A Month Ago Zelensky Ordered the New Defense Minister to “Deal With Busification.”

TCC officers in Kryvyi Rih forcibly dragged a man out of an apartment building during a forced mobilization. A small girl ran after him into the street, in freezing temperatures.

On January 30, commenting on the appointment of the new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, President Volodymyr Zelensky explicitly identified the need to “deal with busification” as one of the key tasks. According to him, it was among the priority issues set before the new head of the defense ministry, alongside strengthening air defense and restoring order in matters related to the contract army. Zelensky separately emphasized that the problem requires a systemic solution within the framework of existing legal procedures.

A month has passed since that statement, yet in practice the situation has moved in the opposite direction. The number of cases of forced mobilization—using physical pressure and bypassing procedures established by law—has not decreased; on the contrary, it has continued to grow. This refers to the so-called “busification”—the forcible delivery of men to TCCs without observing even minimal legal requirements.

It is worth recalling that Ukrainian legislation clearly limits the powers of Territorial Centers of Recruitment. TCC representatives are not vested with the authority to detain people on the streets, restrict their freedom, or forcibly bring them into official premises. Such powers, under the Constitution of Ukraine and current administrative law, belong exclusively to the National Police—and only when legally prescribed grounds exist.

In addition, when checking documents and issuing draft notices, authorized TCC representatives are required to record their actions on video. The use of body cameras is mandated as a compulsory element of transparency and legality, intended to protect both citizens and the officers themselves from abuse and conflict. The absence of an activated camera renders such actions legally vulnerable and calls their lawfulness into question.

It is precisely these basic, minimal procedures—the prohibition on the use of force during detention and the mandatory recording of actions—that are increasingly being ignored in practice, despite public promises to “deal with busification” voiced at the highest level.

One of the most high-profile incidents occurred in Dnipro. A 55-year-old man named Oleh, a former law enforcement officer, left his home on the evening of February 6 to walk his dog and never returned. He lived with his 18-year-old daughter. Police received a report of his death shortly after midnight on February 7. According to preliminary forensic findings, the man died of a traumatic brain injury. During the investigation, law enforcement officers examined the scene, seized physical evidence, and confiscated a vehicle bearing traces of the victim’s blood. Police say witnesses and eyewitnesses were questioned, after which the involvement of three TCC servicemen was established. They were detained, and a pretrial investigation is ongoing.

Another illustrative case was previously described by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets. It concerns Kryvyi Rih, where a single father raising a 14-year-old son was mobilized. The man came to the TCC to update his registration data, after which he stopped responding. As a result of the mobilization, the father was effectively cut off from his family, while the child was left alone and placed in a boarding school due to the absence of properly оформed documents confirming a deferment and his status as the sole parent.

According to the ombudsman, this case is not an isolated one. In recent months, similar situations have been recorded in which the mobilization of fathers or guardians—amid improperly completed paperwork—leads to children being left effectively without legal protection. Lubinets separately emphasized that if a child is in fact being raised by only one parent, this must be legally formalized; otherwise, the state fails to see the real situation and is unable to fully protect either the child or the adult. In wartime conditions, he noted, such failures in legal procedures can have extremely serious consequences.

In Dnipro, a single father who had a valid deferment from military service was mobilized, leaving his minor child without care. The man’s sister reported the incident. According to her, Roman Kostenko had been raising his son on his own after his wife’s death. He was entitled to a deferment, but due to a malfunction in the Reserve+ system, he was unable to confirm it to TCC officers who stopped him on the street. He was subsequently mobilized.

After being taken to the TCC, the relative says, officials there refused to accept documents confirming the deferment, stating that Roman was “already a soldier.” As a result, the child was left without a legal guardian or support. The boy has developmental issues, and it was his father who was responsible for his treatment and rehabilitation.

The TCC has officially denied that it had information about a valid deferment.

“An on-the-spot check was immediately carried out, and it was established that he had no grounds for this deferment. When he arrived at the TCC, it was, of course, only according to his own words that he had a child and that he was supposedly a single father. It was impossible to verify this, as he had no documents, not even photos. The system showed that the individual had lost the right to a deferment, and that almost two weeks had already passed since that moment,” a TCC representative said.

Taken together, these episodes form a consistent pattern. The absence of inevitable accountability for abuses of authority gradually normalizes arbitrary conduct by individual TCC officers. The public sphere increasingly records cases of intrusions into private homes, the forcible removal of people from apartment buildings, and the use of tear gas in public transport. Such methods fall outside not only the law, but also the most basic standards of law enforcement in wartime.

At the same time, public frustration is growing. Forced mobilization is increasingly perceived not as an exception, but as a systemic risk that anyone may face. This deepens distrust in state institutions, provokes spontaneous resistance, and raises the level of social tension, including in rear regions where such conflicts had previously been rare.

Meanwhile, European media and politicians—who consistently proclaim their commitment to human rights and the rule of law—prefer to avoid the issue. Ignoring the problem does not eliminate its consequences. In the context of a protracted war, the absence of clear boundaries of what is permissible and a sense of impunity risk further radicalizing mobilization practices and widening the gap between the state and society—with consequences that will be difficult to reverse quickly.