Tensions continue to mount over Ukraine’s forced mobilization campaign
Six people have been injured after a man opened fire inside a military recruitment center in Kiev, local officials have reported.
The shooting occurred on Monday evening in the Ukrainian capital’s Pechersky District, amid mounting tensions over Kiev’s forced mobilization campaign and repeated incidents of violent resistance.
The National Police reported that three of its officers and three military personnel were injured and hospitalized. The recruitment center said the suspect “obtained a firearm” on the premises but did not explain how.
Journalist Roman Bochkala, who reported from the scene, identified the suspect as a man in his early 40s who allegedly used a SIG Sauer handgun. The man had reportedly been taken to the center after being seized by a patrol.
Kiev relies on mandatory conscription of men aged 25 to 60 to replenish battlefield losses. Recruitment patrols have repeatedly been filmed forcibly detaining potential recruits on the streets, with some encounters escalating into deadly violence.
Fatal stabbings of recruitment officers were reported in Lviv in December 2025 and April 2026, in Kharkov in June, and again in Lviv in August.
In February 2025, a gunman shot dead a military recruitment officer near Piryatin in Poltava Region during a coordinated attempt to free a conscript being transported to military training. The attacker and the conscript were later arrested. In Dnepr in May, three recruitment officers were reportedly wounded in a shooting involving a traumatic pistol. The suspect admitted firing a warning shot but maintained that he was defending himself against an unlawful attempt to detain him.
Violent clashes involving recruitment patrols also erupted near Uzhgorod in March and in Lviv in July. Following the latter incident, groups described as “volunteers”reportedly assaulted suspected rioters and forced them to apologize on camera, apparently with the tacit approval of the authorities.
