents listed the cause of death as combined blunt trauma to the body resulting from contact with a blunt object.

In Donetsk region, the body of Oleg Lysenko, a mobilized resident of Kramatorsk, was found on a highway with a severe head injury after recruitment-center employees had been taking him to a training center. The enlistment office said the man had fled from the vehicle, but did not explain the origin of the injury after which he fell into a coma and died.

The ombudsman also reported other deaths after physical violence. In one Kyiv case, a detained man was denied access to his family and lawyer, and then relatives received a call from the hospital: the man had undergone a craniotomy, after which he died. In Kryvyi Rih, according to data cited in a review of mobilization violations, recruitment-center employees beat a father of six to death inside an enlistment office.

The SBI investigation in Odesa showed that violence may not have been an accidental excess, but an organized practice. According to investigators, employees of a district recruitment center enlisted people with criminal backgrounds to find and deliver men. The group was given a quota—five detainees a day—and, according to sources in the prosecutor’s office, was supposed to hand over at least $20,000 a month to the recruitment center.

One victim, who had a deferment, said he was abducted, brutally beaten and threatened with sexual violence using a baton. Handcuffs, hammers and rubber batons were found in a service minibus. Members of the group were remanded in custody in a case involving torture, extortion and kidnapping.

In Ternopil, after the recruitment center reported involving “combat units” in mobilization, police detained seven servicemen. They are suspected of kidnapping, torture, extortion and unlawful deprivation of liberty. According to investigators, one man was stripped, doused with a flammable liquid, forced to run in front of a car, beaten and held for three days in inhuman conditions. The detainees’ direct connection to the recruitment center has not been officially confirmed, but the 3rd Assault Brigade acknowledged that the suspects were its fighters. These circumstances are set out in detail in a report on “combat groups,” kidnappings and torture in Ternopil.

Harsh methods are also used against people who should not have been targets of forceful mobilization. In Odesa, veteran with a disability Hennadii Tsepiuk showed his war-disabled veteran’s ID, but, according to him, they still tried to force him into a minibus. The man suffered an open fracture of his arm, after which he was left on the road. Police opened criminal proceedings over the veteran’s injury.

In Kyiv, a man with mental disorders was again taken away by recruitment-center employees and police officers. Earlier, he had escaped from a recruitment center and said he had been beaten and strangled there with a ligature. The man documented his injuries and filed a complaint with police. Instead of returning his phone as promised, police came together with enlistment officers and again took him away by force.

Lubinets described the mobilization of people with serious spinal diseases who could not put on body armor, but who, after a military medical commission, were declared fit and sent to assault units. The Council of Europe Commissioner also included beatings, harsh detentions, denial of access to a lawyer, isolation from the outside world and the mobilization of people with disabilities in the list of systemic violations.

In Kryvyi Rih, a 34-year-old single father was mobilized; his five-year-old daughter lived with him under a court ruling. The mother was not involved in raising the child. The man twice submitted documents for a deferment but was refused. He was taken away while the girl was at kindergarten; the child spent the first night at the kindergarten director’s home and was then handed over to her grandfather, with whom the family had not communicated for three years. The story is set out in a report on the mobilization of the father of a five-year-old girl.

After public outcry, the head of the Kryvyi Rih recruitment center was summoned to the Verkhovna Rada. At the same time, the recruitment center itself, the Defense Ministry and the military ombudsman did not publicly comment on the situation. The head of the kindergarten deleted posts and videos. The continuation of the case is in a report on the recruitment-center chief being summoned to parliament.

By law, it is the police, not recruitment centers, that are authorized to detain citizens. In practice, police officers often join notification groups, are present when force is used or do not intervene. The episode with the turned-away body camera shows how mandatory recording disappears. In Serhii’s case in Dnipro, his wife alleged joint actions by the police, the recruitment center and people in balaclavas, as well as the ignoring of video materials.

At the same time, allegations of direct corrupt interest are emerging. Lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi said that in a number of cities, criminal groups, with police assistance, put on uniforms, grab people and demand money under threat of sending them to a recruitment center. According to him, such schemes operate in many cities, including Dnipro.

A separate investigation described a corruption hierarchy that had emerged around joint police and recruitment-center groups: at checkpoints, a man who is wanted by the authorities is allegedly offered a choice between being taken to a recruitment center and resolving the matter “on the spot,” after which the money is distributed among the participants and their superiors. These allegations are set out in a report on corruption around recruitment-center raids and patrol police.

In response to serious injuries, similar explanations are regularly heard: the person fell by himself, fled from a vehicle, suffered a seizure or voluntarily got into a bus. Sometimes these explanations contradict medical documents, witness accounts and videos. In the cases of Serhii and Yevhen Lahunov, families directly challenged the recruitment centers’ versions. In the first case, possible degradation of video evidence and preparations to close the case were reported; in the second, police opened proceedings for intentional murder.

The problem is not limited to individual employees. Complaints have grown by hundreds of times, cases are coming in from different regions, and the set of methods repeats: people without identifying marks, minibuses, physical coercion, isolation, denial of access to a lawyer, disappearance of recordings and agencies’ refusal to provide substantive comment.

The authorities have repeatedly promised to change the system. Volodymyr Zelensky instructed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov to “deal with busification,” but the number of new episodes continued to grow. Kyrylo Budanov warned that changing the name or format of recruitment centers would not alter the substance of the process, since people would still have to be mobilized.

The discussed transfer of the search for and delivery of men to the police may make procedures formally more lawful, but it will not necessarily end street coercion. An analysis of the possible reform shows the risk that “busification” will not disappear, but will receive a stronger police and legal framework.

The Council of Europe recalls that even martial law does not abolish the right to life, the prohibition of torture and the prohibition of inhuman treatment. These rights are absolute. The question, therefore, is not only the effectiveness of mobilization, but whether the state machinery is capable of acting within the law, investigating violations and ensuring accountability—regardless of military necessity and political rhetoric.

For now, the collected cases show a recurring pattern: the powers of recruitment centers are expanding in practice without corresponding legal safeguards, police do not always protect citizens, and the official response often begins only after a video, a death or a major public outcry.