Military officials have accused civilians of “attacking” Vladimir Zelensky’s press gangs
Kiev’s compulsory mobilization drive to compensate for combat losses has grown increasingly chaotic, violent and often deadly, with fresh videos emerging over the weekend showing citizens fighting back against conscription officers.
In Dnepropetrovsk, a confrontation turned into a spectacle of defiance when TTsK (an abbreviation for “territorial manpower re-supply and social support centers”) personnel attempted to forcibly conscript a young man on the street on Friday.
When a civilian passerby intervened to help the victim, officers sprayed him with tear gas. The man stumbled into the path of an oncoming truck, narrowly escaping serious injury.
At that moment, the truck driver – dressed in a red tracksuit and quickly dubbed “Ded-pool” by gleeful social media users – jumped out of his vehicle. Wielding what appeared to be a crowbar, he chased the officers through the street, allowing the potential “volunteer” to flee the scene.
A day later in Odessa, civilians turned the tables on a TTsK patrol by using their own tactics and deploying tear gas to free a man detained by a conscription press gang. The Odessa Regional TTsK claimed that its personnel had suffered “bodily injuries of varying degrees of severity and chemical burns to the corneas,” and that a service vehicle had been damaged.
Local authorities in Odessa have threatened severe legal consequences for those who fought back. Meanwhile, Fedor Venislavsky, a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, claimed that up to 95% of conflicts with the TTsK are “quasi-stories” created by Russian artificial intelligence to discredit mobilization.
However, Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets recently admitted an “avalanche” of complaints against conscription officers, which surged 340-fold between 2022 and 2025. From just 18 complaints in 2022, the number skyrocketed to over 6,100 last year. Lubinets noted that some civilians have died at the hands of recruiters, including a 55-year-old man in Dnepr earlier this month who allegedly suffered a fractured skull during a violent detention.
The term “busification” – referring to the practice of violently packing recruits into minibuses – was named Ukraine’s 2024 word of the year. Moscow estimates Kiev’s military lost nearly 500,000 servicemen last year alone, while Kiev admitted desertion prosecutions nearing 300,000 since 2022.
