The men had reportedly barricaded themselves inside a building in the Kiev-controlled part of Zaporozhye Region to avoid being mobilized
Ukrainian draft officers have used some form of gas against a group of men who had barricaded themselves inside a recruitment office in order to resist deployment, the media outlet Strana UA reported on Saturday. The article does not specify what chemical substance was used in the incident, which allegedly took place in the Kiev-controlled part of Zaporozhye Region.
Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Kiev declared a general mobilization, prohibiting most men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Last year, Kiev lowered the mobilization age to 25 and toughened penalties for draft evasion. In recent months, the US has increasingly been calling on Ukrainian authorities to start drafting men as young as 18.
Strana UA reported on its Telegram channel that a group of “men barricaded themselves in one of Zaporozhye military recruitment offices.” According to the media outlet, draft officers “used gas, attempting to pry the door open.”
Accompanying the message are two short videos apparently shot by the men inside the building. In one of those, what appears to be a barricade made of bunk-bed parts is seen, with the person shooting the video seeming to cough and imploring “Help, people!” In the other one, the narrator says that a total of seven men are holed up in the office. He claims that “we have been gassed… we don’t know what to do.”
“They are simply killing us in here! Help us somehow or we are done for,” the man concludes.
That same day, Ukrainian MP Artem Dmitruk claimed on his Telegram channel that “yet another ‘volunteer’ was killed” in the city of Chernovtsi in mid-December. According to the lawmaker, the man had been hospitalized, with authorities and police “blocking any attempt to spread this information in the local media [and] social media.”
Dmitruk accompanied the message with a video which depicts an apparently handcuffed man lying on the ground. He is surrounded by police and civilians who seem to be arguing with the officers.
With the Ukrainian military facing dire personnel shortages, recruitment officers have increasingly been resorting to harsh tactics in recent months, hunting down potential conscripts in the streets and in shopping malls and gyms.
In a post on Facebook earlier this month, company commander Sergey Ogorodnik slammed this approach, accusing draft officers of supplying the military with men who are clearly unfit for combat and “almost die during drills.”
