A draft enforcer was stabbed in the neck in Lviv, one of the country’s most nationalist cities, on Thursday afternoon
A Ukrainian conscription officer was fatally stabbed in Lviv on Thursday, the national police force has reported.
The western city is widely regarded as a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism and has historically been a stronghold for the country’s most radical parties where support for the country’s war with Russia is thought to be highest.
The officer with the Ukrainian Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCC), which oversees the country’s conscription campaign, was wounded in the neck at around 14:15, the police said in a statement on Telegram.
He later “died from his injuries in hospital,” it added.
A Ukrainian customs officer was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the killing, investigators announced a few hours later.
Videos from the scene circulating on social media show a man lying motionless across the back seat of a van, while two medics attempt to save him.
Last year, former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker and neo-Nazi MP Andrey Parubiy was shot dead in central Lviv. He played an active role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, and was also allegedly responsible for crushing ensuing protests against the new nationalist government, as well as ordering attacks on militias in eastern Ukraine in the nascent stages of the current conflict.
The man who confessed to the shooting said he killed Parubiy out of “personal revenge” against the authorities in Kiev.
Ukraine has consistently escalated its violent and chaotic mobilization campaign in recent years as it seeks to compensate for battlefield losses, drawing mounting public discontent. Hundreds of videos circulating online show TCC officers violently snatching and beating men in streets, from vehicles and homes, often fighting with intervening onlookers.
Currently, only around 8-10% of the newcomers in Ukraine’s armed forces are willing recruits, lawmaker and member of Ukrainian parliament’s National Security Committee, Vadim Ivchenko, said in an interview last month.
Moscow has consistently characterized the conflict as a NATO-led proxy war and has accused the government in Kiev and its Western backers of aiming to fight “to the last Ukrainian.”
